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| My mom, from a photo taken in 1993 |
This
is just a personal story that I would like to share with all of you.
My
mother, passed away in November of 1995, after a long 4 year battle
with rectal/colon cancer. She was first diagnosed with this terrible
disease in 1991. After what seemed like success against this disease,
it reappeared in the spring of 1995, and became worse day by day.
When my mother was told that there was nothing else the doctors could
do, she asked that we get in touch with Howard Shockley, a
Presbyterian minister whom we came to know during my dad's illness
due to a malignant brain tumor. Howard himself had been diagnosed
with a brain tumor when he was in his late teens, and he had promised
God, that if He would heal him, he would go into the ministry. God
heard his prayers, and Howard was healed.
So,
my brothers and I contacted Howard, and being the good Christian man
that he is, he came to visit my mother, and continued to do so on a
regular basis, sometimes coming by as many as 5 days a week. On his
first visit, he had decided that he was going to give my mother a
Bible verse to memorize, and that he would give her a new one to
memorize each week. That first, and as it turned out, only Bible
verse, was from Philippians 4:13- "I can do all things through
Christ, which strengtheneth me."
You
would not believe the amount of faith my mother placed in that one
verse. It became her all purpose verse, if one can claim such a thing
for any one Bible verse. She placed so much faith in it, that Howard
later said that it became a blessing for him, and he decided there
was no need to bring her any others to learn.
One
of the last times that she was in the hospital, she was having a very
difficult time being helped in and out of bed. She had weakened to
the point, that she did not have the strength to get up without help,
and she experienced a good bit of pain from being gotten up, and then
helped back into bed. She would be literally exhausted afterward. I
was in her room, spending the day there with her, and she knew she
they would soon be coming to help her out of the chair, and back into
bed. She was dreading it, because she knew how tired it made her, and
how much it hurt. She looked at me, and she said, "Steve, pray
for me. Pray for God to help me. Ask Him to help me, so that it
doesn't hurt, and so that I won't be worn out". So, I prayed,
and as I prayed, my mother's eyes were closed, her hands stretched
over her face, as she repeated over and over again, "I can do
all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me". Just as we
finished our prayer, they came to get her out of the chair, and into
bed. They put a strap around her waist, to enable them to help her
up. When the time to make the attempt came, she came up out of that
chair as if it was nothing at all, and got into that bed with no pain
or trouble at all. None! One of her nurses made a comment about how
that time it had been so easy, and mom told the nurse, "it was
because we prayed".
Just
3 weeks later, my mom had gone into a coma at home, and my two
younger brothers, Mike and Randy, were staying at home with us. We
would be taking mom to the Solace Center at Mountain Area Hospice the
next day, and none of us was looking forward to it as you can
imagine, because we all knew mom would be leaving home for the last
time.
We
had been sitting up talking, sitting up late, in fact. I guess we
thought we could ward that time off , keep it from coming too
quickly, if we stayed awake rather than sleep. Mike decided he wanted
something to read, and he found a book, called “The Bible In My
Everyday Life”. It had not been taken down off the bookshelf in
many years.
Now,
that old book had belonged to an aunt who had died at a very young
age. It was written in 1932. She had used it somewhat like a Family
Bible, recording births, deaths, and other events in it. Mike handed
it to me to show me something that was written in it. After looking
at what he wanted me to see, I noticed that in the back of the book,
it listed every day of the year, and that it gave a Bible verse for
each day. I looked at the Bible verse for each of our family's
birthdays, and then decided to look at the verse for the next day,
which was November 7. Do you know what that verse was? "I can do
all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me".
Now,
I was a little bit surprised to say the least. I showed it to Mike,
and he had a total look of shock on his face as well. I now know, I
should not have been surprised. I know that Mike being led to choose
this book was no accident, even though some narrow minded people
might think it purely coincidence, I know it was purely a blessing.
For when we were at a point, when we were sure that all was lost,
that it was just us alone, facing this hard time, God was telling us,
"I am here. I have not forsaken you. I will be with you, and I
will be with your mother".
So,
no matter what happens to you, to your loved ones, or to anyone else
that you know, remember, God is with us always in everything, and in
every way. And remember this verse, "I can do all things through
Christ, which strengtheneth me". I know He
strengthened us.
