I am writing this on Thanksgiving Day, but not about Thanksgiving.  Maybe I should.  I do have lots for which I am thankful.  I am more than a blessed man.
     I took the advice of my oncologist and scheduled a colonoscopy.  He advised that after dealing with three cancers in the past two years, maybe it was time to do the normal “medical things” for a person my age.
     My last colonoscopy was in 2011.  It was past time.
     Two things happened in preparation for the scope.  One of them had happened maybe only once or twice before.  The second had never happened in the last two years during any of the numerous medical procedures that I have had.
     First, I had tears well up in my eyes during the preparation phase.
     It’s not as you think.  As unpleasant as the preparation is, drinking the magnesium citrate didn’t bring tears.  It brought what it was intended to do.  If someone could make that stuff taste better they could be a millionaire.
     Being up most of the night didn’t bring tears either.
      Having the IV inserted didn’t bring tears.  This one was one of the easiest that I have had, and I have had lots of them.  There have been a couple that brought enough pain that I would like to have cried.
     What made tears well up in my eyes was the nurse, actually a nurse practitioner, who handled the preparation.
     We will call her Milly.  I have met very few people like her in the medical field.  Tears didn’t come because she was gruff, mean, or uncaring. 
     Milly is a thirty-something, beautiful young woman in every sense of the word.  She is a believer.  She is married and has a three-year-old son.  She is highly intelligent and very skilled.
     Part of her responsibility was to look over my health records to see if I was at risk in having the colonoscopy.  Because the “colonoscopy center” is out of the Baptist Health network, she had no access to what had happened in the last two years.
     It took a while to recap the diagnosis and treatments for the three cancers.  She was more than knowledgeable, even on multiple myeloma.  I shared with her the plan was to have the stem cell transplant and then not having to have the transplant because of the great results from chemotherapy and prayer.
     She had been typing in the information on the laptop, but I could tell that she was more than simply recording data.
     I asked her if I had time to share a short story.  She backed away from the laptop.
     I shared with her that on Mayo Clinic’s “spreadsheet” there wasn’t a column for the effect of prayer.  God’s power and grace have brought His healing because of the prayers of God’s people, especially children.
     I shared with her that just a few days before we were to leave for the transplant that three of my granddaughters, ages two, four, and just turned seven came out wearing t-shirts that said, “PawPaw’s prayer warriors.”
     As I have shared in these blogs, I shared with her that I have never asked God to heal me.   I have, however, asked God not to destroy their faith.
     It was more than Milly could take and more than she had bargained for in screening a patient for a procedure.   Seeing the tears well up in her eyes was more than I could take.
     Neither of us could say anything.  We didn’t need to.  The tears spoke louder than any words ever could.   Tears often do that.
     And then the second thing happened that has not happened in the last two years during all the treatments, doctors’ appointments, and procedures.
     Without saying a word, Milly spontaneously reached over and gave me a hug. 
     There isn’t a great deal of joy in the colonoscopy surgery center, except, of course, when patients get good results.  I did and I am on the 10-year plan.
     But the greater joy was experiencing a light in the middle of what can be a dark place.  I will long remember Milly.
     Milly moved on to the next patient and it wasn’t long before I was taken into the room for the scope with a totally different staff.  I couldn’t get the redness out of my eyes quickly enough.  I wonder if they wondered what happened in the preparation that would have made tears well up in my eyes.
     I have a feeling that maybe Milly’s next patient may have thought the same.
     I thought about Milly lots of times the rest of the day on Monday, and several times since as is obvious by my writing about her.
     I have prayed for her and her family.
   On Sunday I preached on what seemed to be an unusual passage for Thanksgiving Sunday.  I preached from Deuteronomy 8, part of the sermon that Moses preached to the Israelites as they were standing on the edge of the Jordan River getting ready to enter the Promised Land.  If you haven’t heard the sermon, I would encourage you to take the time.  It’s a sermon in part that lays down God’s principles for handling wealth.
     There is a line in verse 7 that says “For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land.”
     That is God’s heart for His children—to bring us into a good land, a land of blessing.
     I prayed that prayer for Milly, that God will bring her into a “good land,” a land of blessing in her life, her marriage, with her son, and even her ministry at the colonoscopy center.
     We never know when or where God may show up.  Who would ever have thought it might be while waiting for a procedure that none of us enjoys.
      May God use you today, maybe even in an unlikely place.  We are called to be the salt and the light.  I experienced both through the loving heart of one of His own this week.

Saturday, November 2, 2024  Sent
       I wrote this earlier in the week, but didn’t have peace about sending it until this morning.
 
Wednesday, October 30, 2024  Peace Revisited
       The last couple of days have been two of the tougher ones in quite some time.  It had nothing to do with the illnesses I have battled.  It had nothing to do with a new decade in the sights.  Why, it didn’t even have a thing to do with Teresa!
       I had had two circumstances, one at church and one at work that have been weighing on my mind and heart.  I could relate with the Apostle Paul when he wrote, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”  Hum, I think we just sang that last Sunday.
       I’m not at liberty to share the details of either situation, but they both were heavy on me. 
       I have a not-so-crazy belief that stress was a major determinant for me to end up with cancer over 20 years ago and then again almost two years ago.
       Not the normal stresses of life, but what I call “stress of the heart.”  Something that cuts to the core of who you are.  It’s that pit in your stomach that doesn’t go away.
       It’s not depression.  Depression is a rarity for me, if ever.
       It’s more like despair over a circumstance that I can’t change.
       The biggest symptom is the churning in my heart.
      Honestly, the last two years I have worked really hard at trying not to be emotionally involved or emotionally at risk when situations have arisen.  I am sure at times some folks have thought that I have been aloof or uncaring when I haven’t reached out to them because of this concern about the destructive possibilities I’ve felt at times.
       I went to bed knowing that sleep would be a hope more than a reality.  The one time I did fall off to sleep for a few minutes, Oreo decided the old dog needed to go out.  Her, not me.
       I finally rolled out of bed and decided that what I was feeling was no way to live and the worst thing for me, in lots of ways, including my health.
       And I did something that I have never done in my five decades of preaching.  I decided to look at a sermon that I had preached before. 
       Oh, I have looked at past sermons.  There was a time that I had 25 years of preaching at Daybreak in two filing cabinets.  One Saturday the Lord said, “Throw them all in the dumpster.”   Like the grapevine, fruit comes on the new growth.  And I did, without one regret.
       But this time looking at a sermon that I had previously preached was totally different.  I went back and looked at a sermon that I preached for my own benefit.  I had never done that before.
       Last year I preached a series of sermons on peace.  The first one was on peace WITH God.  The second was on the peace OF God.   It was the latter sermon I wanted to see.   I still had it on my computer.
       As I read through that sermon, God did an amazing work in my heart—not because of the sermon, but because of the principles from God’s Word that were in the sermon.
       And by the time that I had read through the sermon, the gift of peace that passes our understanding had flooded my heart.  Gone was the turmoil.  Gone was that pit that I had struggled with for two days.  They had been replaced by the sweet peace of Jesus.
       Being a pastor can be a very tough calling.  I think that Daybreak is more difficult than most because of our unashamed stance for life.   It is the enemy’s greatest area of warfare as we can see in our country.  His attack on our church is more than obvious, just by looking at the heartaches that have come to several people in our church who have been involved at Assurance.
       By the time that I met with someone who was in a far greater crucible than I perceived myself to be, God had brought me to a place where my concern was on their need.  It is where I always want to be as a pastor, though I fall far short of that.
       One of the things that we all know, but at times fail to realize in the moment, is that if our focus is on us and our problems, then it is doubtful that we will ever be able to help someone else.
       The second thing that we know is that the only way that we can come alongside of others is to know the comfort that Jesus brings alongside of us in our times of struggle. 
       It happened to me this morning.  It can happen to you.
     The sermon resonated so much with me this morning that I considered including it at the end of this blog.  I thought that maybe a better plan would be to ask Megan to post it on the church’s website and leave it there for a while.  You never know when you might get one of those pits in your stomach, and it will be there for you to read.
       Daybreak-lex.com
       After finishing the blog, I am wondering if I will get a bill from Mike Courtney for counseling!