Walk This Road With Me, Will You? Chap.6

It has been 2 weeks since my surgery. I just went through all of the face book messages on my page from the past few weeks and I am completely overwhelmed. All the love, prayers, well-wishes....I just can't wrap my mind around it. To say thank you seems so lacking but I don't know what else to say. I just hope that everyone knows how much I have felt and am still feeling the love. I am on the mend and doing well. Still have to watch it though. One day I will feel pretty good and over-do it a little and the next day I pay for it. I'm not use to my strength being so depleted. The biggest thing I am dealing with right now is night sweats. Oh my goodness, they are miserable! They are so different than just the hot flashes of menopause. My sheets and gown literally get soaked. It seems that they are pretty common after major surgery. My poor husband is having to change the sheets every day. I pray that they go away sooner than later:) As for the arthritis, it is not an issue. My joint pain stays around a 1 or 2.  It has been almost 9 weeks since the Enbrel shots.  I thank Him every day.

So while I was busy trying to find answers to my array of issues, life was marching on. My best friend and soulmate died of cancer at the age of 41, my daughter got married while struggling through depression and anxiety, my son went off to college while on a search to find truth, my sweet grand boys joined our family, bringing unimaginable joy, my loved ones struggled with substance abuse and I took a 10 year journey with my hero of a daddy through Alzheimer's disease. It was a most horrible journey. And it did nothing to help build my faith or answer my questions. As confused as I was, I still loved life though. I was still able to find joy in living. The good that I had always overpowered the bad. I was happy in my home and in my job. I loved my church but still there was a feeling of disconnection. Not with the people but with the religious part of it. I just felt like I didn't fit in for some reason. I still cannot explain it. But I knew one thing. I would never leave my church. That thought never even entered my mind.  What happened though is I began to lose interest. It was subtle. I used to be in church every time the doors were open. I had been so involved, all of my life and I loved it. But I found myself questioning too much. Not being able to find answers. I didn't really know how to talk about the issues I was dealing with, the Holy Ghost thing, the tongues, the homosexuality. I began to skip Wednesday nights. Then Sunday nights. It got easier and easier to just not go. My husband had his own set of church issues to deal with so he was content to stay home with me. We stopped being involved. We hardly ever gave money. We were physically and emotionally disconnecting from the church family that I had known for almost 50 years and we hardly realized what was happening. Still I never thought about leaving. I would never leave my family, even though I felt like I didn't belong. That was not anyone's fault but my own. I never got anything but love and acceptance from my church family. They just didn't know what I was going through because I didn't know how to tell them.
Shortly thereafter, a series of circumstances took place which eventually led to our leaving my church. I  can tell you in all honesty, I had never planned for this to happen and I was devastated. I literally felt like part of who I was was ripped away from me. For a long time I was numb. We immediately started looking for another church and ended up staying at the very first one we went to. I remember that the first message the pastor taught on was about Jesus. And His Grace. And how simple that is. Now, I am sure that I heard the message of Grace many times before at my former church but I had let other things that I didn't understand get in the way of it. This seemed fresh to me. And freeing. I now believe that I was in such a place in my life that I needed to hear it all from a different angle. I still missed my church family terribly but the messages I was hearing here were like life to me. I was so moved by some of them and felt like they were directed right to me, I literally could not get up from my seat when the pastor finished. I rarely cried in church, but I found myself sobbing during some of the sermons. It didn't take me long to realize that as painful as it was to leave my church, God had led us away in His timing.  I want to make it clear that it was not because my former church was bad or wrong in any way. It is a wonderful church. When we left and people would question why, I would always say, "We left a good church and we are now in a good church."  I believe with all my heart that because of the circumstances in my family's lives, some that are not even mentioned in my blogs, we were led to our current church for a reason. I will always believe that. I love my church. I miss my former one. It will likely always be like that for the rest of my life. 

I have more to tell you. The search was not over. In fact I believe that we will always be on a search for something in our lives. But I have some answers that satisfy me now. Answers that completely feel like truth to me.  And believe it or not it was my children who led me to discover answers to some of my most pressing questions about God and life. That is an amazing thought. God has used the children that He gave me to help me now understand what He is about. It is so true that He works in mysterious ways:)

My daughter will be telling her story this Sunday,  September 2nd at Forest Park Church at 8:30a,  10:00a and 11:30a. It is an incredible story. Pray for her. Come hear it if you can. And thank you again for sticking with me.......

Walk This Road With Me, Will You? Chap.5

8 days since my surgery. I am healing up well and feeling stronger every day. I have had the best caregivers:) My family and friends have been amazing to me and I could never thank them enough for caring for me so well. It has honestly not been nearly as bad as I dreaded. But usually that is the case. Dreading and waiting are the pits. 
I saw my doctor today and got the final diagnosis on what the mass was. NOT lung cancer. A carcinoid tumor in my lung. Very different from lung cancer. Rare. It is technically considered a cancer but no where near as serious as lung cancer. From what I have been told it was a slow-growing tumor, not known how long I had had it, not sure what caused it. It was completely removed and was not in my lymph nodes. So it is gone. There is no need for further treatment, just follow-up with chest x-rays at intervals. 
Now while the sound of cancer is still scary, I realize that this scenario could have been so different. I feel blessed beyond measure. The joint pain still has not been an issue. I feel that I am walking the road towards my healing. Whatever my path I know without a doubt that He is with me every step. I trust Him completely. It feels good to say that. I couldn't for a long time. 

I have always been a thinker. Let me change that. I have always been an OVER-thinker. For as long as I can remember I have tried to figure out the answers for everything. "Why are we here, what is our purpose, what is life about, how is it that we believe differently and who is right?" I have never been one of those people who can just accept things simply. "I go to this church because my mama did and so that's why I believe the way I do."  So what if your mama raised you in a different church, with different beliefs? You would then believe a different way, right?
I don't mean to sound negative about my life. Not at all. I have had a wonderfully happy life and know that I have been blessed in countless ways. I know that. I would not change a thing about my life. I have just always been aware that for me, something was missing. I know that it was spiritual. I'm not sure why this quest to find out the truth was so all-important to me, but it was. There are many, many people who are either just satisfied with what they believe or who are content to just believe nothing at all. I could find no rest in either one of those ways. Because I couldn't settle I begin to ask myself some very deep questions. I went back to the core of what I really believed. I asked myself, "So Vicky...do you believe in God"? I thought about evolution. I read about atheism. I studied the Bible. I researched it all. It did not take long for the fact that there is a God to settle within me. 100% of me believes in a Master Creator. The absolute perfectness of creation and the universe does not allow me to believe otherwise. I find it much easier to believe that "God has always been" rather than "we came from nothing". So with that fact settled, I searched on. "Are we here for a reason?"  Well if God created us, we must be. It makes sense to believe that we are. And so then I think about the Bible. And how long it has been around. How it cannot be destroyed. Now I know that it was man who actually wrote the Bible, I've heard that and actually said that a lot in my life. "Written by man but inspired by God". That seems impossible to think about, but I can tell you that there have been so many times that I have picked that Bible up in the midst of my despair and it spoke to me. That I cannot deny. Jesus? Was He really here on earth as the Son of God?    Was He really born to a young virgin girl? As a man did He really love like that and teach like that and heal like that? Did He die an awful death? For us to be able to live forever? Was He really raised from the dead and now lives with the God who created us? Is that true?  How incredible to believe that. How absolutely beautiful and amazing to believe in the hope that that brings. To us. To me. Why was it so hard to just embrace this as truth and be satisfied?  I had too much religious baggage. Too many questions with no answers. Too many unanswered prayers....... 

Again, I thank you for your prayers. Thank you for reading my blogs. Thank you for staying with me. I continue to heal as you walk beside me.

Walk This Road With Me, Will You? Chap.4

Tomorrow is the day of my surgery. Ready for it to be behind me. Ready to know. Naturally I have been thinking a lot about healing lately and what that even looks like. I have asked Him for healing. I have asked Him to let it not be cancer. I have asked Him to heal my body completely. I know that He can do this. I am believing that He will.  He is God, no matter what.
The arthritis pain is still under control. No where near what I thought it would be by now. My family and I pray daily for the pain to be manageable. And I continue to be amazed that it is. I have Tylenol and Advil just in case. So far I have not had to take either.
I have so many people who tell me they are praying for me. So many messages, cards, calls, visits.  I cannot tell you what that does for me. You are walking this road with me and I do not feel alone. There is no way I can say thank you enough for that.

As you continue along with me on my spiritual journey, I need to let you know about something else that was a major contributor to the confusion and questions I had in my quest to find out the truth about God and religion. This very thing pretty much consumed my mind during the many years of my "spiritual search".  I almost do not include this part in the telling of my story but it is so much a part of my journey that I don't see how I cannot. It is a topic that has caused many questions and much confusion by the vast majority of people. I know that it has done that for me. This that I speak of has, over the years, taken my sleep, puzzled my mind, and did nothing to help solve the never-ending questions of what God was all about. In fact it succeeded in making things worse. It is the subject of homosexuality. I cannot tell the full part of my story concerning this because it intertwines with the stories of others and theirs is not my story to tell. I can only tell you that for 25 years I have seen and listened to  people that I love and trust tell me that their sexual orientation is towards the same sex.... and they didn't choose that..... and they can't change that.  And I believe them.  And the reason is,  I've watched them cry. And I've watched them pray. And I've seen them hopeless. I have watched them struggle. I have seen and felt the hate towards them. I have witnessed the judgement. I have seen them accept it. I have seen them reject it. Only to accept it again. And my questions and confusion grew.
Which brings me back to church. And God.  I don't really remember hearing much about homosexuality while growing up in the church. It just wasn't talked about. And on the rare occasion that it was, I knew it was a bad, bad thing. The worse. In fact, whenever I did hear it mentioned, the word HELL was in the same sentence. I remember thinking that is was a good thing I wasn't that. I surely didn't want to go to hell. I didn't know anyone who was a homosexual so I didn't have to give it much thought. Then it presented itself to my world. To those people who were precious to me. People that I love very much. People that I trust. People who would not tell me lies about themselves. For the life of me I could not reconcile what the church said with what my loved ones were telling me. It just did not make sense to me in my logical mind. Thus began many years of searching for answers, reading the Bible, talking to others, listening to others, reading books, watching documentaries, begging God to change it, crying myself to sleep and just trying to come to peace with it all........

In my search I have seen that there are those who think you can just throw a Bible verse or two out and that solves the problem. They are the ones who like to say that they love the sinner but hate the sin. They are the ones who think that this particular sin is far worse that any other sin mentioned in the Bible. They think the answer is simple. Just don't be gay. Don't give in to it. I have never been able to be that person. This is too close to my heart. Too personal. And I haven't seen where that has worked. I can see where it has only caused division between the church and those who live with this. I will never forget what one person who struggles with this said to me one time. He said, "The way I see it I have 3 choices. I can live a lie and marry a woman and be miserable, or I can be who I feel that I am and be rejected by the church, or I can be alone for the rest of my life and never be in a relationship with someone I love. And for me, all of these choices suck".  I remember that statement making me so sad. I didn't see any hope in it.  I couldn't get things to settle in my mind. And I kept on searching and praying and searching.

I have to be at the hospital at 9 am tomorrow morning. I would appreciate your prayers for me and my family during these morning hours. Thank you all for holding me up so far. You can never know how thankful I am for you.
Keep reading my blogs. You cannot stop here. I have so much more to tell you. I have found some answers along this journey. They are answers that have brought me peace. They are answers that I believe to be truth. My prayer is that my answers will speak to some of you. I will never find them all and I will be on a search for the rest of my life but I am sleeping now. He is right beside me. I am thankful.

Walk This Road With Me, Will You? Chap.3

The thing that I have been thinking about so much lately is this: I am getting ready to tell you some pretty unbelievable stuff about my spiritual journey.  For most of my life I would have been the one who would read something like this, rolled my eyes and thought, "ugh, another overly religious nut-case."  I have learned that people do not listen to religious nut-cases.  Especially the non-Christian. I have seen so many times how completely ineffective that way is at leading others to Christ. I have fought hard not to be that, so I don't want to lose you while I tell you my story. I want you to believe what I am telling you. I understand, I really do. And I of all people would not tell you any of this if I didn't believe it with my whole heart.

We got home today from a wonderful week at the beach. A week that we all needed. Before we even went though, I worried about something. 4 weeks ago the doctor stopped the shots I am on for rheumatoid arthritis because of the abnormal chest xray. The effects of the shots stay in my body for about 3 weeks and then the pain in my joints comes back with a vengeance, making even washing my hair and getting up from a chair almost unbearable. I have tried at times to delay the shots because I hate being on medication but I always would end up taking a shot after about 3 weeks because the pain would be so bad. This has been the pattern my body has followed for about the last 3 years. 

Well I knew that our beach week was right at the time the shots effects would be worn off and I worried that my week at the beach would be miserable. I even thought about not going, I just knew it would be bad and with no relief because of not being able to take the shot. I didn't really know what to do about it. 

Prayer used to be a confusing thing for me. I have prayed all my life. For years my prayers were begging God for a particular thing and for years He didn't seem to be answering me.  My best friend died of cancer at age 42, my hero of a daddy got Alzheimer's disease, my daughter suffered from clinical depression, my son struggled with his identity, I was diagnosed with RA, and on and on. So I got to a point where I wondered if prayers really worked. Maybe it was just me He wasn't listening to. 

Maybe it was because I didn't have the Holy Ghost. Maybe I just didn't know how to pray. They just didn't seem to be getting through. I kept praying though.  I just got to a point where I didn't think it was doing any good. I started putting all things spiritual in a box. Things I didn't understand. God. The Holy Ghost. Religion. Salvation. Sin. Prayer. They all went into the box. I searched with all my might to find answers and truth. For most of my life I have searched. I have never been one to settle on things just for the sake of settling. I have to know the truth once and for all and I was beginning to think I might never find it.

Back to the beach. I decided to pray. I told God that I needed to be able to move and function while I was at the beach with my family. I told Him that I didn't want to not be able to play with and hold my grandchildren. I told Him that I needed my knees to be able to climb stairs and that I needed my hands to cook and wash my own hair. I told Him that I really needed for Him to come through for me this time. I asked Him with all sincerity...."please come through for me this time." Somehow my prayer felt different than before. Way down deep inside of me, I believed that He was listening.

We are home from the beach now. It has been 4 weeks since I have had a shot. I spent our week at the beach climbing, swimming, cooking, washing, and hugging. The pain is not gone but on a scale of 1 to 10 it stayed around a 2 all week. Usually it would be an 8 or 9 by now. I have thanked Him all week.  There was one day in the middle of the week where I woke up with that familiar dull ache in my shoulder. Usually that meant by the end of the day, the pain would be almost unbearable. My son was the only one with me on this day. I didn't want to tell him because I didn't want him to be discouraged. We decided to get up really early that morning and watch the sun come up over the ocean. As we sat there my shoulder began to ache even more than when I first got up. My first thought was to question God. Instead of doing that I looked at my son and said, "You know, my shoulder is aching this morning. Will you pray for me?" Without hesitation, he placed his hand on my shoulder and prayed. Then we sat there and watched the sun come up. A few hours later, he asked me about my shoulder. I had not even been aware that the pain was completely gone. And never did come back. That had never happened before. I sit here tonight writing this blog still in awe of how minimal the pain in my body is.

I have no other explanation for this other than the fact that God heard our prayers.

I don't know the reasons why sometimes it is "no", sometimes it is "yes", and sometimes it is "wait".  I don't have to know the reasons. I am content now to just know that He is God.

I want to thank you for being with me on my journey. I have had so many wonderful messages, notes, cards, etc from you and I can't thank you enough for that. You are helping me more than you could ever know. For the ones of you who are silently reading and struggling to believe, I ask that you stay with me. I was you one time not long ago. My hope was fading. The logical side of my brain was far overpowering the faith side. There is truth here. It really is beautiful. Stay with me........

Walk This Road With Me, Will You? Chap.2

Chapter 2

I am writing this while sitting by the ocean at dusk. The sun has gone down and there is a full moon out. The beach is quiet. There are a few fishermen out surf fishing, my son being one of them. There is a soft and wonderful breeze blowing off of the ocean. I feel that I could literally stay here forever.

I saw the surgeon today. He showed me the CT scan of the mass in my lung. He is not one hundred percent positive that it is cancer. The lung doctor is almost sure that it is. I am scheduled for surgery on August 16^th. The surgeon explained to me that I would be put to sleep and special tubes would be placed in my lungs while he removes the mass. While I am asleep he will send it to pathology to see if it is cancer. If it is not, he closes me up and I go home the next day. If it is, he removes the lower lobe of my right lung and I stay in the hospital for a few days. By removing the right lower lobe, he feels certain that the cancer will be gone and I will not need chemotherapy. Also he said that because I have never been a smoker, my breathing should continue to be normal. He did say that I might not be able to become a professional singer in this lifetime. Thank goodness that is not one of the items on my bucket list of things to do:)

Pray for me. Pray that the surgery goes well with no complications. Pray God’s will for my life. He is the worker of miracles. He is able to do anything. He is God no matter what. He is our shield, our Glory and the lifter up of our heads. Not only am I asking you to pray for me today, but please say a prayer for the family of an 11-year-old girl who drowned this week in my hometown area. I cannot imagine their pain. I am asking God to give them a peace that is unexplainable in this very dark time for them.

When I was a little girl I remember being happy to the point of almost being giddy all of the time. It’s hard to describe but I remember a euphoric fullness rising up inside of me at the least little thing. It was just an incredible sense of knowing who I was and loving this life to the fullest. Our family was not wealthy by any means but I never remember wanting for anything. I loved my family, I loved school, I loved Christmas, I loved books, I loved my church, and I loved potato chips. I cannot think of a thing back then that did not bring me joy. I was an unusually happy little girl with the solid belief that all was right with the world. That genuine happiness stayed with me throughout my childhood, my teenage years, and into my marriage and beyond.

I don’t remember giving God much credit for my happiness. That’s pretty strange to say since church was a huge part of my life. From birth, I was raised in a Pentecostal Holiness Church and stayed in that same church until I was almost 50 years old. I was there on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, and all revivals. I loved my church family. They were (and are) some of the best people that God put on this earth. The friends who I grew up with are like sisters to me. I loved the singings, the picnics, the Christmas plays, the sleepovers, the trips we took, I loved everything about my church.  Except for the spiritual part. That was the thing I just could not figure out for the life of me. 

One of my earliest memories of church was when I was about 8.  I was kneeling at an altar in my home church. I remember several well-meaning older women, hair up in buns, all around me, their hands on my head, my shoulders, my back, my face. They were crying and praying and shouting for the Lord to fill me with the Holy Ghost. I remember that I was sobbing. It seemed that the more I cried the louder they got. Some of the ladies were speaking in tongues. They kept pulling on my jaw, telling me over and over to keep praying, that I almost had it. I remember feeling confused. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I don’t remember anyone ever explaining to me what the Holy Ghost was all about. I just knew that in order to be ok in God’s eyes, I needed it. I went to the altar many times after that and even though I prayed and cried and asked, it was the same. I didn’t get it. Maybe next time.  I didn’t know it then but I was beginning to develop an unhealthy view of God.  I began to believe that maybe something was wrong with me. There must be or He would give me the Holy Ghost. It made me afraid of Him.  I was taught that He didn’t want us to smoke, drink, wear nail polish or go to the movies. My skirts and dresses were always longer than my school friends and that always embarrassed me. When I got to school I would try to hike them up so I would look like everyone else. It is mortifying to be in middle school and be different.  I thought God was always mad at me and I lived with feelings of guilt. I just felt like I could never get it right and that devastated me because I wanted to so badly. Please don’t get me wrong here. I am in no way blaming the wonderful people in my church for any of this. Yes, some of the things I saw and was taught may have been misguided but these were people who truly loved me and had my best interests at heart. I was the one who internalized it all and never really talked with anyone about it. The love for my church family far outweighs anything negative that I may have experienced and I would not change any of it even if I could.

As afraid as I was of God, I was terrified of the Holy Ghost. I can remember sitting through highly emotional Holy Ghost-filled services and being so confused.. People were shouting and speaking in tongues and running around the church and falling out in the floor and I just didn’t get it. When we had those kind of church services, I remember sitting in my seat and feeling so alone. I loved church when all we did was sing and hear the preacher preach. But when the Holy Ghost showed up, that’s when I shut down. The only one that didn’t seem scary to me was Jesus. I was taught that he loved the little children. We sang songs about it and had pictures of Jesus smiling with children all around Him. I remember really loving Him because I believed He loved me. I remember asking Him to live in my heart. He was the one I prayed to when I was afraid at night. He was the one I pictured in my mind when I felt alone. He felt like a friend to me and He didn’t seem to be disappointed in me.  I didn’t realize it then, but I know now that I was clinging to that with all of my might. Little did I know, this was all the beginning of a spiritual journey for me that would I would be on for most of my life. As you walk with me I will share what I have discovered.  I am still on the journey and I still have so much to learn but I have taken a turn in the right direction. There is no way I cannot share this with you. Please stay with me……