New lessons from the Lord

These few weeks, I have spent most of my time in bed and to the bathroom and it had been tough not to be able to do more.  Life seemed so dismal.  My elder son hurt his back while massaging mine and my youngest one rubbed me the wrong way that I gave up and instead, used non-stop showers to move the morphine faster when it hurt.  After a couple of days, I thought about it and changed course.  I am going to stay as alert as I could by not flushing the morphine around.  This week, I started walking to the dining room for my meals finally and my husband is relieved.  It is rough to have the whole family to expect you to die and keep telling you not to overstretch yourself every day.  Without hope, one could not go on for long.

During this week, the Lord also opened my eyes to a few things.  I’ve been snapping at my husband to be fair to the boys and one night, when my heart seemed like failing and I was ready to go, I felt fear.  This was the first time I feared and wondered why.  Then I remembered.

1 John 4:18

There is no in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

Especially when you are dying, you need that love, or you die in fear.

The next evening, my husband was snapping at the oldest son and before I knew it, I was snapping at my youngest son.  I felt so bad that I had to go and apologize to him. The next morning, the Lord reminded me that even as we die, we have to die as Christian.  I told the Lord I’m the one who is dying and I still have to be good? Yes, we cannot be snapping Christians even as we die.  I then realize how God must have felt when He sent His only Son to earth and every one tried to kill him, and yet Jesus Christ was kind to us.

Then it reminded me when my mom in Hong Kong said two of our nieces are not going to have kids because they don’t have the time.  One is raising a dog and the other just want to work.  Then I realized how much importance our heavenly Father tried to show us that as a parent, we want to dote on our children.  You have to have that parent/child relationship to understand how to pass on this love of Jesus Christ to others.  So if you plan to be childless, go to some charity outfit or adopt a cousin and learn to love and give.  Read 1 Peter1: 14-19.

Thank you to all who left messages and prayers, again.  I appreciate them.

 

The morbid joke of the day

You think my son’s Economics professor has it bad when both of his kids were sick and had to cancel class and stayed home to look after them, listen to this.  Yesterday, my husband was doing a follow up laser up eye surgery for his cataract replacement lens and when he came home with my middle one driving him, I thought they blotched up the surgery and he was in distress and so he asked the son not to go to school.  So here is my 17 year old son, not knowing what to do.  I said email your professor and said, “My father was getting surgery not to be blind and my mom is dying and in a morphine haze and I have to look after them.”  I laughed so hard after saying it.  I think I haven’t laughed at anything for years and I laughed and laughed.  Imagine a filial piety filled Asian son having to look after his parents and couldn’t go to school.  It’s still not allowed in California truancy law.  So when suddenly when my husband announced he was going to work, I was like, “What?” And he pulled back the son for me??? No way.  I sent my son to school at once.  He never got to give the Economics professor this reason since he wasn’t absent but I got to share the joke with my visiting nurse.  Only when you are in Stage IV you could joke like that.

By the way, I want to thank everyone for leaving encouragement at my blog.  I really appreciate them.  I read every one of them but am too tired to respond to every single one.  But you know I know I’m in your prayers.  A big thank you to all of you.

In A Fog

I’ve been on a roller coaster ride these last two weeks. Back attack, constipation, then more massive back attack that required my family to carry me to the bathroom.  On Labor Day weekend, my daughter and her boyfriend drove from Davis to visit and I prayed so hard that God will give me a miracle for the walking portion so that I wouldn’t freak her out too much.  Then it happened on Saturday night.  On Sunday morning and thereafter, I could start walking again. Praise the Lord.  Just in time to give my daughter hope that her mom is not spiraling downwards.

Then a few days ago, hospice sent a professional massage therapist over to work on my back and I caught a nasty cold, threw up, felt loopy most of the time, the body not feeling my own.  The following night, the back pain came back with a vengeance, and now even the front ribs for some reason.  So after these many months of thinking that it’s muscle spasms only, I now know it’s probably deeper that topical ointment or bandages won’t be able to fix.

Since then I have finally succumbed to taking liquid morphine every 2-3  hours. I feel loopy most of the time but I will figure this out and get maximum mileage out of the drug and the time I have.  As you all know, I have been trying to stay away from morphine all this time because I was worried that I couldn’t hear the Lord with a barrier of medication, and that morning before the nurse came, I cried and cried and cried buckets but He gave me permission to take it.  I could still hear Him and talk to Him and when I have 25 mins of clear headedness within the 2-3 hours, I read the Word or draw.  I continue to thank Him.  I thank Him for morphine, and I thank Him for keeping the channel open.  At least now, I am pain free.

And not only that, the Lord continues to peel layers and layers of unfinished business and inadequacies that I have.  This is a very special time with my family, as I am bed ridden and they look after me around the clock when they are not at school.  I even got a new wardrobe of sleepwear because that’s what I am wearing most of the time and when I leave it to the boys to do the laundry, I need more than 2 change of clothes.  I feel so spoiled with 7 pairs of sleepwear and more to come from my shopping-happy husband.  On the bright side, I am finishing at least 2-3 drawings everyday, zen doodle style.  Too bad I don’t have the energy to upload them anymore.  I could make it to the dining room and back and that’s it for now.  One of these days, I’ll go farther.  I have not given up hope that Abba is going to heal me in the end.

I Will Follow Him

The longest week has just passed.  For a couple times I thought I was ready to go home to the Lord as my body slowed and I only wanted to sleep but my friend, Sharon, called and said I had to go to the doctor.  She had prayed for me for an hour and God gave her a vision that I had to get something out of my body.  Having walked from cancer treatment, the doctor is the last thing I think about these days.  But even the clinic said fainting, dizzyness and chest pains are beyond the scope of the clinic and I should head right over to ER at 5 pm that night.  And so I did.  This time, my middle son drove me.  I am no longer alone.  And there, they found fluid build up around the heart drowning it, suppressing healthy heartbeats.  More of that, it would stop the beat altogehter.  I didn’t even tell my husband who was away in Washington for 3 weeks when I undertook the procedure, perio cardiocentisis, where they took 1 liter of fluid out at the operating table and 750 ml the next day.  The next day, they cut a perio cardio window to drain the liquid to the tummy.  All this time, I hid it from my husband when he finished his work up there.  I only did it so he would not find me dead when he came back and I bought some time for us and not leave the kids stranded so to say.  He rushed home when the doctor called him.

One week later, I am finally out of the hospital, the last night being the hardest.  I didn’t know if I was going to make it.  Then when I signed on for hospice, I didn’t realize how affected I get with all the equipment, the hospital bed, the wheelchair, commode, walker cast a negativity on me.  I couldn’t sleep into the PVC heavy smelling bed and I kept having spiritual attack every night that I could sleep only 10 mins at most every 3 or 4 hours.  I felt I was dying even faster at home.  Then we finally raked up my old daughter’s bed in the living room to hold over until that hospice bed gets hauled away.

Hospice has great service and concept but it is the last resort.  They don’t expect someone like me wanting rehabilitation and resistance to slip further.  I’m fighting every inch of the way, every second for my family because they are just not ready for me to leave.  I asked the Lord what does He want me to do at the marsh.  I told him I’m just a simple girl and He has to make it simple for me to understand.  It’s so hard.  He said, “Nothing.  Just coast from now onwards.  It’s extra time for you and your family.  Just enjoy time when you are ready to come home.”  I cried and complained and I wanted to be able to eat too, simple things like sushi, rice with pork chop, oriental buffet or Indian buffet.  I want to eat with my family.  He didn’t answer me directly but this morning after telling my episode to a regular of the marsh trail and a neighbor, the Lord suddenly lifted the excruciating pain on my back that plagued me for two nights.  Now I just need to wait for recovery.

Not only have I walked away from all cancer drugs, I’m walking away from any morphine, painkillers or heart medicine to stabilize the heart.  The Lord made my heart and my body.  He has so much power He just needed to touch me to regulate it.  I don’t need medicine.  If it fails, it fails and I get to go home.  This is the testimony I have for all of you readers.  If you truly believe in the power of Jesus Christ, trust Him all the way.  There’s no other way.

Throughout all this, I have to thank all the people who pray for me.  Two churches are joining hands up here to pray for me, entire churches.  All the Herald Cancer Care Chinese group in the Bay Area, a lot of my online friends, and a lot of my nieces’ Christian congregation in Hong Kong.  And a caring family who looks after me every second and all the cancer support group friends who come visit.  There is so much love around me. How could I give up so easily.

Not so long ago, I watched Sister Act movies again and delight in the original.  The rendition of this song, I Will Follow Him, is so appropriate, so lively.  It speaks of my heart for God.

One night the Lord gave me a message at home.  He said that just like my body needs every part to be well enough before it could make progress and improve, the body of Christ needs to have every segment within its body to be in total unison on its mission, goal, before anything could happen to that church, before it could move forward.  I delivered the message to three churches that I visit.  The Lord continues to open my mind to His lessons daily.

As of writing, I am ambulatory.  I can’t walk more than two mail boxes away and had to sit and rest but I could shower, do the dishes, the wash very slowly and carefully.  It felt like a throw back to 19 months ago when cancer struck but this time, I have the Lord with me everyday, and a community and family of love I never imagined I would have.  That is the blessing in itself.

By the grace of God, I am still alive.  Every day is a miracle. And I won’t stop sharing His word and my testimony, nor will I stop laying hands on people and pray for them.  The Lord has trained me well and in the last couple of weeks, shown me signs and wonders.  When He moves, it is incredible.  People’s financial situaltion improves and health gets restored.  I’m ruined for life.  Having seen Him working the supernatural and divine healing through me, I’m ruined.  I can’t settle for a normal life.  I Will Follow Him!!

 

Pascal’s Wager for Non-Believers

James A. Connor wrote a very comprehensible synopsis of Blaisce Pascal’s wager in his book Pascal’s Wager: The Man Who Played Dice With God.  Here I quote the four possiblities in a wager on faith in the Christian God:

1. You believe in God, and God exists.  This would mean you could go to heaven, and your winnings would be infinite and everlasting.

2. You believe in God, and God doesn’t exist.  In this case, you die like everyone else and rot in the grave like everyone else, and what you lose is some wild times on earth, which compared to eternity is nothing, and your loss is negligible.

3.  You don’t believe in God, and God doesn’t exist, in which case, see possibility 2.

4.  You don’t believe in God, and God does exist, in which case, you are in a lot of trouble.  You go to hell, and your loss is infinite.

 

 

 

 

[Book Review] Facing Death And The Life After by Billy Graham

Well, the book cover looks really somber, with black all over and gold lettering and frames.  A bit grim not unlike a hearse or a coffin if you ask me, but then, why wouldn’t I want to read it especially when it’s a subject that stares at me in the face daily and by one of the most popular evangelist.  Billy Graham pointed out a few things I have not noticed before:

1. Jesus was in agony and had prayed three times, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.  Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39) The cup is the divine wrath that Christ would suffer at the Cross as He bore the sins of mankind upon Himself.   The author wrote, “Jesus did not take delight in His approaching crucifixion; He loved life on this earth.  He enjoyed the pleasures of walking with His disciples, holding children on His knees, attending a wedding, eating with friends, riding in a boat, or working in the temple at Passover time.” Now I don’t feel bad for us mortals for our lingering sentiments for this world.