Living With Hope and Faith: A Unique Outlook On Cancer.

Happy Easter, my friends!

Miracles rarely happen, but I have always wanted to be a bystander when someone’s limbs grow back, or empty sockets are filled with new eyes.

My own life has been one of waiting…for a miracle.

My son Kyle has autism and I at times have grown weary of God’s timing. Many Easter weekends I stood in the row where I was singing hymns about Christ dying and rising from the grave so we might experience eternal life.

I would beg God for a miracle…for him to change my son’s world.

Kyle needed God to roll the stone away in his life so he could be free. Kyle’s own body has entrapped him since birth and caused him great pain and suffering. Little did I know God would call our family to serve others through our son’s plight. To help them see how sorrow can pull us tightly to God’s breast and shelter us beneath his wings during the storm.

This weekend my husband Vance and I, moved my son Eythan and his new bride Jazmin from their tiny-I can’t–barely-move-micro-apartment to a beautiful three bedroom house. A friend of her family’s blessed them with this new and wonderful home. Their rent will be very close to the cost of the apartment.

Jazmin has stage four cancer.

Her parents, Sherie and Aaron, and our son Devyn, also helped with the move. We were waiting for the men to come back with a load of furniture yesterday and Jazmin, Sherie, and I sat warming our selves by the fireplace as we sipped on Tim Horton’s coffee.

Jazmin’s middle name is Faith. Sherie shared that they gave Jazmin, Faith as a middle name because they felt God was saying they would need a lot of faith when raising this new daughter. I asked them what ‘Jazmin’ meant, and Jazmin looked it up on her phone’s search engine:

Jazmin means ‘sweet fragrance’ and also ‘gift from God’.

She said she didn’t know it had also meant ‘a gift from God.’ But my heart fluttered for a moment, and I sighed deep within my soul. God had not only gifted Jazmin’s family with two beautiful daughters, Vangie is the older sister of Jazmin, but he also blessed my son with an incredible wife.

 

 

Most days Jazmin hasn’t had the energy to cook or clean due to cancer. She spends a lot of time just managing her pain with heavy medications. She can’t do the tasks she dreamed she’d do as a wife, like making elaborate meals, and walking flights of stairs with heavy laundry baskets. She has been disappointed that she couldn’t do more.

But she makes my son happy and fills his life with an abundance of joy. 

Sherie was sharing with me how she and Aaron can’t believe how strong Eythan is when Jazmin is suffering. Eythan’s name means ‘strength and patience.’ We picked his name due to it’s meaning, not knowing he would one day need to draw on that strength and patience.

Waiting for God takes an abundance of patience.

 

 

Jazmin and I sat on the couch later while Sherie was finishing organizing the kitchen and waving her fantastic mom-wand. We were talking about suffering and having faith and hope during heart-wrenching moments.

Then Jazmin said something profound. “I know I’m going through this so God can be glorified through my journey.”

I hadn’t felt this way about my son’s journey. I had gone through many years of “WHY God?” I had no hope or faith or even love. My heart was angry with the man in the sky who didn’t care about my son. I was detached from God. My lack of faith and trust in his plan for Kyle’s life had helped me dig a big hole of sorrow and had sealed me into a tomb.

I was dead spiritually.

Slowly a miracle unfolded and one day the stone was lifted, I was set free and was no longer dead and hopeless…God gave me hope, faith and love. You can click on the book to the right,  Beauty from Ashes, and read about the miraculous healing my heart went through.

Since I met Jazmin a year and a half ago, she has always lived with WHEN:

When my cancer is gone.

When I go back to school.

When we buy a house.

When I am healed.

When we have kids.

I am completely blown away by her faith. She told me she doesn’t fear death because Jazmin knows the end of her own story: that one day she will live in heaven with Jesus.

BUT in the meantime, she waits for a miracle.

Jazmin has no options right now, she’s seen the best doctors the world can offer and frankly the medical community has no answers left for her. She told me if her cancer were to disappear tomorrow it would only be through the power of God since mankind can no longer help her.

For the past three days, Jazmin has woken up pain-free. That flame of hope ignites as we see her talking excitedly about her future. We have not seen her pain-free like this in a long time. If all she has is three days of no pain, Jazmin sings of God’s goodness. She lives in the moment and appreciates anything God gives her.

Jazmin’s faith reflects what Easter is about…

Waiting for our Saviour to return.

Waiting for a heart to be changed

Waiting for a loved one to recover

Waiting for a miracle. 

Maybe Easter hasn’t meant a whole lot to you over your lifetime. Could you possibly have been like me? Angry at God for what he didn’t give you, instead of praising him for what he has given you:

Hope. Faith. Strength.

I am still a mother waiting for a miracle. Waiting for my son to be healed, waiting for my daughter’s cancer to be gone. My waiting hasn’t changed… but my heart has.

 

Do you want a changed heart and an Easter miracle? Are you tired and weary and need rest for the soul? God wants to capture you beneath his wings and draw you close to his breast and give you rest. He sent his son Jesus and allowed him to suffer on a cruel cross so you could find forgiveness for your sins.

Pray today and ask God to give you the greatest miracle anyone has ever experienced…

Hope, faith, love and salvation.

Happy Easter💗

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life, – John 3:16