Where to begin? I guess the best place is from the beginning, which began the summer of 2001.
My life was just like everyone else. Enjoying life, enjoying my family and friends and enjoying my relationship with the Lord. Life was good.
BREAST CANCER DIAGNOSIS
One day I noticed something was different with one of my breasts. It had been sore and tender for some time, but that's happened to me over the years. It didn't seem like anything to be concerned about. I certainly wasn't thinking Cancer! After all, I was only 42 years old. Anyway, this one particular day I examined myself and noticed that my breast had taken on a strange look to it. It looked kind of like an orange! It was swollen, hard and tender and had what looked like pock-marks all over. Later on, I found out the name of the breast cancer I have is called "peau d'orange", which is a form of inflammatory Breast Cancer. It is a breast cancer that is usually not detected by a mammogram or ultrasound. It is a rare cancer, only accounting for approximately 1% - 3% of all breast cancers. Inflammatory breast cancer causes the breast to appear swollen and inflamed. The inflammation occurs because the cancer cells block the lymphatic vessels in the skin of the breast. This causes a blockage in lymph flow leading to the reddened, inflamed appearance to the breast. Unlike the more common form of breast cancer, inflammatory breast cancer does not generally present as a lump. The disease grows as nests or sheets that clog the lymph system under the skin. Often the symptoms are attributed to other diseases and thus the diagnosis may take a long time to occur.Symptoms include pain in the breast. Often inflammatory breast cancer is mistaken as a breast infection and treated with antibiotics. If response to antibiotics doesn't occur after a week, a breast biopsy should take place.Skin changes in the breast area. You may find pink or reddened areas often with the texture and thickness of an orange. (peau d'orange)I already had an appointment with the Doctor to find out if I had a sinus infection. So while I was there, I asked the Nurse Practitioner if she would look at my breast. It didn't take her but a moment to step out of the office long enough to see if I could get a mammogram right away. She expressed her concern just by saying that she wanted me to have a mammogram done the next morning. That started my world spinning! I went and had the mammogram done and was sent directly to a surgeon to get a biopsy. Before I left the surgeon's office that day they told me I had breast cancer. I cannot reiterate how I felt at that moment. I was in the lobby, using the lobby phone, calling my mom to tell her the news with tears flowing down my cheeks. For a few moments, I gave into the fear of the unknown. But after the reality sunk in, God brought me to a place of peace and comfort that only you can experience first hand to understand. The Lord continued to carry me through as He continues to carry me now.
SURGERY AND RECOVERY
surgery they took out 16+ lymph nodes in my armpit and found they were all infected with cancer. I believe it was at that point they knew how aggressive my breast cancer was. When I was healed enough from the surgery, I began radiation for 35 days in a row (without weekends). I believe that I started chemo while I was still in the hospital recovering from the surgery. I could be wrong, I'm not remembering things like I used to. The radiation was hard on me though, more than the chemo has ever been. It was hard to look at the deformity that was taking place on my body. All of a sudden I had no breast and I could feel my chest cavity wall and I had a huge hole/gap under my arm. As the days progressed with the Radiation, the surgery site got worse and worse. My skin was being burned basically right off my body and every time I had to change the bandage, some skin came along with the dressing. It was tender to wear anything against the site, even though I had bandages, it just didn't help. But again, God pulled me through each and every day.It's interesting where life leads you when you are going through circumstances that are beyond your control. This particular phase of my life I was working at a company that was very dysfunctional to say the least. It was really hard on me mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I worked for a man that seemed to be the most incredible lack of God's creation I believe I will ever encounter again in my life time. He was the CEO, President of the company that I directly supported. I won't go into details, but it was like working with one of Satan's demons each and every day. I'm not easily frazzled with other personalities; in fact, I take on those types of personalities as a challenge. I like to see if I can help open eyes to see Life as a gift not just another entity that can be broken, torn down and treated any way they feel like it. This man had no compassion for anyone but himself. I know that God had me there for a reason and that was to pray for him. Let me tell you though, everyday it got harder and harder and harder. The very last thing that I wanted to do was to pray for him. When I did pray, I could not find words...that to say. When I found out I had breast cancer, it was like my boss couldn't even look at me. He never really said anything to me about it. I worked through it all...I didn't dare ask if I could take any time off. I had the surgery on a Friday one week and went back to work the very next Monday. When I did chemo, I had to work it out so I had "comp" time that I could use. So I would go in early and stay late to cover the time I was gone. It was the same way during Radiation. As I got tired and from the chemo and from the Radiation, my energy at work started to slack and I would have a hard time keeping all of my tasks together. I was really going through what's called "chemo brain." I kept telling people about chemo brain, but nobody would believe me. I just knew that I wasn't thinking normal. My brain was not capable of processing complete thoughts. That was really hard. My boss really put me down because of that. He knit-picked everything I did. I once was written up because I forgot to get ice for the pop we needed in one of our big board meetings with big-shot board members/sponsors (we were a start up company). I was so appalled to be treated in such a way. The bottom line was that they wanted (the CEO wanted) me out of there. One of my co-workers knew how hard they were on me and kept trying to talk me into staying there until they fire me. Which is what I did, but it was hard. Typically, when I went home for lunch, I would cry all the way home and on my way home at night, I would cry. I'm not that kind of emotional person! I mean I cry about things, don't get me wrong, but not like that. I guess I was so frustrated being treated the way I was, during a time in my life when nothing was making any sense, and I couldn't do anything about it.
Well, eventually I got through my treatments; I started a permanent job with a temp agency until there was an opening with Medtronic. Great company by the way. I started right off working for a wonderful boss and was surrounded by wonderful people. In January 2003, God took me from a dark, dark gravel pit and put me in a place of peace and joy and I never looked back.
CANCER IN THE LIVER
I thought I was back on the path of health and vitality. Later on that year I had a follow CT scan (CAT scan) and they found that I had multiple tumors in my liver. I now had to begin the process of trusting Father God again in another way. And actually, it wasn't that hard to do. He lifted me up again without any effort really. I fell into this peace that does surpass all understanding, just like the living word talks about. I think it was because I had no where else to turn. I needed to turn towards something or someone and nobody was really there for me! My children were there to lean on, but it's not the same as a parent or someone you should be looking up to, you know what I mean? My first dad on earth died when I was 13/14 years old, and he was a very dysfunctional man to begin with and caused a lot of hardship in our family. My mom and I didn't have a very meaningful relationship in any aspect of the word and my brother was miles away. I have a step-dad that I stay somewhat close to because of his relationship with my mom. I still need to honor them as parents. But God was there for me in every way possible and I will never ever forget what He has done for me during that time of need and love.
Now, about 1.5 to 2 years later I get this news about my liver and they are talking about doing an R.F.L.A., which is a Radio Frequency Liver Ablation. They take a probe and puncture it into your side (while watching on a CT scan) into your liver. When they get to the tumors, they open the end of the probe and these fingers/feelers come out and surround the tumor (one at a time) and then they dial up the frequency on the radio to zap the tumor like a microwave, they fry it. They did this on 1 to 2 of them that were the biggest ones and then we treated the rest with chemo again. The first problem we had with the RFLAs was that it took like 9 times before they could get to the right point to actually do the frying. That has to do with the fact that I was awake during it all. The only way it could have been done differently is if they stopped my breathing for it and that's not something they get too excited about. During the procedure, they accidentally punctured my diaphragm, because I was breathing, and therefore I had to stay in the hospital longer than anticipated. When I did go home, I had a big oxygen tank that had to sit in my living room with a 50 foot lead going directly to me in order breath the proper oxygen my body needed. After about a week or two of that, I was on the road to recovery again. Still having to go through chemo for the next 6 months I think it was, not sure! Once the chemo stopped, I slowly gained my strength back, went back to work and was feeling good and confident that I was once again on the road to good health and peace in my life.
CANCER IN THE BONES
A few months later my left shoulder started hurting. I didn't act on it right away because I was always having pain somewhere it seemed. When I went in to check it out, that's when the cancer started showing up in my bones. I had an area in my humorous that was being attacked and had to start Radiation. Then about 6 to 9 months later a small group of my girlfriends and I got together and stayed at a Hotel in Duluth over a weekend just to hang out. The first night we were their, I sneezed and broke a rib. The cancer had started spreading to other areas of my bones and I had a particular rib that the cancer was eating away at and then it snapped when I sneezed. I started Radiation for that. It didn't seem that chemo was in order for some reason, but I did start getting a bone strengthening drip once a month to build up the bone density in my body. There were plenty of other occasions that are hard to remember now when I would just start having pain in my hip, leg, inside and outside of my legs and lower back, etc. and they all would turn out to be cancer eating away at something and then I would have to have Radiation on that area. And the Radiation worked...it would always take the pain away. Then one day, when I was feeling pretty good, I was working again full time, my hair was growing back, my strength was building up and I was doing really well. A good friend of mine took me to a friend's lake home to hang out one afternoon. The lake actually wasn't a lake, I don't think it even had a name it was so tiny, but they had a boat they would take to go fishing on. So we all thought, let’s go and coast around the shoreline to look at the houses and the bird nests, specifically the Eagles nests that had been sighted recently. So we went ahead and did that and had a wonderful time. The next day I woke up having really hard time breathing. Amber, my oldest daughter was coming over to the apartment which Brie, my youngest, and I lived in to take my granddaughter Libby swimming in the pool. When they left the apartment, they knew something was wrong and asked if I was going to be okay. I said yes...I didn't understand what was going on, but just figured that it was nothing and in a short period of time I would be fine. Well about an hour later the girls came back in the house and I was still sitting in the chair they left me in, having a harder time now breathing. I knew something needed to be done quickly. I told them I needed to go to the hospital and they right away were talking about who was going to drive etc., until I told them they needed to call 911. Now if you know me, I don't complain about much. When I hurt, I deal with it or fix it on my own. I typically don't go to the doctor for little things; I feel it's a waste of my time. Over the course of some years now, I do feel differently about that. So when I told the girls to call 911 they knew I was in some serious pain. By the time they got me to the hospital and did some ex rays, etc. they found I had cracked and fractured multiple ribs from the little boat coasting we did on the lake the day before. That's how brittle my bones had become once again. It took me a few weeks to recover from that episode.
CHEMO AGAIN
Up to this point, I have had multiple treatments of Radiation. In fact, there are not really many places that can be treated anymore. Once you've been treated with Radiation in a certain area, they cannot treat that same area again. I have had chemo treatments on 4 different occasions over the past 7.5 years. Last year, in 2008 around June, was the beginning of my 4Th time that I started chemo again. I had a bone scan done and they found I had a tumors up and down my spine and some on my skull. The ones on my skull were found initially in 2004, so that was no surprise. But I was having pain again in my lower back and leg. It was in April of this year that I just felt I was done with the chemo thing for a while. I needed a break! I was tired all the time and not really enjoying life like I know I could be. So I made a decision on my own to stop the chemo for a while. My doctor was fine with that; he totally understood what I was saying. He wanted me to start on a chemo pill as a preventative, but I didn't have any prescription coverage for that pill and it was like $300 or more a month to take...so I didn't even look into how I could afford that.
RADIATION
A number of weeks went by when I noticed that my chin, bottom lip, bottom row of teeth and gums were numb. It started gradually without me even realizing it. Then one day as I washed my face and I felt my chin and how numb it was. I brushed my teeth and really felt the same way. I pondered over calling the clinic and decided not to, but then I thought it couldn't hurt to just leave a message to play it safe. I ended up leaving them a message. Well, I got a call the next day from my NA that when there is numbness on the face, that can mean there is something pressing on the cranial nerves in the brain. They wanted me to get an MRI on the brain and a full body MRI. When the results came back from that, I had an appointment to meet with my Radiation Oncologist to start Radiation on the brain. They had found multiple masses of tumors scattered around the entire brain and needed to start treatment immediately. They saw that my liver had some tumors growing again and felt that was the reason why my stomach was in so much pain. In addition to that, they saw some new tumors on my neck that were new. They also found that I had fluid on one side of the brain and needed to get to the bottom of that. So the next step was to get a spinal tap in addition to starting Radiation! I will never ever get one of those again unless I'm put to sleep! The funny thing is I have a high tolerance for pain! It took them I think 3 times before they could get a good test of fluid and it hurt like you know what. When the results came back negative, we were all ecstatic. I felt that I was out of the clear and just needed to do this Radiation stuff for 3 weeks and that would be the end of this phase. When in reality, it just started the ball rolling for the next course of events in my life.
I started the Radiation like normal. Amber drove me into the Hubert Humphrey Cancer Center every day, God bless her, Monday through Friday. Kris wasn't working yet, so he watched the kids most of the time while we were gone. The drive took about 45 minutes, and the treatment took about 5-10 minutes, go figure. As the days went by, I got more and more tired and stayed in my bed more and more. My body seemed to be aching more and more as well. I lost my appetite pretty quickly and was having the dry-heaves after the first 4 treatments, then it was after 3 and then it didn't matter anymore. All of a sudden it went to 2-3 or more per night and then I was just throwing-up randomly. I wasn't eating much because everything I ate I threw-up, even liquid. It was hard to take my pain pills because I knew that eventually I would throw-up the liquid from it. I laid in my bed for days, no strength, and no energy. I couldn't even talk on the phone, it was too hard to hold the phone up to my head for any length of time and I was too tired to even open my mouth and talk most of the time. It was really getting bad. Then one day I mentioned to Amber that I thought I needed to go into the clinic. I felt that I was just not going to get better unless I did something about it. I really felt that I needed to go into the Hospital, but didn't want to act too quickly about that if it wasn't necessary.
HOSPITAL FOR 2 WEEKS
I called the doctor's office and told them my symptoms and they took me in to see the doctor that same day. When I arrived, I couldn't even walk by myself, I had to have Amber wheel me in the clinic. I was brought back into the room with a new Nursing Assistant because my NA was not there that day. I was also told at that time that my Oncologist I had for 8+ years was now gone on a Leave of Absence and would not be able to assist me moving forward. So now, I had a new Oncologist assigned to me that knew nothing about me in my current state of illness or my 8+ year history. To top that off, he was going on vacation in a few days and would not be back for 4-5 days. This was all fine with me, I really didn't care, I just wanted someone to take me under their care and get me feeling better. The NA was first talking about changing my pain med and to give me something for my stomach and nausea/throwing-up. She was going to send me home! I told her that I should go to the hospital. She wrote up the orders to be admitted. Amber drove me over their and in minutes I was in a bed on the Women's floor. It wasn't until a few hours they realized how sick I was when they started to monitor my heart and blood pressure, etc. When my heart rate was reading 26 bpm, they rushed me to the cardiac floor and started to hook me up to all kinds of monitors. They put on some big sticky label stuff on both sides of my chest in case I went into cardiac arrest and asked me if I wanted to be resuscitated if need be. They also wanted to know if I would have a pace-maker put in if necessary. Everything was moving so quickly.I was so dehydrated from throwing up that I gained 16 lbs of fluids in one day. My throwing up stopped the very next day. My heart rate took some time to increase, but over the course of a few days, they were able to bring it to at least the low 4o's then to mid 50's. They still had a hard time understanding it all because I was always so alert all the time. I wasn't dizzy, or confused and could get up and walk on my own if I needed without any help to go to the bathroom (of course they wouldn't have that in the hospital).It was at this time when my Oncologist came into my hospital room and told me that things were serious, he wasn't going to lie. He needed to really dig into my files and get a really good overview of where I've been and what's going on now in order to have a good conversation with me on how to move forward. I was then assigned a Neurologist to my case. He didn't hold back any news from me either, which I really appreciated about him. He told me that I have cancer in my nervous system; therefore it is in my spinal fluid. Even though the results came back from my spinal tap there wasn't cancer in the fluid, he knows that it's there just by all of my symptoms. All of the aches and pains, twitching, numbness, etc. all lead toward this phase of aggressive cancer. He basically at that time told me that I have 1-2 years at best and asked how I wanted to fight. Is this something that I wanted to battle with treatment or did I just want to live as is as long as I can. Of course, I told him I'm a fighter...he will soon find out, that I'm also a Winner!!! Praise God?
UPDATED DIAGNOSIS
Two weeks ago, July 10-12th, 2009, when my brother was in town, I had a Doctor appointment with my Oncologist to go over all of my files for the past 8 years. Finally, my new doctor was going to sit down with me and confirm what he knows about what I've been through and what the course of action was going to be. I also needed to be prepared for the updated news on my condition. Some things could have changed after he reviewed my files based on the most current and updated multiple scans that I had. Sure enough, the updated news that I was feeling a little anxious about came. I remember sitting there next to my brother, the one man I love more than anyone, and as he was holding his hand, my doctor said, things were very serious and legally he had a responsibility to tell me that I have 3-12 months to live! The cancer has spread to my entire body and the plan is to try and come up with some drugs that will prolong the diagnosis and be able to keep some quality of life at the same time.
Having to face those words, that it's everywhere in my body, was a bit to take in as you can imagine. I remember my brother squeezing my hand, and nobody really saying a word. Amber came over and hugged me and comforted me. I remember thinking that I was glad that my youngest daughter Brie wasn't there because I didn't know how she would handle the news. Amber took it well I think, but I know that she's more concerned about me than about her own feelings. I think about that a lot. I know that she and her sister will lean on one another like never before, but my desire is that they learn to lean on the Lord through this all. He's the one that will guide them through these months to come. He will comfort them, and love on them when nobody else can. They will be the ones that need to turn to Him and seek His face like never before.
My life was just like everyone else. Enjoying life, enjoying my family and friends and enjoying my relationship with the Lord. Life was good.
BREAST CANCER DIAGNOSIS
One day I noticed something was different with one of my breasts. It had been sore and tender for some time, but that's happened to me over the years. It didn't seem like anything to be concerned about. I certainly wasn't thinking Cancer! After all, I was only 42 years old. Anyway, this one particular day I examined myself and noticed that my breast had taken on a strange look to it. It looked kind of like an orange! It was swollen, hard and tender and had what looked like pock-marks all over. Later on, I found out the name of the breast cancer I have is called "peau d'orange", which is a form of inflammatory Breast Cancer. It is a breast cancer that is usually not detected by a mammogram or ultrasound. It is a rare cancer, only accounting for approximately 1% - 3% of all breast cancers. Inflammatory breast cancer causes the breast to appear swollen and inflamed. The inflammation occurs because the cancer cells block the lymphatic vessels in the skin of the breast. This causes a blockage in lymph flow leading to the reddened, inflamed appearance to the breast. Unlike the more common form of breast cancer, inflammatory breast cancer does not generally present as a lump. The disease grows as nests or sheets that clog the lymph system under the skin. Often the symptoms are attributed to other diseases and thus the diagnosis may take a long time to occur.Symptoms include pain in the breast. Often inflammatory breast cancer is mistaken as a breast infection and treated with antibiotics. If response to antibiotics doesn't occur after a week, a breast biopsy should take place.Skin changes in the breast area. You may find pink or reddened areas often with the texture and thickness of an orange. (peau d'orange)I already had an appointment with the Doctor to find out if I had a sinus infection. So while I was there, I asked the Nurse Practitioner if she would look at my breast. It didn't take her but a moment to step out of the office long enough to see if I could get a mammogram right away. She expressed her concern just by saying that she wanted me to have a mammogram done the next morning. That started my world spinning! I went and had the mammogram done and was sent directly to a surgeon to get a biopsy. Before I left the surgeon's office that day they told me I had breast cancer. I cannot reiterate how I felt at that moment. I was in the lobby, using the lobby phone, calling my mom to tell her the news with tears flowing down my cheeks. For a few moments, I gave into the fear of the unknown. But after the reality sunk in, God brought me to a place of peace and comfort that only you can experience first hand to understand. The Lord continued to carry me through as He continues to carry me now.
SURGERY AND RECOVERY
surgery they took out 16+ lymph nodes in my armpit and found they were all infected with cancer. I believe it was at that point they knew how aggressive my breast cancer was. When I was healed enough from the surgery, I began radiation for 35 days in a row (without weekends). I believe that I started chemo while I was still in the hospital recovering from the surgery. I could be wrong, I'm not remembering things like I used to. The radiation was hard on me though, more than the chemo has ever been. It was hard to look at the deformity that was taking place on my body. All of a sudden I had no breast and I could feel my chest cavity wall and I had a huge hole/gap under my arm. As the days progressed with the Radiation, the surgery site got worse and worse. My skin was being burned basically right off my body and every time I had to change the bandage, some skin came along with the dressing. It was tender to wear anything against the site, even though I had bandages, it just didn't help. But again, God pulled me through each and every day.It's interesting where life leads you when you are going through circumstances that are beyond your control. This particular phase of my life I was working at a company that was very dysfunctional to say the least. It was really hard on me mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I worked for a man that seemed to be the most incredible lack of God's creation I believe I will ever encounter again in my life time. He was the CEO, President of the company that I directly supported. I won't go into details, but it was like working with one of Satan's demons each and every day. I'm not easily frazzled with other personalities; in fact, I take on those types of personalities as a challenge. I like to see if I can help open eyes to see Life as a gift not just another entity that can be broken, torn down and treated any way they feel like it. This man had no compassion for anyone but himself. I know that God had me there for a reason and that was to pray for him. Let me tell you though, everyday it got harder and harder and harder. The very last thing that I wanted to do was to pray for him. When I did pray, I could not find words...that to say. When I found out I had breast cancer, it was like my boss couldn't even look at me. He never really said anything to me about it. I worked through it all...I didn't dare ask if I could take any time off. I had the surgery on a Friday one week and went back to work the very next Monday. When I did chemo, I had to work it out so I had "comp" time that I could use. So I would go in early and stay late to cover the time I was gone. It was the same way during Radiation. As I got tired and from the chemo and from the Radiation, my energy at work started to slack and I would have a hard time keeping all of my tasks together. I was really going through what's called "chemo brain." I kept telling people about chemo brain, but nobody would believe me. I just knew that I wasn't thinking normal. My brain was not capable of processing complete thoughts. That was really hard. My boss really put me down because of that. He knit-picked everything I did. I once was written up because I forgot to get ice for the pop we needed in one of our big board meetings with big-shot board members/sponsors (we were a start up company). I was so appalled to be treated in such a way. The bottom line was that they wanted (the CEO wanted) me out of there. One of my co-workers knew how hard they were on me and kept trying to talk me into staying there until they fire me. Which is what I did, but it was hard. Typically, when I went home for lunch, I would cry all the way home and on my way home at night, I would cry. I'm not that kind of emotional person! I mean I cry about things, don't get me wrong, but not like that. I guess I was so frustrated being treated the way I was, during a time in my life when nothing was making any sense, and I couldn't do anything about it.
Well, eventually I got through my treatments; I started a permanent job with a temp agency until there was an opening with Medtronic. Great company by the way. I started right off working for a wonderful boss and was surrounded by wonderful people. In January 2003, God took me from a dark, dark gravel pit and put me in a place of peace and joy and I never looked back.
CANCER IN THE LIVER
I thought I was back on the path of health and vitality. Later on that year I had a follow CT scan (CAT scan) and they found that I had multiple tumors in my liver. I now had to begin the process of trusting Father God again in another way. And actually, it wasn't that hard to do. He lifted me up again without any effort really. I fell into this peace that does surpass all understanding, just like the living word talks about. I think it was because I had no where else to turn. I needed to turn towards something or someone and nobody was really there for me! My children were there to lean on, but it's not the same as a parent or someone you should be looking up to, you know what I mean? My first dad on earth died when I was 13/14 years old, and he was a very dysfunctional man to begin with and caused a lot of hardship in our family. My mom and I didn't have a very meaningful relationship in any aspect of the word and my brother was miles away. I have a step-dad that I stay somewhat close to because of his relationship with my mom. I still need to honor them as parents. But God was there for me in every way possible and I will never ever forget what He has done for me during that time of need and love.
Now, about 1.5 to 2 years later I get this news about my liver and they are talking about doing an R.F.L.A., which is a Radio Frequency Liver Ablation. They take a probe and puncture it into your side (while watching on a CT scan) into your liver. When they get to the tumors, they open the end of the probe and these fingers/feelers come out and surround the tumor (one at a time) and then they dial up the frequency on the radio to zap the tumor like a microwave, they fry it. They did this on 1 to 2 of them that were the biggest ones and then we treated the rest with chemo again. The first problem we had with the RFLAs was that it took like 9 times before they could get to the right point to actually do the frying. That has to do with the fact that I was awake during it all. The only way it could have been done differently is if they stopped my breathing for it and that's not something they get too excited about. During the procedure, they accidentally punctured my diaphragm, because I was breathing, and therefore I had to stay in the hospital longer than anticipated. When I did go home, I had a big oxygen tank that had to sit in my living room with a 50 foot lead going directly to me in order breath the proper oxygen my body needed. After about a week or two of that, I was on the road to recovery again. Still having to go through chemo for the next 6 months I think it was, not sure! Once the chemo stopped, I slowly gained my strength back, went back to work and was feeling good and confident that I was once again on the road to good health and peace in my life.
CANCER IN THE BONES
A few months later my left shoulder started hurting. I didn't act on it right away because I was always having pain somewhere it seemed. When I went in to check it out, that's when the cancer started showing up in my bones. I had an area in my humorous that was being attacked and had to start Radiation. Then about 6 to 9 months later a small group of my girlfriends and I got together and stayed at a Hotel in Duluth over a weekend just to hang out. The first night we were their, I sneezed and broke a rib. The cancer had started spreading to other areas of my bones and I had a particular rib that the cancer was eating away at and then it snapped when I sneezed. I started Radiation for that. It didn't seem that chemo was in order for some reason, but I did start getting a bone strengthening drip once a month to build up the bone density in my body. There were plenty of other occasions that are hard to remember now when I would just start having pain in my hip, leg, inside and outside of my legs and lower back, etc. and they all would turn out to be cancer eating away at something and then I would have to have Radiation on that area. And the Radiation worked...it would always take the pain away. Then one day, when I was feeling pretty good, I was working again full time, my hair was growing back, my strength was building up and I was doing really well. A good friend of mine took me to a friend's lake home to hang out one afternoon. The lake actually wasn't a lake, I don't think it even had a name it was so tiny, but they had a boat they would take to go fishing on. So we all thought, let’s go and coast around the shoreline to look at the houses and the bird nests, specifically the Eagles nests that had been sighted recently. So we went ahead and did that and had a wonderful time. The next day I woke up having really hard time breathing. Amber, my oldest daughter was coming over to the apartment which Brie, my youngest, and I lived in to take my granddaughter Libby swimming in the pool. When they left the apartment, they knew something was wrong and asked if I was going to be okay. I said yes...I didn't understand what was going on, but just figured that it was nothing and in a short period of time I would be fine. Well about an hour later the girls came back in the house and I was still sitting in the chair they left me in, having a harder time now breathing. I knew something needed to be done quickly. I told them I needed to go to the hospital and they right away were talking about who was going to drive etc., until I told them they needed to call 911. Now if you know me, I don't complain about much. When I hurt, I deal with it or fix it on my own. I typically don't go to the doctor for little things; I feel it's a waste of my time. Over the course of some years now, I do feel differently about that. So when I told the girls to call 911 they knew I was in some serious pain. By the time they got me to the hospital and did some ex rays, etc. they found I had cracked and fractured multiple ribs from the little boat coasting we did on the lake the day before. That's how brittle my bones had become once again. It took me a few weeks to recover from that episode.
CHEMO AGAIN
Up to this point, I have had multiple treatments of Radiation. In fact, there are not really many places that can be treated anymore. Once you've been treated with Radiation in a certain area, they cannot treat that same area again. I have had chemo treatments on 4 different occasions over the past 7.5 years. Last year, in 2008 around June, was the beginning of my 4Th time that I started chemo again. I had a bone scan done and they found I had a tumors up and down my spine and some on my skull. The ones on my skull were found initially in 2004, so that was no surprise. But I was having pain again in my lower back and leg. It was in April of this year that I just felt I was done with the chemo thing for a while. I needed a break! I was tired all the time and not really enjoying life like I know I could be. So I made a decision on my own to stop the chemo for a while. My doctor was fine with that; he totally understood what I was saying. He wanted me to start on a chemo pill as a preventative, but I didn't have any prescription coverage for that pill and it was like $300 or more a month to take...so I didn't even look into how I could afford that.
RADIATION
A number of weeks went by when I noticed that my chin, bottom lip, bottom row of teeth and gums were numb. It started gradually without me even realizing it. Then one day as I washed my face and I felt my chin and how numb it was. I brushed my teeth and really felt the same way. I pondered over calling the clinic and decided not to, but then I thought it couldn't hurt to just leave a message to play it safe. I ended up leaving them a message. Well, I got a call the next day from my NA that when there is numbness on the face, that can mean there is something pressing on the cranial nerves in the brain. They wanted me to get an MRI on the brain and a full body MRI. When the results came back from that, I had an appointment to meet with my Radiation Oncologist to start Radiation on the brain. They had found multiple masses of tumors scattered around the entire brain and needed to start treatment immediately. They saw that my liver had some tumors growing again and felt that was the reason why my stomach was in so much pain. In addition to that, they saw some new tumors on my neck that were new. They also found that I had fluid on one side of the brain and needed to get to the bottom of that. So the next step was to get a spinal tap in addition to starting Radiation! I will never ever get one of those again unless I'm put to sleep! The funny thing is I have a high tolerance for pain! It took them I think 3 times before they could get a good test of fluid and it hurt like you know what. When the results came back negative, we were all ecstatic. I felt that I was out of the clear and just needed to do this Radiation stuff for 3 weeks and that would be the end of this phase. When in reality, it just started the ball rolling for the next course of events in my life.
I started the Radiation like normal. Amber drove me into the Hubert Humphrey Cancer Center every day, God bless her, Monday through Friday. Kris wasn't working yet, so he watched the kids most of the time while we were gone. The drive took about 45 minutes, and the treatment took about 5-10 minutes, go figure. As the days went by, I got more and more tired and stayed in my bed more and more. My body seemed to be aching more and more as well. I lost my appetite pretty quickly and was having the dry-heaves after the first 4 treatments, then it was after 3 and then it didn't matter anymore. All of a sudden it went to 2-3 or more per night and then I was just throwing-up randomly. I wasn't eating much because everything I ate I threw-up, even liquid. It was hard to take my pain pills because I knew that eventually I would throw-up the liquid from it. I laid in my bed for days, no strength, and no energy. I couldn't even talk on the phone, it was too hard to hold the phone up to my head for any length of time and I was too tired to even open my mouth and talk most of the time. It was really getting bad. Then one day I mentioned to Amber that I thought I needed to go into the clinic. I felt that I was just not going to get better unless I did something about it. I really felt that I needed to go into the Hospital, but didn't want to act too quickly about that if it wasn't necessary.
HOSPITAL FOR 2 WEEKS
I called the doctor's office and told them my symptoms and they took me in to see the doctor that same day. When I arrived, I couldn't even walk by myself, I had to have Amber wheel me in the clinic. I was brought back into the room with a new Nursing Assistant because my NA was not there that day. I was also told at that time that my Oncologist I had for 8+ years was now gone on a Leave of Absence and would not be able to assist me moving forward. So now, I had a new Oncologist assigned to me that knew nothing about me in my current state of illness or my 8+ year history. To top that off, he was going on vacation in a few days and would not be back for 4-5 days. This was all fine with me, I really didn't care, I just wanted someone to take me under their care and get me feeling better. The NA was first talking about changing my pain med and to give me something for my stomach and nausea/throwing-up. She was going to send me home! I told her that I should go to the hospital. She wrote up the orders to be admitted. Amber drove me over their and in minutes I was in a bed on the Women's floor. It wasn't until a few hours they realized how sick I was when they started to monitor my heart and blood pressure, etc. When my heart rate was reading 26 bpm, they rushed me to the cardiac floor and started to hook me up to all kinds of monitors. They put on some big sticky label stuff on both sides of my chest in case I went into cardiac arrest and asked me if I wanted to be resuscitated if need be. They also wanted to know if I would have a pace-maker put in if necessary. Everything was moving so quickly.I was so dehydrated from throwing up that I gained 16 lbs of fluids in one day. My throwing up stopped the very next day. My heart rate took some time to increase, but over the course of a few days, they were able to bring it to at least the low 4o's then to mid 50's. They still had a hard time understanding it all because I was always so alert all the time. I wasn't dizzy, or confused and could get up and walk on my own if I needed without any help to go to the bathroom (of course they wouldn't have that in the hospital).It was at this time when my Oncologist came into my hospital room and told me that things were serious, he wasn't going to lie. He needed to really dig into my files and get a really good overview of where I've been and what's going on now in order to have a good conversation with me on how to move forward. I was then assigned a Neurologist to my case. He didn't hold back any news from me either, which I really appreciated about him. He told me that I have cancer in my nervous system; therefore it is in my spinal fluid. Even though the results came back from my spinal tap there wasn't cancer in the fluid, he knows that it's there just by all of my symptoms. All of the aches and pains, twitching, numbness, etc. all lead toward this phase of aggressive cancer. He basically at that time told me that I have 1-2 years at best and asked how I wanted to fight. Is this something that I wanted to battle with treatment or did I just want to live as is as long as I can. Of course, I told him I'm a fighter...he will soon find out, that I'm also a Winner!!! Praise God?
UPDATED DIAGNOSIS
Two weeks ago, July 10-12th, 2009, when my brother was in town, I had a Doctor appointment with my Oncologist to go over all of my files for the past 8 years. Finally, my new doctor was going to sit down with me and confirm what he knows about what I've been through and what the course of action was going to be. I also needed to be prepared for the updated news on my condition. Some things could have changed after he reviewed my files based on the most current and updated multiple scans that I had. Sure enough, the updated news that I was feeling a little anxious about came. I remember sitting there next to my brother, the one man I love more than anyone, and as he was holding his hand, my doctor said, things were very serious and legally he had a responsibility to tell me that I have 3-12 months to live! The cancer has spread to my entire body and the plan is to try and come up with some drugs that will prolong the diagnosis and be able to keep some quality of life at the same time.
Having to face those words, that it's everywhere in my body, was a bit to take in as you can imagine. I remember my brother squeezing my hand, and nobody really saying a word. Amber came over and hugged me and comforted me. I remember thinking that I was glad that my youngest daughter Brie wasn't there because I didn't know how she would handle the news. Amber took it well I think, but I know that she's more concerned about me than about her own feelings. I think about that a lot. I know that she and her sister will lean on one another like never before, but my desire is that they learn to lean on the Lord through this all. He's the one that will guide them through these months to come. He will comfort them, and love on them when nobody else can. They will be the ones that need to turn to Him and seek His face like never before.
UPDATE A/O AUGUST '09
MEDICAL UPDATE
A couple of months ago I had another MRI on my brain and found out that I have some additional tumors found in my brain.
Now that you have heard all of the medical history of what I've gone through the past 8+ years, lend me your ear a little while longer so I can share how my Father God carried me through it all and continues to carry me.
BROKENNESS
As I have said before, I have found a peace within myself that cannot be explained from the onset of my diagnosis of breast cancer. What you don't know is how the Lord revealed himself to me before the breast cancer began. My brokenness was not at all because of the breast cancer, I had to be broken in spite of it. Let me explain...
Maybe that last statement, "I had to be broken in spite of it", was a little too harsh. I think what I'm trying to say is my brokenness began long before the Breast Cancer came into the picture and in order to have survived those 8 years with the Peace that surpasses all understanding, I had to be broken, shed and torn away from my human self. My past had identified and dictated who I was all my life. If I wasn't going to walk in the victim role any longer, then I needed to do something about it. Knowing this didn't make it any easier to look deep within myself and ask God to help change me into His image. It was in fact harder. After all, I had been this person, Deb Ausk, for how many years now? If I let go of whom I know that I am who am I going to be? The most obvious answer did not come forth very quickly...I struggled with the fact that I would be a child of God of course...a likeness in His image! But what did that actually mean? Your guess is probably as good as mine was at the time. I was really petrified of the answer and I don't get scared very easily.It was then that a dear friend told me about a book called "Releasing of the Spirit" by Watchman Nee. This book brought me through a lot of enlightenment about my spirit and how it relates to the outer-man, inner-man and the inner-most-man, i.e. body, soul and spirit. I was able to finally let go of me, to some extent, and let my spirit come forth and take over. It was at this time that I had found out that I had breast cancer. I don't know what would have happened had I not read the book before I got the cancer news, but I know that it helped me tremendously. I was able to take on the news with peace that surprised everyone, including myself. I remember sitting in my living room raising my hands up to the Lord and thanking Him for this new trial that He was going to guide me through. Instantly, I felt an overwhelming amount of peace, comfort, and love that engulfed me like a huge 30 foot wave. For months I walked in the peace that was provided that day in my living room. It really never left my side. Yes, I had other circumstances, situations that came about after that, but I always remembered to raise my hands and thank God for the opportunity to walk through whatever it was He wanted me to walk through. I knew that I was going to be victorious number one, and the lesson that would come out of it would be greater than anything I could imagine. I loved the fact that people were watching around me too because they were about to get really impacted by the peace, and they did.
MY CHILDHOOD
MY CHILDHOOD
Now that I'm trying to find the words to describe what my childhood was like, it's hard to articulate the different situations that I had to experience during those years of growing up. My childhood wasn't easy as most people are faced with even now-a-days. But on September 19, 1958 at 29 days old I was adopted and brought home into a family that already had a 2 year old adopted boy. That was my mom's dream to have a boy and a girl. It was the perfect family scenario for every American family in the 50's in the United States. Everyone wanted to look like the family in the TV shows, "Father Knows Best", or "Leave It to Beaver", and "Ozzie and Harriett." Along with that came a price in my family. My mom took the role as a perfect mother with perfect children too far. I remember always going to bed with curlers in my hair, always having to wear a dress and ribbons in my hair. My mom made a lot of my clothes and actually made outfits that were matching for my Barbie's too. I always thought that was very cool, but not many of my friends would know because I never got a chance to play that much. I don't remember the early stages of my youth, as most of us don't now that we are so much older. And unfortunately, the things I do remember are the memories that I would much rather forget, mostly, the feeling of love in the house. It was like my brother and I just existed there, like we were to fill a void of some kind. Years later I found out that my mom had been raped when she was 16 and could never have children after that. Maybe that's part of the reason why she was so bitter and hurtful and had no love in her own heart to give to anyone else. But in the middle of all her pain and turmoil from the rape and who knows what else, she had this one man that would NOT leave her alone. Against her own good judgment, said a friend of hers, she married him. I don't think she ever really wanted to marry him either, but she never told me that. I just think she was much smarter than that. Anyway, this man I call "Dad" was a severe Alcoholic in the making. It took some years to perfect that title. But in the beginning, my mom did what she could to help him along the way...they were both socialites with the drinking and partying with friends and neighbors. As I got a little older, like around 5 or 6 maybe the "angry" and "mean" drunk started rearing its ugly head. He did a lot of hitting and used my mom like a punching bag. I would always wake up to their loud verbal fighting at first, and then the real violence would start shortly after that. I remember hearing a lot of running around the house and falling down, yelling and then crying. That was usually about it. Sometimes my mom would have bruises, but I never said anything to her the next day or looked at her suspiciously for anything...I was only 5 years old! To some extent, I'm sure that I thought it was normal to live like that, at least in the beginning. The only problem was that on my TV shows, there was never any fighting like that, so eventually I learned it wasn't right to have that in the home. But thankfully, my dad wasn't home much. His alcoholism got so bad that when he was home, he was sleeping the drink off from the night before in some tight quarters or compartments of the house; like the attic in the garage, under the pool-table, behind the wet bar, under the staircase, where ever. As I got older, around 7 or 8 years old, my mom would grab me and use me as her human shield when my dad went after her. This was during the weekends of course, but it didn't matter what time of day, early in the day or at night. Now when I think about it, I think she somehow knew that he wouldn't hurt me and that's why she put me in front of her so as to not get hit herself. She already knew his secret he thought he was keeping from her and that was in the middle of the night he was sneaking into my bedroom.
INCEST
Since I was about 7 years old until I was 13, my dad would come into my bedroom at night. My life was never the same after that.Over the next 5 or 6 years, my mom had a terrible time with me as you can imagine. Whatever relationship we did have, soon became null and void. I had such hatred toward my mom that I remember having this one recurring nightmare that would honestly haunt me night after night. This is what I would picture every step of the way. Actually, I was floating in the air, barely above the floor in this long white flowy nightgown into the kitchen. I would then slowly open the drawer to the knives and get a butcher knife out of the drawer. As I was still in the air, I would turn around and float back across the floor to my parent’s bedroom making it slowly over to the other side of the bed where my mom slept and there I would be stand, still in the air. I would just stand there, over my mom with the butcher knife in my hand in the stabbing position, holding it up in the air, like I was waiting for the right moment somehow to be taken out of my own misery. Can you imagine? I still can't believe that was me thinking and feeling that image. That I would actually think those things and picture them playing out in my head. Well now I know better. I know where those thoughts came from; they came from the pit of hell. Thank God that I didn't act on what I was imagining. I thank the Lord for having mercy on me those nights, to give me strength to move past the suffering and pain that I truly was feeling, at least bad enough to blame my mom and want to punish her for everything instead of my dad.Well Satan continued to use my mom as his advocate for years after that. Her lack of showing me any love and all the verbal abuse towards me didn't help matters much either. Then there was always the shipping me off to Grandma's house every summer, every year. I loved my grandma, but I don't think sending me there every year instilled the kind of Love that I needed from her so badly. I remember feeling like I was a slave. I always had to earn my play time outside with my friends. So when I got home from school I had to rake the shag carpeting with my hands on my hands and knees so there weren’t any footprints left behind. All the beds had to be made, not just my own, and if there was any laundry, it needed to be started and/or finished. There shouldn't be any dust around, the bathrooms had to be clean with freshly shaken rugs, the coffee needed to be started and dinner going (if there had been given instructions previously). Once that was completed, I needed to do my homework (which I faked all the time). Then I could go outside and play. That was pretty much the schedule every day of the week. My friends even remember that I could never go out and play until all my chores were done first.
BREATHING REVELATION
I never told anyone about my dad coming into my room at night until I was about 28 years old. I think that it was my mom and step-dad that were the first to hear a brief statement of what happened to me when I was a child. My mom didn't have any comments to make, but my step-dad said, while he was looking straight at my mom, "See, I told you, didn't I." So apparently there was some discussion around the fact whether it happened to me. From that day forward it was never discussed again. However, I did continue my own quest to talk about that chapter in my life through counseling, friends, etc. Many revelations came forth and brought healing in my life and they continue to do so these days.Getting back to my childhood briefly; if I was still awake when my dad came in my room, I would try to make it look like I was sleeping by breathing as shallow as I could. Sometimes I would try not to breath at all hoping he would just leave. I was really hoping he would think that I was dead and then leave me alone, but that never happened. It's funny, well maybe not funny; let's say interesting that I had completely forgotten about this. I didn't remember it growing up at all. Even though I always thought my breathing habits were not normal, I never knew why I noticed it at all, but I did. I used to think maybe it had to do with trying to be more aware of my weight and wanting to look good. Strangely enough and looking back on it now, I wasn't heavy by any means. In fact I weighed about 130-140 lbs and was just shy of being 5ft 8" tall. In my eyes, I was still overweight, only because I was used to weighing more like 110-115 lbs. Anyway, I continued to watch people a lot and how they inhaled and exhaled. I would compare the thin people that seemed to have no weight issues to those that did and how differently they were breathing. I couldn't believe how often the people that were heavier had harder time breathing and were actually breathing more shallow like I was, and the thinner people had no problem breathing correctly. It wasn't hard to see how their breathing was so different than the way I was breathing. So I tried to get myself to change my breathing habits by really concentrating on inhaling and exhaling better. I was always very hopeful that I would start to feel better and I would lose weight and have all this energy, etc. This was harder than I thought, but because I was so curious as to why my breathing was so shallow most of my life, I wanted to somehow change it. I really wanted to get myself into the habit of breathing deeper and stronger and possibly have a higher metabolism. Many years went by and I had forgotten about my shallow breathing and how obsessed I was with my breathing and how closely I watched others breathe. Then one day last year (2008) I was laying in bed, not feeling very well and I caught myself breathing very shallow. Immediately, I noticed my shallow breathing! Memories flooded my brain like you wouldn't have believed.This is what happened as I lay in bed that night; I thought to myself, who better than the Lord to show me the truth. I also knew that if there was something that would be hard for me to take in all at once, He would give me only what I could handle at that time. So I went ahead and brought it before the Lord to see what he had to say about it. I raised my hand up to Father God and said, "Lord, please reveal the truth to me about my breathing. Why was I always so bent-out-of-shape to get to the answer about why my breathing was so poor?" This was really cool...He didn't hesitate one bit or for one second to reply. His response was immediately brought back to me in a memory of when I used to purposely breathe shallow and even hold my breath sometimes when my dad would come into my room late at night. That's it...that's all He said.Wow, huh? I was floored...I didn't know what to think. Of course, that was the answer, the truth to the annoying question that I pondered over for years...who would have thought? Not me! I could hardly believe it! I was so thankful for that revelation. Father God loves me so much that he would bring forth such an important piece of my childhood for complete understanding and closure. I haven't really paid any attention as to whether my breathing has changed over these years or not, but I do know there is freedom in my lungs to expand the way they were designed to expand. Maybe somehow that's going to come in handy with everything else I'm going through...I don't know, but it will be interesting to see. From the very onset of revealing this revelation, the Lord brought me through further healing by showing me the right way to breathe almost every minute of the day. From the moment I woke up in the morning to when I went to bed, He reminded me quite frequently to inhale deep and exhale completely. The way He showed me how to do this was through my eyes and ears. I remember one day I was driving down the road and I heard a song on the radio about breath...that reminded me of Him, my Lord and how He wants me to breathe. Then I was looking out my window and I noticed how happy the trees were blowing in the wind...the wind reminded me of air and I started to breathe differently. Isn't that awesome? I remember being shocked about something once and when I took that sudden breath inward, it reminded me of breathing correctly. It was obvious that my Father was bringing me out of a painful time in my life and restoring it with His breath...the breath of life! You may ask me now; do I inhale and exhale the way I'm supposed to? Believe it or not...I don't pay much attention to whether I do or not, which is a good thing I think. But I have noticed that my Father brings much air to my lungs periodically throughout the day just because. I think of Him most of the time when He does that!Don't you just love it when freedom comes, you're set free and then God continues to remind you that you are free?
NO PERSCRIPTION COVERAGE
I have had no Insurance coverage for prescription drugs since I went on Medicare back in 2005. It's been a struggle sometimes to get the medication that I've needed because of the cost of some of the drugs. The Cancer Center has been very helpful and instrumental along the way. There have been times when they have filled a prescription out of their pharmacy and then just billed me. Sometimes I could pay the bill, and sometimes I couldn't. They finally got to the point where they wouldn't fill any prescriptions unless I were to pay something towards the balance that I already owed. The only way my drugs are covered at the clinic now is if I get some treatment of some kind on site, like through an I.V., etc. Then all procedures and drugs are just automatically added to my bill.Once my new onset of health issues came up, we were going to be faced with a drug need again. There is a new drug that my Doctor wanted me to start that is supposed to be most beneficial for me and the cancer that is growing rapidly in my liver. That's really the main concern right now. The problem was the drug cost over $4700.00 for a one month supply! That's simply because this drug only comes in pill format. If I could get it in an I.V., it would be just added to my bill and I would go into the clinic and get treatment right away. Yeah, I know...who has that kind of money to pay $4700 for a one month supply of chemo?Prior to finally getting this chemo pill, called Tykerb, it seemed like we were running out of time. So many days had gone by and I wasn't on any chemo treatment to help the tumors in my liver from growing. At one point, I was really getting frustrated and concerned, but at the same time I knew deep in my heart that the Lord was going to come through and get that drug for me. I knew it wasn't going to cost me anything. I had great peace about my Father providing for me once again, that when I did have moments of doubt, they just disappeared as quickly as they would show up. It was about 3-4 days later; we got a phone call from a company that's affiliated with the Committment to Access Program for financial assistance to tell me that I've been approved 100% for the Tykerb every month! I was elated as you can imagine. That was the best news I've had in a long time. My Father God came through again, which I knew He would...He has never let me down, He's always showing me to put my trust in Him and all will be taken care of.
NOT WAITING FOR PILLS
Prior to getting the financial assistance for the Tykerb pills, we had all been waiting on pins and needles. Time really is of the essence right now. I don't have the kind of time to spare and wait around for things to happen. So I get a call from my Doctor who has decided, until I get the financial assistance for Tykerb, he needed to put me on another chemo treatment. I made an appointment to get a drug called Herceptin, which has been proven to be a very good chemo drug for metastatic breast cancer patients such as myself. This drug has to be given through an I.V., therefore it's just added to my bill and I don't have to pay for it up front, thank God. I have also taken this chemo treatment before, so I knew what the side affects were, etc. Now that I have the Tykerb pills, I won't have to get the Herceptin treatment at all. Apparently the Herceptin isn't as affective as Tykerb and was only going to be used as a secondary plan until the Tykerb came through somehow. Tykerb is the only drug that will bypass the "blocking" mechanism we have at our necks to stop drugs from getting in our brains. I didn't know we had such a thing either. That's the reason why Tykerb was so detrimental to me. My doctor wanted the additional chemo to seep into my brain for the additional help.
POSSIBLE BLOOD CLOT?
So here it was Monday and I already had an appointment to go in and get an I.V. drip called Zometa. This is a bone strengthening drip to increase my bone strength. I will be getting that once a month, which has been an on going regimen for some time over the years. I go into the clinic expecting to walk in and out rather quickly because I know how long this treatment takes. Well I was there a lot longer than anticipated and again was finding myself trying to fight the annoyance that was overcoming me. Once the Zometa treatment was over, I had to get the Ultrasound done on my legs (because of the swelling) just to rule out the possibility of a blood clot. So when I was done with the Zometa, I was instructed to walk across the hall to the Imaging Center for the ultrasound. When I got there at 4pm, I was told by the Receptionist that the ultrasound person had already left for the day and in order for me to get the ultrasound; I had to go to the hospital. WHAT? There is no way that I'm going to the hospital I thought to myself. It's now 4:15 pm, and I've been been at the clinic for over almost 3 hours. I immediately told the Receptionist that I was not going to do that and left. I went back into the Cancer Center and told their Receptionist that I was not going to have the ultrasound done and why. She told me that I couldn't leave until I spoke to the nurse. When the nurse came out, she told me that she wasn't concerned about getting the ultrasound done anyway because she didn't think I had a blood clot and she only wanted to rule it out just in case. She said if my legs got worse over the weekend, be sure to call the on-call doctor right away. When I left, I felt confident there was nothing to worry about. On Monday I got a call from my main oncology nurse, explaining how serious blood clots are and telling me that I had to come in and get the ultrasound done pronto. I still didn't go in because it was so late in the day and the clinic is an hour away. I followed up for a visit the next morning and it didn't take them long to find out that I did in fact have a blood clot and put me on medication right away. Fortunately for me, the pharmacy allowed me to pick up the prescription without having to pay for it (otherwise it would have been $135.00 which I didn't have). I guess blood clots can cause Pulmonary Embolisms which can cause strokes, heart attacks, etc. All I know is that my Father God is so good to me...I remember lying in my bed the night before I went back to get the ultrasound, and my legs were really sore. I had thought to myself, "Tonight I could actually die." Without even thinking any more about it, I raised my hands to the Lord and just said over and over again, "I know that you love me Lord, I know that you love me Lord, I know that you love me Lord." I'm not really sure what encouraged me to do that. It must have been the Lord. At that moment I wasn't feeling worried about anything or anxious or fearful. But it was obvious that I needed my mind, body and spirit to be united very closely with my Father through the night in a way that was comforting, peaceful and full of His kind of rest. Looking back on it now, there's no doubt in my mind that my Father watched over me that night. Of course I thanked Him profusely for protecting me through the night, for getting me to the clinic safely and on medication right away.
AN ENCOUNTER WITH GOD CALLED
~ FORGIVENESS ~
God and I had an encounter the night before my mom passed away in October of 2006. She was laying in her hospital bed not being able to talk, move or even blink or even close her eyes. But to really understand this encounter with God, I need to share some things that will help you see what an encounter this truly is.
Well, first of all, I was adopted at one month old and brought to my new home on my adopted brothers 2nd year birthday. We were raised in an extremely dysfunctional home as I mentioned before. My dad was a severe alchoholic and physically abusive to my mom. My mom used me as a human shield for years. During those years, while my dad was molesting me on a regular basis, my mom would verbally and emotionally abuse me. And because my mom didn't know how to show love, I was not nurtured with hugs and kisses and "I love you's." When I turned 13 years old, my parents divorced and a month later my dad died. I'm not sure, but I think he drank himself to death. My relationship with my mom was already non-existant and then just got worse. When there was any kind of communication it was filled with toxic verbal expressions of how worthless I was. I had never felt loved by her and yet I continued to long for her love in any and every possible way that I could get it.
As soon as I graduated from High School, I moved out of the house. I never really spoke to my mom much after that. I don't remember her trying to stay in touch with me either for quite a long time. Years went by and at the age of 23 I married my ex-husband in front of the Justice of the Peace and called my mom up on the phone the next day to give her the news. I think that I did that just to make her mad. I continued to keep her out of my life as much as I could. What's strange is that whenever she was upset about something or needed my love I always gave it to her unconditionally. We had a very strange and interesting relationship. I could only take her in doses. Too much at one time would tug at my past and that was not a place that I wanted to go willingly.
So two years later, I gave birth to my first daughter, Amber. Much to my surprise, my mom wanted to come visit and help us out for 2 weeks. I didn't know how this was going to pan out, but I welcomed her with open arms nevertheless. It actually turned out to be a pretty nice visit. She was a great help during that time and we got along pretty well for the most part. She went back to the cities after 2 weeks and it didn't take long before everything was once again the same between us. Have you ever felt like you could never measure up to someone's liking? I always felt that way by her. I felt rejected by her most every day of my life. Another two years later we were blessed with our second child, another baby girl, Brieanna. When she was 4 months old and Amber was 2, I left my ex-husband and moved back to the cities. My mom and I continued to butt-heads on everything. It didn't help that I was living with her and my step-dad for a month until I could find a place of my own to live. Thankfully, 1-1/2 months after I moved to the cities, I found an apartment through Hennepin county subsidized program, started on Welfare, and getting food stamps. About a month later I found a partime job that soon turned into full time and started my life all over with my two children at my side.
A lot of time went by with heartache, disappointments, and arguements with my mom. Somehow, someway I continued to muster up the strength to try again and again to turn the other cheek and try to gain her approval and love. The problem was that I was trying to resolve our reltaionship without the help from my Father. I finally began to understand that in the beginning of 2003.
At that time, I was already two years into my breast cancer diagnosis and had already had my mastectomy surgery and had 19 lymphnodes removed (all were infected with cancer). I had been through 1-1/2 months of radiation every day and 6 months of chemotherpy. Then, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in my liver. Although my illness had a way of bringing my mom and I closer, we were still at odds with one another somehow. There were 2 or 3 times a year when I just couldn't take it any more. When those times would come, I got closer and closer to disowning her as my mother, or at least I would entertain the thought. I know it was just the enemy trying to cause division and he was winning sometimes. I always seem to almost run out of strength to continue fighting for the mother love that I had longed for all my life. It was at that time Father God told me very clearly He wanted me to start praying for her. Prior to that, I hadn't really thought about it...she was really the last person that I cared to or wanted to pray for. When the Lord told me that He wanted me to pray for her, I was taken back and let me tell you, I needed a whole lot of encouragement for that request. I couldn't think of anything nice to say about her let alone in a prayer. Pretty sad huh? I loved my mom, but I'm not really sure why. I think it's because the Lord had instilled in my mind when I was very little that I needed to honor my mother and father and that never left my heart. I felt that no matter what, she was my mother and I needed to honor her somehow, even if it was in the littlest of ways.
I remember the first prayer I lifted up to the Lord for my mom was somehting like, "Lord, I don't know how to pray for my mom, I have no words, its' hard for me to pray for someone that I'm so angry at." Eventually, the prayers got to be more more about our relationship and to help us love one another. At one point, God even began to show me that while I was concentrating so much on the amount of love my mom wasn't giving me, I couldn't see at all the love she did have and was giving me or at least trying to give me through my blindness. Father continued to soften my heart for my mom and reminded me how important it was to Him that I honor her with all my love - the love that He has given me. It didn't matter if she could not return the same amount of or not. He began to show me that you need to be in posession of something in order to give it away. I wonder if that's why it's so important to our Father that we learn to love ourselves. How could we ever be able to love our neighbors if we can't love ourselves first. I finally realized that my mom wasn't in "posession" of the amount of love that I so desparately wanted and needed. But I sure was! I knew that I had that amount of love and I needed to show her that love by giving more of it to her. So I called my mom up after 2 or 3 weeks of being mad at her for something I don't even remember. I asked her if I could stop by after work to talk to her about something, but I wouldn't tell her what. I knew and God knew that my heart was in the right place, but unfortunately my intention for my visit was to tell her once and for all that I forgave her for all the heartache and pain she had caused me as a child and young adult. I wanted to forgive her for the words that she had spoken into my life and to let her know it's okay, that I don't blame her. Right...Sure...Okay, can we say "wake-up call"? God was like, "Are you kidding me? You can't say that to her. You have to go to her with your own heart and ask her to forgive YOU!" Well, I didn't hear that coming! I didn't know what to say about that, but I knew that He was right. I was already on my way to my moms house and now I was frantically thinking about what I was going to say to her, so I just began to pray in tongues until I got there. According to my Father, my plan wasn't going to work and I wanted to be obedient to Him, so I decided to just let the Holy Spirit take me by storm and lead the way.
When I got to my mom's house, she was a bit estranged. We went downstairs into the family room. I asked if she could turn the T.V. volume down and she grabbed the remote and said, "well let's just turn it off"! As she sat very sturn in her chair, I took hold of her hand and looked into her eyes and told her about a conversation that I had with the Lord about my relationship with her and how I wanted to be close to her like other mother's and daughter's were. I told her how the Lord just kept telling me how He wanted me to honor her as my mother. She immediately said, "I was wondering about that since you claim to be a Christian and all."
I then proceeded to tell her that I needed to ask her for forgiveness. Her immediate response was first a shocked look on her face and then a worried one. She said, "ask for my forgiveness, what on earth for"? As tears were streaming down my face, I said, "I really need to ask you to please forgive me for not allowing you to love me in the way that you know how and to please forgive me for not loving you in the way that you deserve." I continued to tell her that too many years had been waisted and I wanted to begin a new relationship with her. That was a big step of faith that I just took and my mom didn't know how to react. She did say, "well of course I forgive you." I believe on that day Father God began to renew and transform my mind. Rom 12:2 Do not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - His good, pleasing and perfect will. God was beginning to show me how the renewing of my mind was going to bring me further freedom in the areas of my life that had been dominated by my feelings for so many years.
Father God united my mom and I in a way that had never happened before. Over the next 3 years, our relationship grew to unexpected and unexplainable new heights. Father was teaching me how to love her in the way that she really was so deserving of and in return He began to show me how much she really did love me and always did. I just could never see it.
God gave me many opportunities to speak His truth and love into her, which I gladly and boldly took. I remember this one time we were together during the summer of 2004, sitting out on my balcony at the apartment. I had just found out that I needed to start chemotherapy again for the third time. The breast cancer had come back in my bones - that was after I was breaking ribs by sneezing, coughing and had mulitple broken ribs and multiple fractures because of a little boat ride that I went on. Anyway, my mom and I were on my balcony, having coffee and talking about the upcoming chemo, when my mom said to me, "are you going to lose your hair again?" I told her that was most likely to happen. She turned to me and said with discust on her face, "I just don't understand why you have to suffer so much." I looked at her, straight in her eyes and said, "without suffering there would be no compassion mom." While I said that to her, she began looking at me differently. It was like she was looking at me for the first time, ever. I quickly sensed it was Jesus she was looking at, not me. It was almost like I wasn't even there...it was so incredibly cool and I will never ever forget the feeling I had on that day. I felt the prescence of the Lord within me, living inside of me like never before.
Our time together and the days we had spent together chatting on the phone, which was pretty much daily, and every weekend we were together, was quality time spent on healing and restoring our relationship. Father was blessing us with the kind of reltaionship I had been praying for and that we both had hoped and longed for.
In the spring of 2006, my mom was diagnosed with Multiple Myaloma, which is cancer of the bone marrow. She struggled with good and bad days for 5 months. I took care of her almost every day. My step-dad was working part-time, so when he was home I had a day off for myself and my own recovery because I was also going through chemo at that time. It wasn't an easy time for my mom. Some days she wasn't feeling so well and then other days she was feeling really good. So one weekend my step-dad and mom decided to take a trip up North to Hinckley. When they returned home, she wasn't feeling very well. We thought maybe she just over did it and needed to get some really good rest. After a couple of days she started to feel better. I hadn't gone over to her house since they came back from Hinckley because my step-dad didn't have to work and my mom was feeling pretty well. By Thursday of that week, she started not feeling very well again and when I showed up to sit with her and help out on Friday, I was appauled at the state of health she was in. My step-dad was getting ready to walk out the door for work when I showed up. My mom was having a real hard time breathing, she couldn't talk and had a look of help and desperation in her eyes. I knew that I needed to do something. I looked at my mom briefly and told my dad that I had to call 911. "Why is she here and not in the hospital?", I said to him, "she needs to go into the emergency." She was immediately admitted into the hospital and they soon found out that she had severe pneumonia in both lungs. She was intibated within a short period of time while they continued to run more tests. We were told later on that she wasn't going to get better and then started asking us questions about her demise.
I remember that night, when my friends and family went home, I stayed there. A dear friend of mine came over to be with me at the hospital until it was time to go home. Sometimes I wish that I had just stayed there all night long. It was about 11:00 PM at night and before we decided to leave, I suggested that we pray over my mom for a restful and peaceful night of sleep. That's when it happened! God showed up in that room and in our prayers in a big way and poured out Holy Spirit over my mom, my friend and myself. This encounter with God was very obvious and totally unexpected. I can't remember the exact words that were spoken in our prayer, but once the Holy Spirit took over and started speaking through me, this is what He said. He told my mom that she could go home to Jesus if she just asked Him. He told my mom He knew that she believed in Jesus and that He died on the cross for her sins. And to have eternal life, she just needed to ask to be forgiven of her sins and ask Him to come into her heart. He said, I know you can't speak with your mouth, but you can ask Him with your mind and heart, He will hear you. Just ask Him now so you can have eternal life. This prayer was coming out of my mouth, but certainly not out of my mind...this was a plea straight from Holy Spirit. The prayer continued, but by this time it was no longer Holy Spirit, it was my friend and me making a plea to God that He would make my mom comfortable, safe and free of pain through the night and to give the rest of the family members as much time as possible for other faimly members to come and visit with her. When we were done praying, my friend and I looked at each other in simple amazement and actually shock wondering if we both just experienced the same encounter of Holy Spirit in the room. We both agreed we experienced a devine encounter with God. I knew at that moment, there was no doubt in my mind whatsoever, that my mom had just accepted Christ in her heart. I remember there was a time in my life when I thought that my mom would be the last person on this earth that would ever accept Jesus Christ in her heart.
The next day, more relatives were showing up to say there own goodbye's. My mom wasn't doing well and we all knew it was only a matter of hours now. All of a sudden, one of the nurses came into the hospital room telling me I had a phone call. The phone call was from a friend that I didn't have an opportunity to tell the status of my moms health yet. She told me that she had been in prayer with the Lord when He told her to call me and pray for me. So she tracked me down in the hospital room and she prayed a lovely prayer over me, my family and my mother. What I hadn't expected was that 5 minutes later she tracked me down again and she said that Father had a message for me that she needed to pass on right away. She explained to me that she didn't understand the message at all, but was reassured by the Lord that I would understand. She told me that the word "ASK" kept coming up. She said that whatever you asked Him for, that He heard me. He just wanted me to know that. I thanked her and said my good-byes. It took me a few minutes before it registered in my head. Then all of a sudden I remembered the prayer the night before. I remembered the prayer of salvation when my mom "asked" Jesus to come into her heart. Wow! All of a sudden I was perpelled into this whirlwind of love I couldn't hardly handle the feeling physically. God was giving me confirmation of my mothers eternity with Him. He wanted me to know that she was in fact going home to be with Him. What's almost more amazing on top of that, is that He loves and cares for me so much he wanted me to know He was listening. That blew me away. That just goes to show you how deep, how long, and how wide His love really and truly is for us.
During the last hours of my moms life, I sat a foot away from her face holding her hand all the while telling her how much I loved her, how beautiful she was and that it was okay now to let go and be with Jesus. I told her she could go see her mom and dad that she has missed for so long. I told her to watch for me because when I see her again I will run to her. I sang songs to her and would whisper loving words in her ear every now and then. I told her she wouldn't have to suffer any more and that there would be no more pain of any kind with Jesus.
My brother couldn't make it back home in time to see her, so I had him talk to her on the phone for a few minutes. I held the phone up to her ear as he talked to her. I know without a doubt that my mom could hear him no matter what the nurses said. She really needed to hear his voice. I asked him if he was done talking to her and if he told her any jokes. My brother was always good at making my mom smile and bring a chuckle to her bones. He asked if he should and I told him of course and then put the phone back up to her ear. I thank the Lord for bringing that to my mind so he could find some peace and closure with her passing being that he was so far from home. I continued to sit with her, telling her that now she's talked to her son David, she can go home to the Lord. I told her that we will all miss her terribly, but whenever she's ready, she should go home to Jesus.
During the entire time at the hospital, my mom couldn't move on her own, talk, breath on her own, or even blink. But as I sat next to her, holding her hand and whispering sweet thoughts in her ear, she all of a sudden squeezed my hand and then took her thumb and rubbed the side of my hand 3 times. I couldn't believe it! I was exstatic and yelled out loud to everyone, my mom squeezed my hand a rubbed it 3 times. You might think it's silly to think of this, but I think the amount of times she rubbed my hand was very significant to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. My mom passed away shortly after that and went home to spend eternity with her Father in heaven.
Through this tragedy and loss of my mom, Father God taught me so much. Never underestimate the power of God. I always thought my mom would be the last person that would ever accept Christ as her Lord and Savior. But I also thought I could never pray for her and look what He did! In August of 2003, I had prayed for healing and restoration in my life. I actually not only received an answer to that prayer, but as God often does He blessed me with so much more. I now remember the things my mom did for me that I was blinded to before. The truth has set me free. I have no regrets because I was obedient to my Father, even when I didn't want to be. He replaced my broken heart with a brand new one. Luke 6:45 The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.
All my growing up years I wondered why God chose my mom to adopt me. Why did He allow her to adopt me anyway and why was she brought into my life. I know now that she wasn't brought into my life as much as He brought me into hers. You see, He already knew my heart and knew the love I would have in my heart for her; I was the vessel for her eternal life, who would have thought. Now every time I miss her and start to feel sad that she's gone, Father brings the warmth of her love to my mind and spirit and once again I have peace that surpasses all understanding. That's what I call grace and how it's been defined in my life.
Never ever underestimate why you are in someone's life. You might think that you're of no importance or significance, especially if the relationship is a challenging one. But God's plans are so far beyond our imagination that the possiblities of the daily encounters we are faced with are endless. All we can do is just continue to be obedient and let God do the rest of the work. I think we can all agree that He knows what he's doing.
SUICIDE/DEPRESSION
This is really a tough topic to communicate. Not necessarily for me because I've had such deliverance from both topics, suicide and depression. But, unfortunately there are many people that are too familiar with these topics and happen to still be a part of their own lives. That's the reason why I feel it's so important to mention my struggles with both of these topics and how the Lord has delivered me from both.
I think to some extent it was inevitable that I would have to deal with suicide and depression at some point in my life. Looking back on things now, I believe the depression came upon me early in life. I even have pictures of me when I was little and had always wondered why I had such an unhappy look on my face. I never seem to be smiling in many of those pictures. Certainly, there were things in my life that made me happy. My life couldn't have been that full of chaos and dysfunction, could it have?
AN ENCOUNTER WITH GOD CALLED
~ FORGIVENESS ~
God and I had an encounter the night before my mom passed away in October of 2006. She was laying in her hospital bed not being able to talk, move or even blink or even close her eyes. But to really understand this encounter with God, I need to share some things that will help you see what an encounter this truly is.
Well, first of all, I was adopted at one month old and brought to my new home on my adopted brothers 2nd year birthday. We were raised in an extremely dysfunctional home as I mentioned before. My dad was a severe alchoholic and physically abusive to my mom. My mom used me as a human shield for years. During those years, while my dad was molesting me on a regular basis, my mom would verbally and emotionally abuse me. And because my mom didn't know how to show love, I was not nurtured with hugs and kisses and "I love you's." When I turned 13 years old, my parents divorced and a month later my dad died. I'm not sure, but I think he drank himself to death. My relationship with my mom was already non-existant and then just got worse. When there was any kind of communication it was filled with toxic verbal expressions of how worthless I was. I had never felt loved by her and yet I continued to long for her love in any and every possible way that I could get it.
As soon as I graduated from High School, I moved out of the house. I never really spoke to my mom much after that. I don't remember her trying to stay in touch with me either for quite a long time. Years went by and at the age of 23 I married my ex-husband in front of the Justice of the Peace and called my mom up on the phone the next day to give her the news. I think that I did that just to make her mad. I continued to keep her out of my life as much as I could. What's strange is that whenever she was upset about something or needed my love I always gave it to her unconditionally. We had a very strange and interesting relationship. I could only take her in doses. Too much at one time would tug at my past and that was not a place that I wanted to go willingly.
So two years later, I gave birth to my first daughter, Amber. Much to my surprise, my mom wanted to come visit and help us out for 2 weeks. I didn't know how this was going to pan out, but I welcomed her with open arms nevertheless. It actually turned out to be a pretty nice visit. She was a great help during that time and we got along pretty well for the most part. She went back to the cities after 2 weeks and it didn't take long before everything was once again the same between us. Have you ever felt like you could never measure up to someone's liking? I always felt that way by her. I felt rejected by her most every day of my life. Another two years later we were blessed with our second child, another baby girl, Brieanna. When she was 4 months old and Amber was 2, I left my ex-husband and moved back to the cities. My mom and I continued to butt-heads on everything. It didn't help that I was living with her and my step-dad for a month until I could find a place of my own to live. Thankfully, 1-1/2 months after I moved to the cities, I found an apartment through Hennepin county subsidized program, started on Welfare, and getting food stamps. About a month later I found a partime job that soon turned into full time and started my life all over with my two children at my side.
A lot of time went by with heartache, disappointments, and arguements with my mom. Somehow, someway I continued to muster up the strength to try again and again to turn the other cheek and try to gain her approval and love. The problem was that I was trying to resolve our reltaionship without the help from my Father. I finally began to understand that in the beginning of 2003.
At that time, I was already two years into my breast cancer diagnosis and had already had my mastectomy surgery and had 19 lymphnodes removed (all were infected with cancer). I had been through 1-1/2 months of radiation every day and 6 months of chemotherpy. Then, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in my liver. Although my illness had a way of bringing my mom and I closer, we were still at odds with one another somehow. There were 2 or 3 times a year when I just couldn't take it any more. When those times would come, I got closer and closer to disowning her as my mother, or at least I would entertain the thought. I know it was just the enemy trying to cause division and he was winning sometimes. I always seem to almost run out of strength to continue fighting for the mother love that I had longed for all my life. It was at that time Father God told me very clearly He wanted me to start praying for her. Prior to that, I hadn't really thought about it...she was really the last person that I cared to or wanted to pray for. When the Lord told me that He wanted me to pray for her, I was taken back and let me tell you, I needed a whole lot of encouragement for that request. I couldn't think of anything nice to say about her let alone in a prayer. Pretty sad huh? I loved my mom, but I'm not really sure why. I think it's because the Lord had instilled in my mind when I was very little that I needed to honor my mother and father and that never left my heart. I felt that no matter what, she was my mother and I needed to honor her somehow, even if it was in the littlest of ways.
I remember the first prayer I lifted up to the Lord for my mom was somehting like, "Lord, I don't know how to pray for my mom, I have no words, its' hard for me to pray for someone that I'm so angry at." Eventually, the prayers got to be more more about our relationship and to help us love one another. At one point, God even began to show me that while I was concentrating so much on the amount of love my mom wasn't giving me, I couldn't see at all the love she did have and was giving me or at least trying to give me through my blindness. Father continued to soften my heart for my mom and reminded me how important it was to Him that I honor her with all my love - the love that He has given me. It didn't matter if she could not return the same amount of or not. He began to show me that you need to be in posession of something in order to give it away. I wonder if that's why it's so important to our Father that we learn to love ourselves. How could we ever be able to love our neighbors if we can't love ourselves first. I finally realized that my mom wasn't in "posession" of the amount of love that I so desparately wanted and needed. But I sure was! I knew that I had that amount of love and I needed to show her that love by giving more of it to her. So I called my mom up after 2 or 3 weeks of being mad at her for something I don't even remember. I asked her if I could stop by after work to talk to her about something, but I wouldn't tell her what. I knew and God knew that my heart was in the right place, but unfortunately my intention for my visit was to tell her once and for all that I forgave her for all the heartache and pain she had caused me as a child and young adult. I wanted to forgive her for the words that she had spoken into my life and to let her know it's okay, that I don't blame her. Right...Sure...Okay, can we say "wake-up call"? God was like, "Are you kidding me? You can't say that to her. You have to go to her with your own heart and ask her to forgive YOU!" Well, I didn't hear that coming! I didn't know what to say about that, but I knew that He was right. I was already on my way to my moms house and now I was frantically thinking about what I was going to say to her, so I just began to pray in tongues until I got there. According to my Father, my plan wasn't going to work and I wanted to be obedient to Him, so I decided to just let the Holy Spirit take me by storm and lead the way.
When I got to my mom's house, she was a bit estranged. We went downstairs into the family room. I asked if she could turn the T.V. volume down and she grabbed the remote and said, "well let's just turn it off"! As she sat very sturn in her chair, I took hold of her hand and looked into her eyes and told her about a conversation that I had with the Lord about my relationship with her and how I wanted to be close to her like other mother's and daughter's were. I told her how the Lord just kept telling me how He wanted me to honor her as my mother. She immediately said, "I was wondering about that since you claim to be a Christian and all."
I then proceeded to tell her that I needed to ask her for forgiveness. Her immediate response was first a shocked look on her face and then a worried one. She said, "ask for my forgiveness, what on earth for"? As tears were streaming down my face, I said, "I really need to ask you to please forgive me for not allowing you to love me in the way that you know how and to please forgive me for not loving you in the way that you deserve." I continued to tell her that too many years had been waisted and I wanted to begin a new relationship with her. That was a big step of faith that I just took and my mom didn't know how to react. She did say, "well of course I forgive you." I believe on that day Father God began to renew and transform my mind. Rom 12:2 Do not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - His good, pleasing and perfect will. God was beginning to show me how the renewing of my mind was going to bring me further freedom in the areas of my life that had been dominated by my feelings for so many years.
Father God united my mom and I in a way that had never happened before. Over the next 3 years, our relationship grew to unexpected and unexplainable new heights. Father was teaching me how to love her in the way that she really was so deserving of and in return He began to show me how much she really did love me and always did. I just could never see it.
God gave me many opportunities to speak His truth and love into her, which I gladly and boldly took. I remember this one time we were together during the summer of 2004, sitting out on my balcony at the apartment. I had just found out that I needed to start chemotherapy again for the third time. The breast cancer had come back in my bones - that was after I was breaking ribs by sneezing, coughing and had mulitple broken ribs and multiple fractures because of a little boat ride that I went on. Anyway, my mom and I were on my balcony, having coffee and talking about the upcoming chemo, when my mom said to me, "are you going to lose your hair again?" I told her that was most likely to happen. She turned to me and said with discust on her face, "I just don't understand why you have to suffer so much." I looked at her, straight in her eyes and said, "without suffering there would be no compassion mom." While I said that to her, she began looking at me differently. It was like she was looking at me for the first time, ever. I quickly sensed it was Jesus she was looking at, not me. It was almost like I wasn't even there...it was so incredibly cool and I will never ever forget the feeling I had on that day. I felt the prescence of the Lord within me, living inside of me like never before.
Our time together and the days we had spent together chatting on the phone, which was pretty much daily, and every weekend we were together, was quality time spent on healing and restoring our relationship. Father was blessing us with the kind of reltaionship I had been praying for and that we both had hoped and longed for.
In the spring of 2006, my mom was diagnosed with Multiple Myaloma, which is cancer of the bone marrow. She struggled with good and bad days for 5 months. I took care of her almost every day. My step-dad was working part-time, so when he was home I had a day off for myself and my own recovery because I was also going through chemo at that time. It wasn't an easy time for my mom. Some days she wasn't feeling so well and then other days she was feeling really good. So one weekend my step-dad and mom decided to take a trip up North to Hinckley. When they returned home, she wasn't feeling very well. We thought maybe she just over did it and needed to get some really good rest. After a couple of days she started to feel better. I hadn't gone over to her house since they came back from Hinckley because my step-dad didn't have to work and my mom was feeling pretty well. By Thursday of that week, she started not feeling very well again and when I showed up to sit with her and help out on Friday, I was appauled at the state of health she was in. My step-dad was getting ready to walk out the door for work when I showed up. My mom was having a real hard time breathing, she couldn't talk and had a look of help and desperation in her eyes. I knew that I needed to do something. I looked at my mom briefly and told my dad that I had to call 911. "Why is she here and not in the hospital?", I said to him, "she needs to go into the emergency." She was immediately admitted into the hospital and they soon found out that she had severe pneumonia in both lungs. She was intibated within a short period of time while they continued to run more tests. We were told later on that she wasn't going to get better and then started asking us questions about her demise.
I remember that night, when my friends and family went home, I stayed there. A dear friend of mine came over to be with me at the hospital until it was time to go home. Sometimes I wish that I had just stayed there all night long. It was about 11:00 PM at night and before we decided to leave, I suggested that we pray over my mom for a restful and peaceful night of sleep. That's when it happened! God showed up in that room and in our prayers in a big way and poured out Holy Spirit over my mom, my friend and myself. This encounter with God was very obvious and totally unexpected. I can't remember the exact words that were spoken in our prayer, but once the Holy Spirit took over and started speaking through me, this is what He said. He told my mom that she could go home to Jesus if she just asked Him. He told my mom He knew that she believed in Jesus and that He died on the cross for her sins. And to have eternal life, she just needed to ask to be forgiven of her sins and ask Him to come into her heart. He said, I know you can't speak with your mouth, but you can ask Him with your mind and heart, He will hear you. Just ask Him now so you can have eternal life. This prayer was coming out of my mouth, but certainly not out of my mind...this was a plea straight from Holy Spirit. The prayer continued, but by this time it was no longer Holy Spirit, it was my friend and me making a plea to God that He would make my mom comfortable, safe and free of pain through the night and to give the rest of the family members as much time as possible for other faimly members to come and visit with her. When we were done praying, my friend and I looked at each other in simple amazement and actually shock wondering if we both just experienced the same encounter of Holy Spirit in the room. We both agreed we experienced a devine encounter with God. I knew at that moment, there was no doubt in my mind whatsoever, that my mom had just accepted Christ in her heart. I remember there was a time in my life when I thought that my mom would be the last person on this earth that would ever accept Jesus Christ in her heart.
The next day, more relatives were showing up to say there own goodbye's. My mom wasn't doing well and we all knew it was only a matter of hours now. All of a sudden, one of the nurses came into the hospital room telling me I had a phone call. The phone call was from a friend that I didn't have an opportunity to tell the status of my moms health yet. She told me that she had been in prayer with the Lord when He told her to call me and pray for me. So she tracked me down in the hospital room and she prayed a lovely prayer over me, my family and my mother. What I hadn't expected was that 5 minutes later she tracked me down again and she said that Father had a message for me that she needed to pass on right away. She explained to me that she didn't understand the message at all, but was reassured by the Lord that I would understand. She told me that the word "ASK" kept coming up. She said that whatever you asked Him for, that He heard me. He just wanted me to know that. I thanked her and said my good-byes. It took me a few minutes before it registered in my head. Then all of a sudden I remembered the prayer the night before. I remembered the prayer of salvation when my mom "asked" Jesus to come into her heart. Wow! All of a sudden I was perpelled into this whirlwind of love I couldn't hardly handle the feeling physically. God was giving me confirmation of my mothers eternity with Him. He wanted me to know that she was in fact going home to be with Him. What's almost more amazing on top of that, is that He loves and cares for me so much he wanted me to know He was listening. That blew me away. That just goes to show you how deep, how long, and how wide His love really and truly is for us.
During the last hours of my moms life, I sat a foot away from her face holding her hand all the while telling her how much I loved her, how beautiful she was and that it was okay now to let go and be with Jesus. I told her she could go see her mom and dad that she has missed for so long. I told her to watch for me because when I see her again I will run to her. I sang songs to her and would whisper loving words in her ear every now and then. I told her she wouldn't have to suffer any more and that there would be no more pain of any kind with Jesus.
My brother couldn't make it back home in time to see her, so I had him talk to her on the phone for a few minutes. I held the phone up to her ear as he talked to her. I know without a doubt that my mom could hear him no matter what the nurses said. She really needed to hear his voice. I asked him if he was done talking to her and if he told her any jokes. My brother was always good at making my mom smile and bring a chuckle to her bones. He asked if he should and I told him of course and then put the phone back up to her ear. I thank the Lord for bringing that to my mind so he could find some peace and closure with her passing being that he was so far from home. I continued to sit with her, telling her that now she's talked to her son David, she can go home to the Lord. I told her that we will all miss her terribly, but whenever she's ready, she should go home to Jesus.
During the entire time at the hospital, my mom couldn't move on her own, talk, breath on her own, or even blink. But as I sat next to her, holding her hand and whispering sweet thoughts in her ear, she all of a sudden squeezed my hand and then took her thumb and rubbed the side of my hand 3 times. I couldn't believe it! I was exstatic and yelled out loud to everyone, my mom squeezed my hand a rubbed it 3 times. You might think it's silly to think of this, but I think the amount of times she rubbed my hand was very significant to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. My mom passed away shortly after that and went home to spend eternity with her Father in heaven.
Through this tragedy and loss of my mom, Father God taught me so much. Never underestimate the power of God. I always thought my mom would be the last person that would ever accept Christ as her Lord and Savior. But I also thought I could never pray for her and look what He did! In August of 2003, I had prayed for healing and restoration in my life. I actually not only received an answer to that prayer, but as God often does He blessed me with so much more. I now remember the things my mom did for me that I was blinded to before. The truth has set me free. I have no regrets because I was obedient to my Father, even when I didn't want to be. He replaced my broken heart with a brand new one. Luke 6:45 The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.
All my growing up years I wondered why God chose my mom to adopt me. Why did He allow her to adopt me anyway and why was she brought into my life. I know now that she wasn't brought into my life as much as He brought me into hers. You see, He already knew my heart and knew the love I would have in my heart for her; I was the vessel for her eternal life, who would have thought. Now every time I miss her and start to feel sad that she's gone, Father brings the warmth of her love to my mind and spirit and once again I have peace that surpasses all understanding. That's what I call grace and how it's been defined in my life.
Never ever underestimate why you are in someone's life. You might think that you're of no importance or significance, especially if the relationship is a challenging one. But God's plans are so far beyond our imagination that the possiblities of the daily encounters we are faced with are endless. All we can do is just continue to be obedient and let God do the rest of the work. I think we can all agree that He knows what he's doing.
SUICIDE/DEPRESSION
This is really a tough topic to communicate. Not necessarily for me because I've had such deliverance from both topics, suicide and depression. But, unfortunately there are many people that are too familiar with these topics and happen to still be a part of their own lives. That's the reason why I feel it's so important to mention my struggles with both of these topics and how the Lord has delivered me from both.
I think to some extent it was inevitable that I would have to deal with suicide and depression at some point in my life. Looking back on things now, I believe the depression came upon me early in life. I even have pictures of me when I was little and had always wondered why I had such an unhappy look on my face. I never seem to be smiling in many of those pictures. Certainly, there were things in my life that made me happy. My life couldn't have been that full of chaos and dysfunction, could it have?
Somewhere in our picture box, there is a snapshot of me playing in my bedroom with my barbies. I'm standing at my dresser, in a dress that my mom made, with my hair all pulled back and put in this really nice bun. I look like I'm ready to go for a photoshoot as soon as someone gives the word it's time to go! That was my life! Crazy huh? But to me, that was normal...I didn't know any better, so I guess I was happy to some extent during that time. Then there were the years when we had all kinds of animals at our house. We always had a dog and then puppies. We had a momma and papa rabbit and ended up with 32 babies in our back yard. That was so much fun! We had ducks, geese, turtles, birds, fish, you name it. My brother even had peraunas once. It's hard for me to imagine my mom having the compassion and the patience so we could have these animals. But I guess that's a time when things were better in our household. We also had a neighborhood full of kids around the same age, give or take 3-4 years apart. So practically every night after dinner, all of us kids would get together in the front of someone's yard and play games until bedtime. We would play Red-roover, Red-roover, Kick-the-Can, and other games that would consist of a number of kids. Shortly after school was let out for the summer, I was shipped off to my grandmother's house for at least 3-6 weeks. My grandmother and I were very close and made a lot of great memories together. I wouldn't trade that for anything. If it wasn't for my grandma, I wouldn't have received much nurturing at all. I always got a lot of love and hugs & kissed from her and my Auntie Joanie and my Auntie Gin. They always showed me that uncondtional love that everyone wants to experience in life. So that was really a blessing in disguise for me. But as I got older, it got to be really boring to spend so much time at grandma's house and no time with any of my friends back home. I think I was just sent to my grandma's so my mom could have her own fun and not worry about me. As soon as my dad was out of the picture, (divorced), my mom went out a lot at night. During the summer she used to use my grandma as a babysitter, so to speak. She either came and stayed with us for a few weeks, or I stayed at her house. I can't say that I blame my mom for wanting to get out and have a little freedom after all that she had been through with my dad. She really went through hell and back if you want to know the truth. But during that phase of her life, I don't think she ever thought of anyone but herself. I wasn't close enough to her to have any expectations of my own. I just took each day as I did the day before. You never really knew what was going to happen for sure.
Before my dad left, the days got harder and harder. I used to go into my room and just lay on my bed and cry. I can't remember how old I was...but I do remember crying out to the Lord plenty of times asking why I must go through what I was going through. I didn't understand why certain things had to happen to me. I never dawned on me to think for a minute that maybe these types of things were going on in other family households too. I wasn't just talking about the incest, but also the verbal, emotional and spiritual abuse that I was exposed to and trying to get through each and every day the best way that I could. Most often than not, when I was crying out to the Lord, I believe the Father would answer my pleas and tell me that one day I would be stronger than I was at that moment. I didn't know what that meant nor did I understand it at that time, but those words always stuck with me somehow and continued to replay in my mind whenever I asked the question "why". Interestingly enough, just a few years ago, I came across a scripture that really spoke to me and had brought me to a "new" place of healing when I read it. 1 Peter 5:10-11 In his kindness God called you to his eternal glory by means of Jesus Christ. After you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. All power is his forever and ever. Amen (NLT) I believe to this very day that God continues to strengthen me as He does all of us. But this scripture was very pertinent to me because it showed me that He was restoring something in me that I had lost long ago, ME! And really, when I think about it, I never really lost myself, because I never really felt like I existed to begin with. That's when God really started to restore me and began to show His support by placing me on this awesome firm foundation that He spoke about. The firm foundation of His eternal glory. Prior to that, I had always felt like I was raised to accomodate everyone else's needs in my life. To please, perform, and to provide a service to my family that included unconditional love and affection that was above and beyond the duties of a daughter. And for the most part, I think that I fulfilled that to the best of my ability over the years.
When I was in 10th grade I ran away from home. It seemed that everytime my mom and I got into a fight, she would speak certain words into my life that were really like darts to my heart and caused a lot of internal pain. There were plenty of times that I just couldn't take it anymore and I would have to leave for a while or just run away. This particular time I ran away to a friends house that lived close to school. It just so happened to be my mom's friend's daughters house. There mom took me in and promised that she wouldn't tell my mom that I was there until the next day. Probably not such a good idea on her part, but it worked for me. The next day I didn't go to school because I was still pretty upset about the night before and I didn't want my mom to know where I was. I wanted her to worry about me, just for a little while...for once in her life I wanted her to show me that she was afraid that something might have happened to me. Maybe, just maybe that she could be worried about where I was and then apologize to me for saying the things that she said. What it really boiled down to was that I really wanted her to tell me that she loved me. But that never happened! The next day, my friend went to school while I stayed at their house. Around 1pm or 2pm that afternoon, (when my friend was supposed to be coming home before she started her part-time job) I locked all the animals in the bedroom. I was so depressed that I went into the kitchen, opened up the oven door, blew out the pilot light and laid my head on the oven door. Not much later my friend walked in the door and stopped what I was doing and called her mom. There really was no time for anything to happen, thank God. I mean I was only laying there for like 10 minutes or so. I must have already knew that she was going to be coming home soon and would find me and I would be okay. That's why I timed everything the way that I did. I'm sure the entire process was just a call for help at that point like a lot of teenagers do back then and even now. I'm not even sure if the pilot light got blown out because I never smelled any gas. That tells you how desperate I really was. I just wanted my mom to know that I was so depressed that I wanted to take my own life. Unfortunately, nothing transpired from the incident. But that certainly was the beginning of many entertaining suicidal thoughts in my life for years to come. Anyway, my mom was furious about the entire episode and did her best to make me feel even worse than I already did. Telling me that she loved me was the furthest from her mind when she came to bring me home. She even made threats that she wanted to send me through the Juvenille Court system and have me put in some kind of jail for minors. Fortunately for me, after all of this, the biggest blessing showed up in my life. Isn't just like our Father to show up in the midst of a storm? It reminds me of the disciples that were worried about the storm they were in and how Jesus was sleeping during it all and how they had no faith and trust they would get through the storm. But this was one of those kind of blessings that actually saves your life! You see, unbeknownst to me, my friend's sister was a born again Christian. We started talking the night that I stayed at their house and she spoke to me a lot about God and how much He loved me. She asked if I wanted to come to a bible study with her in a couple of days and I told her yes. Actually, I couldn't go until after I was done being grounded.
But when I was able to, I went with her to my first bible study and that very night I became born again and accepted Christ into my heart as my Lord and Savior. I received my first vision and spoke in tongues for the first time...all in the same evening. I remember that night and my vision as if it just happened. I will never forget the feeling I had that night. From that moment on, my life had changed quite considerably and I felt physically that my depression was lifted and my demeanor changed completely. I was always smiling and happy and started to take care of myself again. I wasn't keeping myself confined to my bedroom and I began talking to my mom like I never had before. Making her laugh and letting her know that I loved her had seemed to be important to me again. However, my mom wasn't very responsive. Because of the immediate change in my behavior, I think she started to get suspicious that I was hanging around a bunch of hippies that were influencing me with drugs. She eventually refused me the right to hang around with them again. Well it didn't take long before I reverted back to my old ways and the depression started to set in once again. The next two years went by rather quickly but not painlessly. My parents' divorce was final that year and a month later my dad died. That was really hard for me. Even though there was a lot of dysfunction and a lot of healing that needed to happen yet, I somehow loved my dad and was feeling the tragedy of loosing him. Another year of school went by and then it was a like a month after school was over, we moved to another part of the cities and I started a brand new school as a Senior, not knowing a soul.
When I began my Senior year in High School, I was a very shy girl that had a hard time talking to people that I didn't know. I was working at Target in Bloomington and staying in my room most of the time. The boys in school were hard on me because they knew that I was shy. They used to take rubber bands and snap them at me during class when the teacher wasn't looking. Things like that would happen to me all the time. Nevertheless, I would continue just as though things were fine, but my life wasn't full of joy, happiness or any kind of love. I often wondered what my purpose was and how my life would change after I graduated. I couldn't wait for that day to happen because I knew that I would move out as quickly as I could make it happen.
Eventually I made friends at school and started to hang out with them and began skipping a lot of classes. As it turned out, I skipped so many classes that I ended up being short on my credits and then couldn't graduate with my class. I ended up going back to school for 3 months during that summer to finish my credits so I could get my diploma. I didn't do this for myself, I did it for my mom. I really didn't care if I graduated or not, but I knew that it was important to my mom, so I went ahead and put myself through the humility of being seen in school as kind of a drop-out that had changed their mind. But, I graduated and got my diploma, but did I get anything else? Did my mom ever acknowledge the fact that I graduated? Did she give me a graduation party? Did I get any recognition of any kind, a present, a graduation card, anything? Absolutely nothing! I was so belittled when my own mother didn't even have the compassion to tell me how proud she was that I got my diploma, I could have cried for days...in fact, I think that I did cry myself to sleep many nights. It kind of makes me sad now to just thinking about it.
That summer, in 1976, I grew up tremendously. I met a boy, or a man I should say. I was 16 years old and he was 24 years old. He had just moved to our apartment building from Chicago, Illinois. He was very attractive and swept me off my feet. I had never fallen in love, so I didn't know what to think of this guy. I was also very naive to a great extent. My mom loved him though because he gave her a lot of attention every time he saw her. If you did that with my mom, you were in her good graces no matter what you did and who you were, actually, unless you were me of course! I moved out right after school into an apartment with two other girls and kept dating this older man for a couple of years. We had an on again and off again relationship. I was really only infatuated with him, but because he was the only man that really paid any attention to me and gave me any kind of love, I tried to hang on to our strange relationship as long as I could. Eventually, our relationship finally had to end, and it did. I had started dating someone else that I worked with that was a lot of fun. We worked 2nd shift together at Control Data in Bloomington and after work was over, a bunch of us would hang out in the parking lot, play Frisbee, drink and do drugs all night long. We were all destroying our lives and didn't have a clue what we were doing. We were so young, that God wasn't even close to being in our thoughts. Days and months went by and I continued to do drugs with my new friends. I was having the time of my life...everybody loved me...I had friends that actually cared about me and wanted to hang out with me...it was pretty cool. What wasn't cool was the fact that I was doing drugs like cocaine, crystal meth, acid, LSD, marijuana, and so forth. I have no doubt that my Father in heaven was watching over me because there were plenty of times that people would give me cocaine and nothing would happen to me. So then they would give me more so I could get high and still nothing would happen. Eventually, my ex-husband that I worked with at Control Data and I hooked up and started to live with each other. We dated for another year and then one day we decided to get married.
My ex-husband grew up North in a town called Cass Lake, MN. Most weekends we went up North to visit family. One weekend when we were there, we decided to get married. We went to the Justice of the Peace at the court house in Bemidji and got married. As I mentioned earlier, my mom wasn't very happy about that at all. But, surprisingly enough, my mom hosted a wedding reception for my ex and I a month or two after we got married, which I thought was a very strange thing for her to do. I was happy about it and I think that I showed her how happy I was, I really don't remember though.
Once my ex and I got married, we soon decided to move up North since Control Data had opened a new Subsidiary plant in Bemidji. We put transfers in to take on new jobs in hopes that we could move up North and start a new life up there. Well, my ex's transfer went through, but mine didn't. That was fine though, we had enough money to last until my transfer went through. We found a place to live right on Cass Lake itself with our dogs and enjoyed the next year partying all the time. That was "THE" place to be to hang out and party, day or night. Then all of a sudden I realized that I was pregnant. We were actually very excited because we both wanted to have children. Unfortunately, I ended up having a miscarriage the following spring. I was about 3 months pregnant at the time. What I have never told anyone is that I think I was to blame for loosing the baby. At the beginning of the pregnancy, during the most important stage of the growth of cells and so forth I was doing a lot of drugs still. I had done some acid when friends from the cities came to visit. Of course I didn't know that I was pregnant, I would have never done any drugs or had even come close to smelling drugs. That was a really hard time in my life. I wanted that baby so bad. I always thought if I had a baby in my life I would be complete somehow and I would be loved in the way that I had always wanted to be loved, unconditionally. Even though I was married, I still didn't feel loved. Not the way that I needed to be loved...the intimacy wasn't there with my ex. He has never talked about anything intimate, personal, or anything painful in his life, ever. I never felt like I could go to him about anything and get any comfort from him. I needed someone to tell me that everything was going to be okay. I needed someone to say, "it's okay, put your head on my shoulder and cry"...and that never happened. But as bad as that time was in my life, I know that my Lord and Savior had forgiven me long ago for that little baby. My Father began straightening out my life at that point. I started to prepare myself to become a mother. The only problem was that I had become anorexic and had been since I started to work for Control Data in 1976. My anorexia had been bad for a few years already...I was 5'7-1/2" tall and weighed 112 pds. I didn't eat much and took a lot of diet pills and exercised all the time. That's what I did to keep my weight down. I was even taking a lot of laxatives to keep my system flushed out. But mostly I just stayed on diet pills all the time. I was taking about 3-4 times as much as a normal person was supposed to take if you were on a diet. I became very addicted to these drugs and never even really knew that I had a problem. There wasn't really a time when I didn't have the pills with me. Nobody knew that I had this eating disorder, I didn't even know. A year went by and I had really settled down with the drugs and dieting and finally just focusing on starting a family. It was almost to a year I eventually got pregnant again and gave birth to my first child in August of 1982. At that time, believe it or not, I had already stopped taking the diet pills. During my entire pregnancy I ended up gaining almost 70 pds while being pregnant. I was 112 pds when I got pregnant and left the hospital after having my baby weighing 183 pds. It didn't take long before I started taking the diet pills again though. Only six months later, I was back on my anorexia regimen and lost over 60 pds. I did nothing but exercise, eat nothing and continued popping my diet pills. During that time, I was breast feeding my daughter, but I soon dried up and had to start giving her formula. My eating disorder actually didn't come to a stop until I moved to the cities and couldn't afford to purchase the diet pills. I tried to buy them in the beginning, but I just couldn't do it. Thank God that there was such a program called WIC which helped woman that needed assistance to get food to their babies, like formula, baby food, cheese, milk, food stamps, etc. It was a program that was funded through the government and paid by the welfare system. All I know is that it helped me in a time when I needed assistance when there was nobody around to help. My ex wasn't a part of the picture. He wasn't paying child support and hadn't paid it for another 10+ years later. It was definately hard! But we got through it with the help of my Father in heaven. He knew the extent of my needs and met them in every corner I searched and didn't search.
This journey is just starting to take on a new twist. I think that I'm ready, are you?
DREAMS & VISIONS
THE LOVE OF GOD THE FATHER
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