Even when it Hurts like HELL

Intimacy is quite often one of the most sought after and yet misunderstood feelings of life's experiences. I believe that this happens because most people have the misconception that intimacy is  based on a feeling, but true intimacy is based on relationship.
We are all born with a hard wired need for intimacy. Every person from birth to adulthood needs to have an intimate relationship. Our first experience should be modeled by the relationship with our parents, a deep bond and connection that is there for a lifetime. I wish this was the first thought that came to mind when I use the word "intimacy".
  Unfortunately this word has become perverted in today's society. You can rarely use the word "intimate" without it having some sort of sexual connotation. When trying to be polite or discrete, we will often use the term "being intimate" instead of saying "having sex". Today we have been sold on the idea that sex is the short-cut to intimacy; or even sadder still, that sex is the replacement of intimacy. Now don't get me wrong, sex is a wonderful thing in its proper setting; but sex is shallow and empty when it is used to try to replace intimacy.

I have thought a lot about intimacy these past few months.
The deep bond that I share with Norma, my children, God, and a few friends that know me best. Intimate relationships are forged with time, there are no short-cuts. Because through the course of time you will experience it all; joy, pain, celebration, heartache, failures and success. Time is the great revelator.
There is a song entitled "Even When it Hurts" performed by the worship band Hillsong. It has been one of my favorite songs for more than a year now, long before my health events of this past summer.  During a recent chapel service my friend, Pastor Joe Angelo, ran the video of this song and asked each of us to pick out a line of this song and share why it was significant to us.
I had to smile, Pastor Joe had no idea how many times I had played this song while in my hospital room just a few weeks ago. I knew the line before he clicked on play,
"Even when it hurts like hell
 I'll praise You"
There were many intimate moments that I experienced during my twelve days in the hospital, but there are two that I would like to share with you now.
The first I shared with Pastor Joe and those that were in that Thursday morning chapel service.
It was my fifth night in the hospital and Norma had not left my side. She had sat during the day and slept during the night in an uncomfortable reclining chair next to my bed. It was the night before my surgery. The cancer had been found the day before, we had spent the day talking with the doctors. We had covered as many scenarios as possible and had talked about all the "what if's" that we could handle. Emotionally, we were spent. It was late and all that we could do now was to wait and try to get some rest. It was the only night we did this, but that night Norma laid with me in that little hospital bed. We held each other until we fell asleep. Nothing sexual happened, we didn't even say much; but in our twenty-one years of marriage it was one of the most intimate moments that I have ever experienced.
You see, you don't always get to plan your intimate moments. But the more time you spend with someone, the more likely it is that you will become intimate.
The second moment happened a few nights later. I had come through the surgery well and I had convinced Norma to go to my mom's house to shower and sleep in a real bed. Our house seemed too far away and mom only lived ten minutes down the road, so Norma could live with that. I was alone in my room. I was still in a lot of pain, I had not gotten the testing results of the cancer cells back yet and my mind was filled with questions and concerns. I needed to pray, I wanted to talk with my Father.
 Now to some of you this may sound odd, but I am only sharing what happened that night. I personally believe that we are often surrounded by spiritual forces, both heavenly and demonic. They watch and they listen because what we say and do matters in the seen and the unseen realms. This night however, I wanted to speak freely without anyone or anything else to hear what I had to say. As I began to pray I asked the Lord to seal the room, I asked God to remove any other presence from the room so that I could talk to Him openly, just me and God. What I experienced that night was one of the most open and honest discussions with God that I have ever had. It was an intimate time that has changed my relationship with my Father in ways that I am only beginning to understand. But again, I would have never chosen this moment to be intimate with God. I didn't want to have cancer, I didn't want to be cut open and have my insides dissected. I did not want this pain, but because of the years that I have spent with my God I knew that He is a good Father. He gave me a peace and a strength that I had never thought possible, and He assured me that He was in control. It is a moment, and an experience that I would never want to be taken away from me.

In the past few weeks since I have returned home I have thought about something that I read some time ago. It has stuck with me even though I never really had a good understanding of what it meant. This may not be word for word, but it went something like this,
     It is a wonderful revelation and a meaningful relationship when we can see God as a good and caring Heavenly Father. But the next step, the life changing revelation is when we see Jesus as the Groom and the Church as His Bride.
Now I have shared many times about my need for a Father and how my relationship with God has fulfilled that void. But trying to imagine myself as being part of the Bride of Christ never was an image that I could understand, and honestly it just sounded a little strange. That was until I saw it modeled right before my eyes. I thought of Norma waiting for me for almost two weeks, sitting and sleeping in that chair. Not willing to leave and go home until I came with her. I am her love, her groom; and there was no other place for her to be other than at my side.

That is the love that I am supposed to feel for Jesus. He took all the pain, He endured the cancer; and His only reward was that I could be at His side and it made it all worth it, for now and for eternity. Is it such a high price to pay to sometimes have to sit in an uncomfortable recliner to stay by His side? After years of prayer and devotions, something that I had never really understood before now made sense because of what I had watched Norma, my bride, live right before my eyes. 

Christianity is not a set of rules; and salvation is not found in a prayer, it is found in a relationship. We were created to be intimate, with each other and with God. Sin took intimacy away from us but Jesus came and restored what we lost, but then He gave us so much more.
I am a doubly blessed man; to know my God as I do and to have a wife like Norma. Sometimes intimacy is sexy and romantic, but it goes so much deeper than that. I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand the depths of intimacy; but even when it hurts like hell, I'll praise You.

It has to Begin Here

It has been a month since my last post and what a month it has been, there is so much to tell.
 Several times I thought about sitting here and beginning to retell the events of the past thirty-one days, but I felt that the Spirit was holding me back. Partly I didn't want to do any serious writing while still on pain meds, so it has been seven days since I finished with the pain meds. I didn't want the blog to look like a drunk texting and wake up the next morning going, "My God, I didn't really write that did I ? " I do that enough without medication, LOL.

The hard part now is deciding where to begin, because this will take some time to tell. It may very well become a book someday, but it will begin here.

I went for a walk two nights ago. It was a beautiful bright full moon that night, just as it still is this morning. It's funny, the thing that I hear the most often is everyone telling me how good I look right now. I have lost a lot of weight this year, most of it in the past three months, but all totaled I have lost almost fifty pounds this year. I also hear many people say how positive my attitude has been through all of this. I have heard many stories of others who have received the diagnosis of cancer and they did not do so well, it left them in a bad state of mind, some for quite some time. As I thought about this, I knew where telling this story had to begin.

I cannot tell you my story without telling you about my Savior.

As I walked the other night I was talking with God. The question on my mind was how could anyone go through something like this on their own? For a moment the question came to my mind, "Lord, what would my mindset be if I were going through this on my own strength, without your Spirit holding me up and strengthening me? Maybe just for a moment You could step away, so that I would know what it felt like to do this without You? " But just as quickly as I had completed that thought I knew the answer to my question. The desperation and the hopelessness where immeasurable at just the thought of God removing His presence from my life. And like a little child peeking through the doorway into a dark room, that was as far as I needed to go. "Lord please don't leave me alone, not even for a moment" was all I could think.
I have always been fascinated with a particular story of Moses in the Old Testament. Moses would literally sit in the physical presence of God as they spoke together. It was so literal that Moses' face actually glowed from being in the Presence of God. It was so unnatural that it would unsettle the people of Israel to the point that they had Moses cover his face with a veil until the Glory of God that had saturated his body had diminished from his face.
I have often tried to imagine what this might have looked like. Now I am not trying to put myself on the same level as Moses, but in a way I do feel a similarity.
My strength does not come from my positive attitude, and I don't look great because I lost a bunch of weight. I honestly still feel like Hell most of the time, but I have drawn much closer to Jesus for strength and peace; I have often looked for time in His presence. I have to believe that what others are seeing right now is not how great I look, but an overflow of the goodness of God on my life. Most Christians will say that they want their life to be a reflection of Jesus, but that has taken on a whole new meaning to me these past few months.

If I try to tell you my story without telling you about Jesus then I would be a liar.

There is so much that is worth sharing, so many amazing and wonderful stories that have happened over the past several weeks and it is my intention to share them with you all. But this has to be the foundation, because in every story, in every situation my Jesus was right there with me.
In all of this I have thought that sooner or later the freak out would come, at some point the stress and the gravity of all of this would overwhelm me; but it never did. I have had a peace and strength in all of this that I cannot take the credit for, I am not that strong, not on my own.
Satan's original sin was the he coveted the Glory that belonged to God, and I don't want to make the same mistake.The Glory of my story is that God fought for me and that my healing was paid for on a Cross long before it found me in an operating room.
Many in my situation are identified as Cancer Survivors, but to be totally honest I do not like that title. A few weeks ago, God told me to "Walk like a Warrior" because He had conquered cancer in my life. Being labeled a survivor, to me, sounds to much like being a victim. There is a passage in Romans 8 that says it the best to me:

³¹ What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be^[i] against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? ³³ Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.^{[j] 35} Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If I am to be known, then let me be known as a Cancer Conqueror.
If you or someone that you have loved has battled cancer, know that I mean no disrespect. But we have been victims for far too long and in Christ Jesus we are more than conquerors!