An Amazing Performance...

I ended up back in the ER a few nights ago with the same pain that lead me there last week.  Except this time, my oncologist wanted me transferred from Los Robles to Cedars-Sinai.  So I arrived here on Monday night.   

Upon reviewing the cat scan, my lead oncologist’s opinion was to step away from the chemo as the likelihood of another regimen being successful was not very promising.  Tough news to hear, but I think I knew it was coming.

After I reached for the Kleenex, I closed my eyes and again recounted the many promises and words of comfort the Lord has blessed me with while on this road.  There were just so many to recall.   I remembered each and every one of them.  And as I lay there, His peace flooded my soul.  Again.  Just as it did the day I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer three and a half years ago.  And again, I had a touch of excitement stirring in me too.

“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.  Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done.  Then you will experience peace that surpasses all understanding.”  Phillipians 4:6-7.

Oh, how I do.

I just laid in bed and praised Him.  No sound of tv, no outside chatter from other patients, no nurses discussing their charts.  Just me and God.  My door was closed. I hated to open my eyes as I was just basking in my love for Him.

A few hours later, Ed and my Mom arrived.  Just as they sat down, my cell phone rang and it was a pastor friend of mine from Dallas who was calling to pray over me.  I put him on speaker phone and we all heard his words of prayer for healing. 

More Kleenex was used.

In the midst of all this, something else was bothering me.  Don’t laugh, but we had six tickets last night for the Pageant of the Masters.  We had changed the date from August 18th to last night, and due to me being laid up in a hospital bed, no one wanted to go without me.  I begged them.  We had bought the tickets as a birthday present for my Dad.  

“Go!”  I told them over and over again.  I tried to pull the cancer card and everything, but nothing worked.  And not only did they not go, but we couldn’t even give the tickets  away!  It broke my heart.  Because if you remember from last year, I blogged about how utterly amazing that performance was.    And I wanted them to see what I had seen.

“Lord, what could be better tonight than Pageant of the Masters?” I grumbled to myself.

At around 7 o’clock at night, the nursing staff changed.  As my new nurse walked in, she looked like an angel to me.  Just something about her.  I noticed a large cross she wore around her neck and it caught my eye.  Her name badge read, “Esther.”

At about 10 o’clock, my Mom and sister decided to go home.  Right as they were leaving, Esther walked in.  As she was looking over my chart, I told her I had noticed her beautiful cross around her neck.  I asked her what church she went to.  I asked her how long she had been a Christian.  

As she came around to the other side of my bed, she began telling me her testimony.  Before long, she was singing, “Trust and Obey” with a beautiful, beautiful voice.   (How many nurses have you ever had who sing worship songs beside your bed?)  Yeah, I thought so.

She continued to tell me how God speaks to her and how she knows that He is alive.   As I nodded my head, she began singing,  “Be still and know that I am God.”   Tears immediately flooded my eyes and I began to sob.  I laid there, tears streaming down the sides of my eyes, listening to this angelic voice sing “my verse” over me in my hospital bed.  (It’s not even a song!) I looked up to her in amazement.  Amazed that God would use this nurse to again bring me words of comfort -- to bring a stranger into my room who would know how to minister to my soul.   As she was singing, I cried, “This is for me!  This is for me!”  

I had told her with tears blurring my vision that the Lord had promised me healing and despite what the doctors and reports are telling me, I still claim His victory over this cancer.   Her sweet face looked down at me and said, “It is His confirmation.  His Word never returns void.” 

Well, she continued to tell me that she wasn’t even supposed to be on this side of the hospital as she is a floater nurse and is rarely on the same floor twice.  She was supposed to be on the other side tonight.  They gave her all odd numbered rooms and one even.  Mine.  But then she figured, “Well, God must want me to meet someone tonight.”  

And what you don’t know is that after my doctor had left my room hours earlier, I had asked God to give me more words of comfort. More.  I laid there, praised Him and listened.  I never felt led to open my Bible.  I felt in His time, He would reveal His words to me.  Well, did He ever.

Ed walked into my room as Esther was still there.  I could tell when he looked at me he knew I had been crying.  I introduced Esther as the angel God had sent me tonight.  I told him that she sang over me, “Be still and know that I am God.”  His eyes widened and said, “That’s your verse.”  

It’s amazing to me how God orchestrates the details of our lives.  How He shows His love to us.  How He does it in ways I could never dream of.   

A few hours later, I couldn’t help but laugh.  Remember how irritated I was that those tickets went to waste?  I had said, “God, what could be better than us going to Pageant of the Masters?”  Uh, how about an angel singing over me, “Be still and know that I am God” as confirmation of the wondrous work He is about to do.