There is a kit for everything these days, all neatly packaged, all inclusive, with a predetermined end product. We have been trained to expect a set outcome. Follow the instructions and you can be assured of a perfect result.
Life is not like that. I had a cancer diagnosis. The packaged treatment plan was laid out before me with the timeline, the guaranteed delivery and percentage likelihood probable outcome, the expected manifestation of treatment effects and all presented with the expectation that compliance with the stated instructions would give me the desired results.
The other side of the coin was the road less travelled. There were no guarantees, there were many different packages and faith in my body’s ability to respond to healing influences of fresh food, positive outlook, supplementation, rest and laughter.
Then there was the belief in supernatural healing. Many accounts of God’s miraculous intervention into the lives of believers and even people with no expectation or belief, are written and told.
So, I went to New Zealand for 2 weeks with my husband to try and make some sense of what was happening to me and what my response to this crisis would be. The crushing reality was I had breast cancer and I needed to respond quickly.
I had shunned and rejected God up to this point because of a personal trauma, my trust in a God of love shattered. I had turned in a health crisis, first of my mother’s, then my husband’s mother and now my own, to alternative therapies and by association, to alternative beliefs…still in “Source” but in the “Self-Help “aisle. My initial cries for help were from this place to an impersonal “deity” who spoke through channelling or angels…but I, for reasons inexplicable to me at the time, always substituted their title…for God. God heard me amidst all the YouTube noise, talks and podcasts on manifestations of my heart’s desires and I found myself on the floor before Him in tears and anguish. That was how I spent my weeks in New Zealand…on the floor in hotel rooms, weeping in parks, walking for hours in prayer and petition for the miraculous, a sign, yes God, an eagle so I would know I could trust Him and my judgement on what to do…and an escape from the reality I now faced.
Fear won! On coming home, because the cancer was threatening to rupture through my skin…the way Mum’s had done, I commenced conventional medical treatment, a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy for 12 weeks, to be followed by a mastectomy.
My head and heart still railed against the treatment. I became well acquainted with the floor. I spent countless hours in prayer and Bible study, searching for direction, guidance, wisdom with regards to continuing treatment. We were living in a caravan behind our house, which was being completely renovated. The bush was close so I would take my Bible and notebook and sit on a rock on the edge of the gully early in the morning and journal my unfolding relationship with God.
My Bible dusted off, I was drawn to the story of the haemorrhaging woman who dared to reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak as He passed by and was healed. She hadn’t intended to be noticed or seen. She just had a hope that if she could just get close enough and brush his clothing, she would be healed. She believed it was possible.
It was with that story from Matthew 9:20…a few short verses, that something in me wanted to take God at His Word. I just wanted to reach out and be healed. His response to that woman when he realised, amongst the crushing crowd, that someone had taken healing power from him was to say to her “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your disease is healed.” Could I believe that? Could I trust that He would do that for me?
In the throes of treatment, I attended a Hillsong Conference. Following a healing service in which many were prayed over and healed, I found I was not, or at least I had no physical manifestation of the healing I had hoped and prayed for. Sitting outside the stadium I was questioning my husband about a comment made at the service about sometimes needing to do something more. It didn’t make sense but I had to hold to my faith and belief that God had a plan.
A stranger approached me at that moment of thought, introduced himself and told me God had told him to come and speak to me. He said, “God has heard your prayers and seen your faith and said to call you Daughter”. In disbelief I asked this poor man…was there more? Where was the rest of it?? Your faith has made you well? Apologetically, he confirmed those were the words given. We wept together, hugged and he left.
To not drag this out, I made certain choices about treatment…there are those trees again…2 trees, that took me to decide for myself before God would bless me but bless me, He did. Sometimes we have to take the step of faith first. I got my eagle! Not in New Zealand, where eagles fly often, but walking into my property in the mountains in NSW and it circled above my head for 10 minutes with me weeping underneath.
Has my experience been neatly packaged? No. Did God answer my prayers in a way I expected. No…no guarantee of outcome, at least not in any way I imagined. But faithful? Absolutely. The instructions? Read His Word…He will lead you. Trustworthy? Yes…when I give up control, let go and accept things will work out according to His plan and timing…not mine. And that is a work in progress…a daily standing before the 2 trees and having to choose.
