A Wrecked Church!

[ILG]

I have shared some horrific things on this thread. Now, I would like to share a beautiful thing (intertwined in some more horrific stuff). But, I do believe that God does show Himself, at times, to people in bad situations. It doesn't really counteract emotionally the bad things that were done. At least not immediately. I don't understand God's timetable or justice balances, I can only tell you what happened.

I saw things like this off and on throughout our ordeal but this was the most personal thing.

I believe in the power of prayer and I believe that prayer changes things both for the good and for the bad. Just as it takes more work to build a house than tear it down and just as it takes more work to clean a mess than make one, I believe that when people pray prayers against you, it comes at you with a force. This is a spiritual war.

Many people were praying against us because they believed us to be evil. We had horrible forces coming against us. One day that I remember in specific brings this out. The lawsuits had both been dropped. We were breathing a sigh of relief when my husband was attacked with a kidney stone. He had lithotripsy (surgery) to break up the stone. We thought that was over. But then, he was facing the pain again (which is horrific) and went back in. They said it had not broken up and he would need surgery again. The same day, my cat got a urinary tract infection and began peeing all over the house. The very same day, we got a letter in the mail from the county saying they were looking into legal action against us because of something we did with the property (that was approved by our attorney). We heard that the people that had sued us and tormented us for a couple of years and couldn't torture us any longer because they dropped the suit went down to the county and were raising a big stink about this issue. They were trying to get the county to sue us. I about fell to my knees when I read that. It was horrifying.

I had to get out of the house and get some relief. I decided to go to a little Amish store and just feel the peace. I pulled up and one of the ladies from the lawsuit walked right in front of my car at the Amish store. I drove to a park and let God have it. I shook my fist at Him. I said "After all we've done for you and this is what we get??!!" I had a lot of choice words for God at that moment. The heavens were not speaking as I railed on and on.

My husband had surgery. Afterwards, the surgeon came out to speak to me saying they had found a small tumor in my husband's bladder. I was completely numb. I had no questions.

After the tumor went to the lab, we got the call...it was cancerous. My husband, through tears in his eyes was telling me that if the first lithotripsy would have worked, they would not have gone into the bladder to remove the stone and they never would have found the cancer. It is a slow growing cancer and they never would have known until it was too late. My husband would be dead right now if they had not found it.

When my husband told me this, I was so numb. I could see he was deeply moved. I could not feel anything. It was 6 or 8 months later that I finally got it.

My husband would be dead right now if it were not for this. I was railing at God and the second surgery was exactly what my husband needed to save his life.

A while later we got a letter from the county. They had made a mistake. They dropped the issue.

I wrote this to say that things like this happened on and off throughout the ordeal. I saw the hand of God in amazing ways.

I still don't understand why we went through all this.

Anyway, my husband did get testicular cancer after we left the UPC. He is doing well now. Hopefully, he will continue to do so.