A Wrecked Church!

[CC1]

Originally Posted by ILG

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.


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.



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.

I hope sharing about your husband having to have that second surgery inspires someone who is questioning God about why something is happening or not happening. Sometimes we are so close to the situation we can't see that in some short term pain or aggravation there may be some better good that comes from it.

Not anywhere on the level of your story but when I was a young father I had lost my job and had to take a new one making a bout half the money I had been making. There was no way to make ends meet with the debt obligations we had.

One Wednesday night my wife stayed home from church with a sick child and on my way home I had to stop at the grocery store with a list of food and over the counter medicine we needed.

I think I had about $10 and quickly realized that to get everything on the list would be about three or four times what I had. Two things happened. First the grocery store had been bought out by another chain so they had all of the store brand items on clearance 50% 0 75% off so I was able to get a lot of the items I needed because of that.

The second and really miraculous thing was that as I was lingering at the meat counter holding a bulk package of ground beef in my hand and realizing that I didn't have enough money for as much of it as I needed to make some cheap meals I suddenly heard a voice from behind the counter say "you don't need that, you need this!".

A white coated butcher had appeared which surprised me since it was after 9 pm and the butcher department was closed. He then brought over to me a large family pack of lean ground beef marked at $0.99 per pound.

Where it really gets wild is that the next Wednesday night after church I went back to the same store. I felt silly doing it but decided to hang around the meat department looking at the meat to see if lightning would strike twice. Just as I was about to give up the same white coated butcher came around the corner behind the counter and again said "you don't need that, you need this!" and proceeded to go get me another large pkg of ground beef marked $0.99 lb.

I grinned sheephishly at him and said "I was beginning to think you weren't here tonight". It was his answer that really freaked me out and made me think maybe I was dealing with an angel. In phrasing that was kind of formal and awkward for modern english he said something like " You must make yourself known for me to help". It has been several decades now so I am sure I don't have the verbage exactly right but I distinctly remember a chill running down my spine and goosebumps on my arms after he spoke. I never saw him at that store again in the daytime or at night and we shopped there all of the time.

While what happened did not solve my financial problems it let me know that God is faithful. That he knew my situation and while there was not going to be an easy out he was not going to let me starve. He was looking out for me.