September 11th

Today carries a different meaning for our family!  Though we celebrate the heroics of 9/11 and mourn the terrible loss of life, we also celebrate a life, one that was spared.  Why?  9/11 is the day the Lord used to teach me a lesson about faith!  Yes, September 11. 2006, ten years ago today, five years after the attacks on our nation, Satan tried to cause me doubt.  However, my hubby walked in faith!!  September 11, 2006, was the day that my man was diagnosed with the big “C” word, CANCER!!

The doc came in to recovery, while B was still under anesthesia and told me that my husband had cancer, but don’t worry, he’d be back before he woke up, to tell him!  Don’t worry?  Everyone I had ever known with cancer had died!  What do you mean, don’t worry?  So, I began sending out invitations to my pity party!  However, my man woke before the doc came back in to tell him.  He said, “well?”  How do you tell your 26 year old husband that he has cancer?  Somehow, I stumbled over the words and shared the news with him.  His response?  That’s where my faith journey begins…the first words out of his mouth were, “cool, that means I get to be a cancer survivor!!”

What?  Maybe you didn’t hear me properly?  You have a disease that has taken the life of everyone I’ve known with it!  That didn’t sway this man’s faith!  Not one bit!!  He saw the exciting journey ahead of him!  We have two friends that came to know the Lord through watching his journey.  His statement, “if that’s the only reason I had cancer, it was worth it!?”  What?  Yes, that is the man I am blessed to call my husband, a man that is more concerned about others and their life after they leave earth vs his, while here!! 

B has taught me so much on my own health journey!!  When I’m not feeling well, I think of what he endured and his outlook!!  Thus, my prayer is that God will be the hero of my health journey, just as he is clearly the hero of B’s!!! 

God is already the hero as I watch my hubby love me in spite of ten years of a medical trial and having to do just about everything for our family!!  He is truly living out Ephesians 5:25-33:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body.  For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

Thank you, Lord, for choosing this man for me, our family, and Your Glory!!!