There’s a place that’s somewhere between midnight and eternity that you may think you will never have to go—a place that tests our faith and where we come to terms with our lives and what is to come. It can be very fearful or a place where you can know all is well. There is a place of uncertainty that only God knows the outcome. I know there are people somewhere who are sitting in the midnight. I just want to share my life story about how my midnight turned into a new day.
I’m sure we have all wondered how we would react when faced with the possibility of death. How would we react? How would our loved ones react? In March of 2005, I personally found out the answer to this question when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. During that most difficult time of my life, I felt the presence of God so strong. It’s just hard to explain. I just wanted to be a light for Him throughout all of this. If it was to be my time to leave this world, then to be absent from the body was to be present with the Lord.
Our family was hit with something that we would never have expected. Overall, our family has been very healthy. My wife and I have been married for twenty-four years. We have faced many challenging times as all married couples have done, but we just didn’t expect this at all. We got married, planned our lives for having a family, watching them grow, and doing everything to make it possible for them to be successful and happy, and then grow old together.
If it hadn’t been for God’s mercy and grace, where would we be today? God has been so very good to me and my family that I could never express to him just how thankful I am. If it hadn’t been for our family, including church families, being so supportive during this time with all their visits, kind words, prayers, and gifts, it would have been so very difficult. We heard that people were praying for us from Pennsylvania to Florida, and as far away as Germany.
We were very blessed with the wonderful staff members at New River Medical Center, in Radford, Virginia, Roanoke Memorial, in Roanoke, Virginia, UVA in Charlottesville, Virginia and Lewis-Gale, in Salem, Virginia, to diagnose, recommend, and send us in the right direction. If it hadn’t been for the surgeon who was so thoughtful, kind, truthful and skilled that performed the very difficult procedure presented to him and the preparation that he put into the surgery to make sure he had his best team with him on the day of surgery, our lives could have been so different today. We know that God had His hand in it all as we look back now.
For all of this, I am so blessed, and I want to share my story of just how wonderful God is and how He can use so many people to fulfill his purpose for our lives and touch the lives of others. How that He arranges things so that you know that it had to be Him and no one or nothing else. If it hadn’t been for this experience, we would not have been introduced to so many wonderful people, made new friends, heard other’s testimonies of what they have been through, and gotten calls from others going through the same situation that wants us to pray for them.
Here is my story. My wish is that this will in some way encourage you and lift your faith.