Once I turned back to Christ
changes occurred in me, however, they were small at first. I prayed more,
mostly about living long enough to raise my kids. For some reason I never asked
for healing, only the time to give my two a good start in life—preferably until
they left home!
We didn’t go to church right away
even though I wanted to. Larry wasn’t too keen on it. Once we moved to the
Seattle area, Renton at the base of Lake Washington, to be exact, I felt a
strong need to find a church and determined to go and take the kids whether
their dad went or not. Raised in the Church of the Nazarene denomination, I
gravitated towards them. On a street corner in Renton sat a Nazarene church.
This soon became our church home to our great delight.
Stephen and Laurie found friends
there that were their ages and it seemed we’d come home. They loved going to
church because of their wonderful friends. Larry seldom went with us but we
didn’t let that ruin our enjoyment of our new-found church family.
Because of Stephen’s developmental
problems I decided he’d benefit from going to preschool. We found a great one
that was actually a course for parents in Early Childhood Development sponsored
by a local community college. A consultant from the college attended each
session and parents were required to take their turn as an aide in a preschool
session plus attending a monthly evening meeting geared to teach them the
skills to work with their children. I found it a great program and spent a lot
of time there to watch over Stephen and assist the teacher. This eventually led
to my learning the ropes of preschool teaching. The teacher retired and they
asked me to take her place.
I loved teaching preschoolers.
They’re like little sponges soaking up information and wanting to know more. One
little guy informed me one day that his toothbrush was beige. Beige? What
three-year old knows the color beige? Among many other things, I learned how to
sit and hold a rambunctious or unhappy child until he’d quieted down and ready
to rejoin the group. I learned how to teach a parent what to do when their
preschooler disrupted their phone conversations because they wanted the
parent’s attention. It turned out to be a great learning time for me as well as
the other parents.
During this time I felt great like
any healthy person in her twenties would feel. I had no symptoms, no pain, no evidence
at all of the cancer. I sincerely believed I was not just in remission but had
been healed completely by God Himself. And told that to anybody who asked.
Cancer, however, can fool you. At
the most inopportune moment it can rear its ugly head. More about that later.
