Monday, September 12, 2011

An Ordinary Life Touched by an Extraordinary God – Part 8


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.

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