"This CANNOT be Your will!"

The year was 1994. I had gone through a divorce the previous year and had married Tom in March of 1994. I was working for Lyne Ranson at the time and needed a hysterectomy. While doing the hysterectomy, they spotted a mass on my chest and asked me to get an MRI after my six-week checkup. The doctor forgot about the MRI, but I asked about it and reminded him, so he sent me to the local hospital here in Ripley. I was laying in the MRI machine watching the medical people through the glass window, and they kept pointing at something, coming out and asking me things like, "Have you been spitting up blood, coughing up things, losing weight," etc., etc. What should have taken about ten minutes took almost an hour, as they studied and looked and kept inviting other medical personnel in to stare at the computer I, of course, could not see into. I'm usually not a paranoid person, but this got me a little concerned.

Went home and told Tom what had happened, and he got really concerned (his sister Nancy Evans died at age 39 of lymphoblastic lymphoma) so he knew more than enough about health concerns with young people (I was 33). That evening, we called Cindy Reese, who was our local doctor and friend, and she said, "Hmmm, I'm at the hospital, let me just hop over and read this MRI while here waiting on a baby to be born." She called us back within the half hour and said that we needed to go to Charleston the next day, she had already called and gotten us an appointment, Tom needed to cancel court or whatever he had, this was important. Would not give any details but her sense of urgency was palpable.

The date was December 20, I believe, and we went to see Dr. Z Khan. He gave us the news: I had a mediastinal mass and my best option was to pray I had Hodgkin's disease - that the other options were much worse. I was reeling - had no medical training but knew there was NO WAY God's will was for me to be sick, not to raise my children. The doctor said he was putting me in the hospital the next day and doing surgery. I began to cry and said, "I just got married this year, and this is my first year to be a stepmother, and I really, really want to try to do this right" - our children were 4, 6, 8, 10 and 14 at the time - He gave me no choices, the diagnosis was too dire - it had to be now. Judge George Scott, my previous judge, had a son Phil who was dying as we spoke of a mediastinal mass (he was 30 or so).

I went to church that night and showed my nurse friend Kim Drennen the paperwork on my MRI and the diagnosis. She told me later she had never known anyone with a mediastinal mass to make it six months. After Wednesday night church, she gathered a few of the saints of our church and they prayed over me at the altar, just five or six of us. As I prayed, my prayer was not a plea of "Just your will," it was desperation, crying and sobbing out to the Lord, "THIS IS NOT YOUR WILL! IT CANNOT BE YOUR WILL THAT I DO NOT RAISE MY CHILDREN! I WILL NOT ACCEPT IT - NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!" I am bawling even now as I type this. I was the woman with the issue of blood, the man laying at the pool of Bethesda, I was Mary, the mother of Jesus, begging for the water to be turned into wine.

I got up from that altar and I KNEW I had been healed. I did not feel any big shaking all over or heat or chills - I just knew I had met my Savior at the point of my need and he had met it! I went home and told Tom about our prayer and that I was healed. He nodded, saying nothing, not believing. We got into bed, I slept like a baby, and he lay awake all night, holding my hand, remembering sitting by the bathtub with his sister, his duty to keep the ice filled so she remained cool, all the trips all over the country his family took to find her help, to no avail.

The next morning we checked in (December 21) and my surgery was completed. They did a thoracotomy (incision below your breast clear around to almost the middle of your back). I awoke with tubes everywhere, the familiar beeping sounds of a hospital at work, but there was a foreign voice speaking into my ear on that Christmas week in 1994, "My dear, you have been given a MIRACLE!" I just smiled and said, "I know," and went back to sleep.

My mother recounted that as they waited in the waiting room, she and dad and Tom, the doctor came to the door and told them he did not know what had happened, he'd never had it happen before (occurs in 1 out of 100,000 cases), but the solid mass that showed so clearly on the MRI had turned to a clear liquid NOTHING when he went in to take it out! My parents fell to their knees and began praising God and thanking Him. Tom said, "You guys almost convince me to become a Christian." It was another five years before he gave his heart to the Lord (and that's a whole other story of praise and miracles!)

I was able to get out of the hospital early and be home for Christmas Eve night (not in any shape, I might say - couldn't even leave the bed), but God had turned our Christmas of death into a Christmas of life, and here 18 years later, my children are adults, both serving the Lord and hard workers, my husband is saved, my health is terrific, and I still have my praying parents. Oh, there are not words to praise Him, to thank Him - He is faithful over ALL.

If you do not know my Savior, please, please, in 2013, find Him! I would be privileged to help you seek him - He is the peace in the midst of the storm, He is the light in the darkness, He is the healer in the midst of pain.