Through The Valley of the Shadow

Since it has been a while since I have blogged I am quite certain this will take more than one post. The LORD has begun taking Monty and me on an interesting journey.

Over the past year or so, we both have felt that God was leading us into a different direction for ministry, but we just were waiting upon Him to give us the specifics. To give you a bit of background...... we have been working with college aged and post college young adults for the past 15 years, teaching Sunday School & home Bible studies. For 20 years before that we were high school sponsors/Sunday School teachers, etc. Now that we are in our 60's, we have wondered if the LORD were taking us in a different direction. Both of us have been open to the possibility of a change and have even discussed that maybe we should go to early childhood and give the parents of the young children a break. God has already made a couple of changes in my personal teaching ministry this past year. We have been anticipating some sort of change in our lives.


SO with that said, I want to begin sharing the events of the past month. Monty had been having some physical problems for the past year or so. The first of February we had just begun getting some directions from doctors for possible diagnosis. One of the things that showed up was high blood pressure, for which he began taking medicine. About this same time, both of us got the virus/bacteria, etc. that was spreading in OKC in epidemic proportions. It took more than two weeks for us to begin to feel anything close to well.


Meanwhile, I had been asking the LORD to show me what to do and where to go to find help for Monty and his health problems. Then on Sunday night,Feb 27, we had been to church and stopped for something to eat. Monty only wanted a bowl of soup, which was a little unusual, but I thought he might be getting the "bug" back. The whole night, neither of us slept. He just tossed and turned, got up and wandered through the house. About 4 in the morning, as we were lying in bed, he said he was "uncomfortable". When I asked him if he hurt anywhere, sort of expecting him to describe flu-like symptoms again, he said he had "pressure". I asked him where his pressure was and he asked me if I would rub his neck and shoulders. I knew that he had a really important luncheon meeting the next day, and assumed he was uptight about it.


Now I want to take you into my spiritual journey!! While we were awake most of that night, I got up and wrote in my journal, asking the LORD to just show me what to do with Monty and the various symptoms he was having, not just that night, but for the past 14-16 months. I asked Him if I should seek natural pathology as an alternative, trying to find other things to help him. I told Him I would do whatever He showed me, but I just needed Him to show me. And as I lay there next to Monty, I just kept praying for wisdom and guidance

The next morning he got up and dressed to meet a young man he has been mentoring the past several months. So I figured he felt better since he didn't say anything about not feeling well. I went to my 8:15 appointment and asked the dr. whom he suggested for a homeopathic directions for Monty's high blood pressure we had just discovered. I drove straight to that place, but it was a dead end, in that there was no one there at that time who could help me. I was to call back at 9:00. Then right after that Monty called me and said he wanted me to take him to the Heart Hospital ER. His answer to my question as to why, was that at breakfast he was nauseous and both of his arms were numb. I hung up the phone and immediately thanked the LORD, saying "Now that is what I am talking about. I can understand that and do somethng that clear!!!"

That began the spiritual clarity of God's sovereign grace over the whole trial He had for us. The next came in the ER. I had on my list for that day to call for an appointment for Monty with Dr. Chris Kerns, the cardiologist who had taken care of Mother, knowing it could be 3-6 months for a new patient appointment. But when they asked me in the ER who his cardiologist was, I, of course, said Dr. Kerns. They asked Monty why he was seeing Dr. Kerns, to which Monty replied that he had never met him. Long story short, Dr. Kerns was in that ER cubicle within 30 minutes after we arrived (much to the surprise of the ER personnel)!! They told us "he was not the cardiologist on call".....to which I thought......he is on God's call!!! He is a godly man who took us, I believe, because God had called him to respond to our request!! (so much for the 3-6 months for an appointment!!) Soveriengty. It was a total shock to both of us when he told us that according to the EKG, Monty had had a major heart attack last night!! We had no idea!!

About an hour later when Dr. Kerns came to talk to us after the angiogram, he made the comment again that if I had brought him in when he was having the heart attack the night before, it would have been better because they could have gotten into the heart before it was all clotted, as it was this morning. Another sovereignty thing.....God did not tell me to take him in..........or that he was having a heart attack. Monty had no "typical symptoms" like you always hear. God chose to keep us in the dark about his heart attack because He had something much bigger in mind and it would not happen if we were in and out of the hospital in short order!!!


Over and over, I have believed and taught.........."Learn in the light what you will need to live in the dark!!" Now I was living the truth I have spent a lifetime learning from the WORD. In my next post, I want to share parts of my journal from our 11 days in the hospital and ways I saw God's hand in all of this.

But first, I want to leave you with a verse that was in my Bible reading for that day. Psa 24:17 "Wait on the LORD. Be of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, upon the LORD."
One note: often in the OT, wait is used as "trust in"!! It is active faith. We live by faith in the Son of God Who loved us and gave Himself up for us!!!