Really ...? Changing Directions?
Really …? Changing directions? Maybe you are wondering where we have been for the last 10-11 months. Well, we intend to tell you over the next few weeks. Our story is very long and will take some time and detail to describe the need for us to change direction. We hope that you will stay with us during this process and give us any feedback that you may want to express about what we have experienced and then share what—if any—impact our story has on you.
My husband and I had the most incredible journey from April through September (and still continuing) with the book, Cancer and the Lord’s Prayer. I could fill your ear for pages (and probably will) with the miracles we have seen and the details of those experiences, but I really want to be careful not to exaggerate or enhance the story so that it becomes unbelievable.
In mid-April, a friend called about an acquaintance that had cancer. Our friend had been in a study several years earlier with my husband about the Lord’s Prayer and wanted to know if he could remember the book. After the call, I began to do some research to find the book but instead discovered the book by Greg Anderson, Cancer and The Lord's Prayer. I ordered it and began reading around April 15. By the third chapter, I told my husband I thought we should read and study the book together, which we did. We finished it on April 25 and committed to read, pray the Lord’s Prayer, fast and study for the next forty days, which put us ending on June 3, when we were to leave for the Abbey at Gethsemane in Kentucky and on to Shaker Village for hiking and prayer.
We were greatly blessed by the book and continuously got new understanding from it and the Lord’s Prayer as we read, prayed, and studied. In 2015, my husband’s income had declined significantly and early 2016 it was not any better, but as we studied and prayed something incredible began to happen. God stretched our finances so that all our bills were paid and we even had enough to save. My husband had a previous investment (which had paid almost nothing for the past 30 years) suddenly pay a significant dividend. We also discovered some cash that belonged to my husband that had been with the Tennessee Unclaimed Properties Division for years, and we were able to collect that money as well.
Our HVAC is very old and in the spring of 2015, when the annual inspection was completed, we were advised the unit may last thru the summer, but by the summer of 2016, we would need to replace the system. When the inspection was completed in June of this past year (2016), the technician said it was in great condition, functioning well—though old. We had several calls and emails (out of the blue, so to speak) from people seeking our business expertise. We are in the process of following through on those. God truly is our Healer and Provider!
On June 4 after spending the night in The Old Jail in Bardstown, KY, we went to the Abbey as planned and hiked to some bronze statues, intending to read another chapter from the book. The statues were of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and the three disciples a little way off, asleep. It is a very dramatic, larger-than-life artist’s rendering of the scene in the garden. As I put the book and my phone down and looked for a place to sit and read, I happened to see movement to my left toward the statue of Jesus. I looked and screamed! It was a 5-foot long water moccasin.
My husband instructed me to pick up my things and move slowly down the path. He watched the snake watch me as I moved away. After I moved away, it then turned its attention to my husband as he very slowly moved toward his hat and his large walking stick (potential weapon). The snake continued to fix its gaze intently on him and my husband told me later, that experience raised the hair on the back of his neck. After what seemed like minutes, but probably no more than a few seconds, the snake slithered toward the statue of Jesus; then disappeared in the grass and my husband thought the snake had gone under the base of the statue. It suddenly reappeared and crawled up on the base toward Jesus’ heel that was exposed, but just prior to reaching the heel, the snake turned away from the statue and slithered off the base of the statue, crossed the trail and was gone.
I remembered the scene in the first Garden where God reprimands Adam and Eve; then says to the serpent in Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed (Jesus); He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
We left the Abbey, wondering what this experience meant. It was not long before we would know….
