How can you be peaceful when you face a painful, slow death? How can you be peaceful when you have tough decisions to make? For example, what do you do about a specialist’s recommendation that you undergo chemical and radiation therapy when another specialist doesn’t recommend it? When you pray and ask God for guidance, and there is only silence? When you receive solicited and unsolicited conflicting advice from many friends and associates who care deeply?
We turned to our Guidebook for help. These were the time-proven instructions that we already knew and that needed to be applied to our new circumstances. Never before had we faced a situation like this one.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He shall direct your paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6, NKJV
If you combine this verse with Philippians 4:6-7 and John 16:33, it is clear that if you want to get a hearing from God you need to present your “requests” to Him in a relaxed, cheerful, thankful, trusting fashion. We have an opinion about how things should turn out, but we need to be neutral about how they actually do turn out.
Eva and I had very definite opinions about how this situation should turn out. She had always been a healthy woman. We wanted her to be healed! Why should a good woman who has been faithful to God, her husband, and her family suffer a slow painful death by cancer? It didn’t make sense. Of course we were anxious! Why shouldn’t we be?
But the Bible said we needed to come to the Lord in the proper spirit. The Bible said to relax and trust God. We asked the Lord to help us, and we experienced a miracle. He did calm us down and we were able to trust Him.
Eva decided she didn’t want chemical and radiation therapy. Our research indicated that this might prolong her life a bit, but only at the cost of intense suffering. She preferred to try a special diet and food supplement program.
When we let a specialist and some of our friends know about our decision, we experienced a chorus of intensive opposition. I was confronted by some of our best friends who said we must avail ourselves of the finest medical technology available. They insisted I would never be able to forgive myself if I didn’t do this.
When the judgment of people we respected was so strong against our decision, Eva and I had to reconsider. We prayed fervently for direction. Silence.
I remembered a time when Moses was in need of direction. He cried out to the Lord, and the Lord gave him this answer:
“My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest”
Exodus 33:14, NKJV
That seemed to be our answer. Eva did not change her mind and we proceeded with our plan. We discovered that we could not commit our ways unto Him once and for all. We found ourselves drifting away again and again from peaceful trust in God.
Eva could not follow the rigorous diet and food supplement program that she had selected. Slowly she lost weight: 120 pounds, 110 pounds, 100 pounds, 90 pounds. Sincerely concerned people came to call on us. They asked about our faith. A prayer of faith should heal her. We were asked if there was any known sin in our lives. We appreciated their interest. We searched our hearts and as best we could tell, there was nothing that blocked our prayers for healing.
Several dear people proposed that our faith was too weak. They would pray for Eva themselves and we could benefit from their faith.
Eva just lost more weight and got weaker and weaker. She stuck to her decision not to have chemical therapy. Weeks grew into months as we observed a steady physical decline. At the same time, our faith and trust in the Lord grew. We realized that peace was not dependent on God doing what we wanted Him to do, but peace was dependent on knowing that He was God and He knew what was best in every situation.
Our daughter Sue was able to spend the last six months of Eva’s life with her. She was a missionary with the North America Indian Mission which we have worked with since she was a teenager. Now that Eva was sick, the mission assigned her to look after her mother. I canceled most of my itinerary and also spent the last six months of her life with her. Numerous other people spent several days to a week helping to keep the home going. Our whole family gathered together for Christmas. Mel and Bertha Willett spent five or six weeks near the end of Eva’s life. Tom and Ruth Tate, dear friends for thirty years, took a week out of a very busy life to be with Eva. We were surrounded by many people from all over the world; they offered sympathy, friendship, and help with housekeeping, cooking, and running errands.