(There’s power in remembering what God has done! He wants us to share those rememberings with Him. I believe that in how we tell those rememberings, He hears the genuine thankfulness of our hearts for what He has done. He’s not an admirer of platitudes-empty etiquette-driven thank-you’s that aren’t heart-felt. When we remember what He’s done, whether in the solitude of prayer or in the sharing of the story, it takes the power of what He did and brings it into right now. Today I am remembering what He did in one season, bring the Holy Spirit power of it into a different season. I rejoice saying, “Look at what the Lord has done!” I rejoice, trusting, in His way, in His timing, He will do it again!

Repost from August 6, 2019. Sometimes we all need to remember and, in the remembering, preach to ourselves.)

Those baby bracelets with the misspelled name, the II signaling he was born second. . . no one ever realized satan had already made a move to destroy that precious life. Satan didn’t yet realize God already had the saving plan (Part I: When Easter, Passover, and Christmas Collide)

Part I of this series talked about how during the Christmas season – Christmas and Easter collided. Acutely grateful that our Savior was born and acutely grateful that He atoned for our sin so that His loving Father could gather us into His family – it wasn’t just a sweet story; it was life. It was hope. It was faith alive, a Father who would fight the battle because we were made His through His son!

Yes, Christmas and Easter collided, coming alive like never before.

Then The Passover came alive for us. The Power of the Blood of the Passover encircled, protected and saved.

“When the LORD passes through to strike down the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the top and the two side-posts and pass over the door; so He will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.” ~ Exodus 12:23

Slowly, one by one, friends entered our prayer circle, people God sent who opened conversations with intentional interest, as a friend once called, “God-designed appointments.” Old friends, new friends, blogging friends that I knew would pray faith, hope, healing and miracles.

One friend sent me two books on “The Power of the Blood,” with her own personal experience praying that power in her own circumstances (The Blood and The Glory by Billye Brim, and The Power of the Blood by Carolyn Savelle). Like Salvation, it sounded too good to be true. Like Salvation – that I am saved because I believe that Jesus is the Son of God who was born of the virgin Mary, died for my sons, and on the third day, was resurrected – that I am saved now – I remember thinking, “No, that’s too easy. How did I not know that! It’s not a tally record two tallies for good marked only to have three taken away the next day.” My reaction to this was similar – it’s too easy. How did I recognize the power of the blood as a protective shield?

The blood of the lamb that covers my sin so that my Father can look upon me, come sit with me, protect me – the crucifixion sacrificial blood, I understood that, but my friend was talking about The Power of the Blood that shielded the Israelites the night the Angel of Death passed over those whose doors were covered with the blood of an unblemished lamb, the night of the Passover. That kind of Power of the Blood I had thought was just for that night, for the Israelites. I had compartmentalized it separately when it was not separate at all from the life-giving, salvation blood of our Savior.:

“They are to take some of the blood and put it on the two side posts and tops of the doorframes of the houses in which they eat the lambs.” ~ Exodus 12:7

“Encircle your husband with the power of the blood,” she encouraged.

“Figurative – right?” I wrote back (I have literalist issues).

“Right!”

So we did, we prayed in the middle of our family room, before the TAVR procedure, before we realized the truth of the nodule discovered in the lung (though the doctors suspected it was cancer), we prayed that the same powerful blood that covered the doorposts for the Israelites would cover my husband – protecting, healing, freeing.

“All is Well” – we stood on that! All is Well – and the broken heart valve with the opening the size of a needle was crushed by a deployed new three-leaf valve. We were home the next day. A friend in the medical field pointed out that most likely, without his C-Pap device he had been using, he might not have made this far. We could only praise God’s amazing love and healing touch through these physicians.

He came home on a Monday and on Friday, the pulminologist biopsied the nodule. What she grabbed showed no cancer. “It still needs to come out,” she said, so we went to the surgeon. The surgeon pointed out that biopsies can be wrong, especially in hard-to-reach places like where this nodule had nestled in the lung. Lung surgery was schedule for the following Tuesday.

They’d take a section of his lobe, freeze the nodule and send it to the lab. “Within 15 minutes we’ll know if it’s cancerous or not. If it’s cancer, we’ll remove the entire lobe. If not, we’ll sew him up, and he’ll be home the next day.”

Every time, friend, I tried to pray that it not be cancer, and every time, God stopped me.

“I’ve got this,” He seemed to tell both of us, whether it is or isn’t cancer. He admonished me, “Don’t put me in a box. I can do so much more than you think is possible.”

Passover, my friend, came to our house, to the hospital, wherever my husband was, The Miracle of Passover was happening, the Power of the Blood encircled him, shielding him from the angel of death.

The night before lung surgery, I asked God, “How do I need to pray about this? Tell me what to say.”

He gave me this, “And Moses said to the people, ‘Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians [cancer, broken down heart valves, whatever challenges being faced} whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.’” ~ Exodus 14: 13-14.

I’ve written before about how I grew up without the support of a father (here, here, here, and here) – but God that night drove home that He’d be in that waiting room with His girl, His beloved daughter. He’d take care of His girl – and if taking care of His girl, meant taking care of her husband – well, He’d do that, too. My father sent me on to bed – and met me at the hospital in the morning.

My husband and I held hands as he prayed the scriptures he’d established with the TAVR, and then I went out to wait. Being over 1 1/2 hours away, I encouraged my sons not to come until the surgery started. Until then, I sat in the waiting room, with my Father beside me, but not an untouchable, no-show, no-time-to-fight-for-you-father. Not a God set far off, reminding me of how unworthy I was.

Suddenly, I felt this Father God next to me, dressed for war – but not like King Arthur, or even King David. It was a John-Wayne kind of Father God who stood up beside me, saying, “No one! Not One is going to mess with My daughter’s dream – and if this young man is her dream, if it’s My girl’s dream to grow old with this young man and show those boys of hers what a marriage looks like as it ages with Her Dad as the centerpiece holding it all together – well. . . No one messes with what’s Mine!”

And I envisioned this John-Wayne like Warrior God with his rifle daring anyone to mess with His girl’s dream.

I realized then that He’s such a great Father God, that He’s not limited to being there with me – but He was with Keith, too, in that surgery. He was standing there with that John Wayne stance, his rifle resting across the crook of his arm, telling them, “Now do it right. . . ’cause My daughter – she wants him healthy and whole, and I’m here to make sure you do just that.”

Maybe that’s offended some of you – likening God to John Wayne characters – but for a girl who never had a father fight for her, doesn’t really know what that looks like, that Thursday in February – that’s what it looked like to me. It made me smile, tear up and courage up! My Dad was fighting for us!

The boys showed up right after that. We waited with calm, hopeful expectation that God had this – cancer or not.

During surgery, we received a call we were expecting on whether they were going to sew him up (No Cancer) or continue for another hour or so removing the entire lobe and lymph nodes. Holding my phone, a perky little nurse on the other side sounded like she was telling me I had won the lottery, “We’re removing the lobe.”  In the natural, we hadn’t won the lottery – if not for God, we hadn’t. That little nodule was cancer, Adeno Cancer, the most common cancer among non-smokers.

We were in the hospital for six days. Recovery wasn’t as easy. The NP told us as she removed the draining tube before he went home the removal was the worst thing he would feel from then on. She was wrong. The day he went home, he experienced massive muscle spasms in his chest that lasted for two to three more days. Pain medication was ineffective. It was a hard week, much harder than we expected.

But, friends, it was a miracle. “All is well!” The mistake from the year before, where he wasn’t notified about “severe aortic stenosis” – it was part of God’s plan. I asked the pulminologist, “Would they have found the nodule last year? In the surgery pre-testing?”

“Probably not,” she said. “It would have been too small or it might not have been there at all.”

God had a plan – and seeming mistakes are sometimes part of the plan.

If I had put God in a box – and asked that my husband be cancer free – the pieces wouldn’t have fit together to show The Miracle.

Because the nodule of cancer was caught so early, he doesn’t need treatment. Just follow-ups every six months for two years – and then every year. If it doesn’t return after five years, this cancer doesn’t come back.

But the story doesn’t stop there.

Nine days after we returned home, we were back in the hospital with an infection in the lining of the remaining lung. A fever, an infection, a white blood count of 25,000.

Throughout the entire journey I hadn’t experienced fear – not during the TAVR, not during the lobectomy – except for one time while we were in the hospital for the infection. I’d been sitting wrapped up in my blanket on the chair that folds into a bed. Outside it was grayness and rain. All January and February, if we were in Nashville for hospital stays, it was grayness and rain – and as I sat there during the third hospital stay, with his fever climbing, it seemed like a veil opened up that was surrounding us, and I saw fear and death outside that veil, waiting to come in.

When I felt/saw fear and death, I immediately looked to God – and the veil closed.

The angel of death was passing over where we were. The Power of the Blood shielded my husband, saving him.

The Passover came alive for us. Yes, the Power of our Savior’s blood, the perfect sacrifice to not just cover our sins, but to encircle us, protect us. All because The Son of God was willing to be born a helpless baby in a manager. All because The Son of God was willing to be Salvation for humanity.

A No Cancer result seems like it would have been easier – it’s easier to live by faith if there’s nothing really to challenge you to believe. An easy path on a hike often means you don’t have to focus so intently on the one you are following. I would never have known what it felt like to have a Dad who fought for me. I would never have learned to cling to God, learned what it is like under His wing if I hadn’t sought shelter from the storm. I would never have learned about The Power of the Blood if we hadn’t needed to be shielded from the angel of death.

All we had to do was to keep our eyes on God, trust and believe! When fear tried to steal in, I turned my eyes to my Father. When doubt tried to muscle in to my thoughts, I turned my thoughts to my Father, the one who had The Plan, an All is Well Plan.

Like I said in the beginning of this series, if you’re going through a challenge, this post is for you. Maybe it’s a teen challenge, a fertility challenge, an over-the-edge exhaustion challenge, maybe it’s a health challenge – your own or one you love.

Maybe it’s a financial challenge, a dream challenge,  a broken-down car challenge, academic or behavior challenge, a heart-breaking challenge.

Do Not Qualify Your Challenge, don’t compare, quantify, or measure,  don’t shut off conversation because it’s not the exact challenge. Challenges are challenges – they stretch the heart, stretch faith and hope; they frustrate, hurt and, yes, grow us. Sometimes they don’t turn out according to our expectations. Yet, in each challenge, God is the same.

As a child of God, though, the course of action is the same, regardless of the challenge: keeping our eyes on the one who can walk us through the challenge, protecting us, helping us, and, at times, carrying us. Whatever your challenge is, this story was for you, too – where Christmas, Easter and The Passover come alive!

Click here to read Part 1: A Christmas, Easter, Passover Collision