As I have noted previously noted, my  wife Mary struggled with illness and injuries for most of her life, beginning in her teenage years and continuing on a regular basis for all of the years we were together. But during that time God graciously sustained her and touched her often with his healing hand. And on at least two occasions she received what can only be called miraculous healings.  Here is the story of those in her own words:

“God has blessed me with two miraculous physical healings. The first healing occurred when my husband, Bill, and I lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  I was diagnosed with Crohn’s, a colon disease, in 1976.  The doctor said there was no medical cure for the disease and prescribed a life-long medication, a sulfa-drug, to control its symptoms.  We turned to God and our church family for support, and they enveloped us with love and comfort.  Our pastor anointed me with oil and our church family laid hands on me and prayed for God to heal me of the disease.  Now this was a new experience for us.  We had never been part of a church that held healing services, or been asked if others could place their hands on our arm or shoulder while they prayed for us.   Although I wasn’t healed immediately, our prayers for the medicine to keep the symptoms under control were answered right away.  I was able to continue working full time, be active in the church and lead a full life.  The only downside to the medicine was that it could not be taken during pregnancy, and Bill and I wanted a second child.

After 3 years on the medicine, Bill and I still wanted to expand our family.  We prayed about the situation and I asked the doctor for permission to stop taking the medicine.  At first the doctor said no, but then he suggested a three-month trial period where I would go off the medicine, keep a written record of all symptoms of the disease, and avoid pregnancy.  Three months later I was able to report to the doctor that I’d been symptom-free the entire time.  That was 33 years ago, and since then I have not taken any medicine for Crohn’s nor had any symptoms.  Praise God.

Last week I had a routine, 5 year colonoscopy checkup and the doctor in Dallas said the disease is still in remission.  He calls it remission; after 33 years I call it a miracle!

In 1985 Bill and I moved to Plano and joined Grace Presbyterian Church.  In 1990 I was diagnosed with a rare, auto-immune disease called Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis or PSC.  The disease scars the liver and the common bile duct and eventually destroys their ability to function.  The doctor said the average life expectancy was about 3 years unless I could get a new liver.   By the next year I was having recurring infections, typical for PSC patients, requiring emergency hospitalization, high doses of IV antibiotics and the placement of stents in the common bile duct to allow it to drain properly.  To date, I’ve had 41 endoscopic procedures (ERCPs) with 37 stents placed in the common bile duct.  I’ve also had sepsis once and pancreatitis once as a result of these procedures.  And I’ve been on the liver transplant list at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas for 11 years now, which is longer than any other person on the list.  I still have PSC, but God has blessed me with 22 more years of life (so far) and a higher quality of life than is typical for PSC patients.

And now for the best part of the story about the second miracle. As a pre-transplant patient, I’m required to have an MRI of the abdomen every year.  In 2007 the MRI revealed a small malignant tumor on the liver.  After extensive testing, my team of doctors recommended against treating the tumor with chemotherapy, radiation or surgery.  They wanted to leave the tumor alone and let it grow.   Yes, grow.  The doctor explained that under the rules for liver transplantation, when the tumor reaches 2 centimeters in size, I would move from near the bottom of the transplant list to the top of the list.  The doctors monitored the tumor through MRIs conducted every three months.  The tumor’s size and appearance remained the same for six months.  The tumor was less visible after nine months.  And after twelve months, the transplant surgeon reported there was no tumor—it was completely gone.  The doctors cannot explain why or how the tumor disappeared.  And I’m still tumor-free today.  This was confirmed a few weeks ago after my annual MRI.

Although medical science cannot explain the disappearance of the tumor, I believe that God’s hand was at work.   God performed a miracle, not because I’m special or deserving, but as an answer to prayers lifted up by

• members of the church Prayer Team who have anointed me with oil, laid hands on me and prayed regularly for my healing,
• members of  WOW (Women of Wonder Bible Study Group) who have prayed for me and provided love and support for the 15 years I’ve been part of the group,
• our pastors Bryan and Mark, our former pastors, our deacons and elders and Stephen Ministers have all prayed faithfully for me.

I’m so grateful and deeply blessed to be part of a church family that believes in the power of prayer, that offers healing services, asks God to perform miracles and wants to walk through the hard times with each other, as well as celebrate the good times together.    Our church family is awesome and God is good!”

These words were written in March 2012. Mary lived for more than 5 more years after that, extending her record stay on the liver transplant list to 16 years and her life after the initial diagnosis of PSC to over 27 years. In all of those years we continued to ask God for a complete healing of her body. And on December 21, 2017 that prayer was finally answered. She did not receive healing of her mortal body as we had hoped. But God gave her something better – an ultimate healing. On that day she passed from her mortal body into God’s presence where she received an immortal, eternal body that will never feel pain or suffer death.

Hallelujah! Praise God for his unending, immeasurable love and grace.

As the weather has turned warmer and the rains temporarily abated, I have begun taking walks again outdoors. Recently I went to Beavers Bend Park here in Frisco to try out the walking trail. I thought the park looked vaguely familiar although I hadn’t been there since moving to Frisco last September. As I started out on the trail I began to remember that my wife Mary and I had walked here before some years ago following a visit to our daughter and son-in-law’s Frisco home while we were still living in Plano. As I neared the top of a hill I recognized the place where Mary had said she was tired and wanted to return down the path we had come up.

Mary and I had an exciting journey together for over 54 years as we documented in our book, “Spiritual Entrepreneurship”. We both had a passion for travel and adventure and we took advantage of the opportunities we had to pursue that passion. As a result we were able to  engage in successful careers in several different industries (manufacturing, construction commercial real estate, telecommunications, marketing consulting and academia) and in the process to live in several different communities in Texas, Louisiana and Virginia. During that time we were able to go places and do things that went far beyond what we had originally expected for ourselves. We indulged our passion for travel by visiting all 50 of the United States and over 60 foreign countries, experiencing wondrous sights, sounds, smells and tastes and learning something about how people live, work, play and worship in those different places. I am forever grateful that we took advantage of the opportunities we had while we were able to.

While at home we often went for walks that not only provided some exercise, but also gave us time to be together in a relatively quiet and peaceful setting and to talk at length about our plans and hopes for the future. In recent years Mary’s deteriorating health had curtailed, but not totally stopped, our opportunities to travel. Our last overseas trip was to Italy for a second time in 2012. Our domestic travel, however, continued through a trip to Mobile, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida in May of 2017. A planned trip to New York for September 2017 had to be cancelled due to our move to a new home in Frisco that month. Our walks also had been shortened, but not abandoned altogether.

After Mary passed away last December it took me a while to get back to a regimen of walking. And when I did most of it was indoors due to the weather. When I did venture outdoors again I started slowly, taking short walks around our new neighborhood. These brought back bittersweet memories, and I felt a deep sense of loneliness. Then when I returned to Beavers Bend Park and reached that former turning back point on the trail, I determined to go on alone this time to see what lay ahead that Mary and I had not seen in our earlier walk. I felt it was my duty somehow to forge on ahead alone. This time I made a more complete loop around part of the park and encountered some new sights. It was with more of a sense of resignation than of joy, however.

Today though, God awoke me to a new realization, one I had arrived at earlier, but had forgotten. Mary is no longer by my side to share the journey in the way she did for so many years. But she still lives in my heart, so she goes with me still nonetheless. And then I realized that I have the opportunity now to take her with me to places we had dreamed of, but not yet visited. I can take her with me to places that her tiring mortal body no longer allowed. With that in mind, I went back to Beavers Bend Park today and started out on the trail. This time I told Mary that we were going to places she had not yet been and see things she had not yet seen. And when I turned a bend  in a new section of the trail I was confronted with a path that stretched as far as I could see. “Wow’, I thought, “This path goes on forever”. And then it hit me straight between the eyes: The journey we are on does go on forever. The end of this mortal life marks the beginning of an eternal, immortal one. And one day in the not too distant future, I will once again continue my journey with Mary at my side, as well as my parents, grandparents and all those who have gone on before me. What a glorious thought!

The stark reality of my wife’s passing has forcefully brought home to me the depth of meaning in Genesis 2:24

“This one finally is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh. She will be called a woman because from a         man she was taken.” This is the reason that a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife, and           they become one flesh.

Let me explain. I grew up in one of the last vestiges of a bygone era – a three generation household. I lived for the first 18 years of my life in the home of my maternal grandparents, along with my parents and my younger sister. We lived, ate, slept, worked and played together on a daily basis. My parents and grandparents were my role models, as well as my constant companions, during all that time.

When my grandmother passed away during my senior year in high school, I was not devastated, because I knew where she had gone to and that I would one day see her again. I wrote this in the back of my Bible:

November 4, 1959 – Ada Colhoun, my grandmother, went to be with God this morning.

Eleven months later, during my freshman year away at college, my grandfather also passed away. Once again, I was comforted by the knowledge that he had gone to rejoin his beloved wife. I wrote in my Bible:

October 5, 1960 – Adams Colhoun, my grandfather, left this afternoon to join his wife at the right hand of God.

As much as I loved and missed my grandparents, I nevertheless celebrated, rather than mourned, their passing. Similarly, when my father passed away in December 1994 and then my mother in October 2005, I felt a sense of loss, but realized that this separation was only temporary and not permanent. I still shed a tear now and then when I remember my parents and grandparent, but I have never deeply grieved over my loss of their companionship.

It was a much different story when my wife passed away last December. Not that it was totally unexpected. She had battled a fatal, incurable liver disease for over 27 years. We both knew that death was the inevitable result to be expected, as it is for all of us. And I was able to rejoice in the fact that her struggle was over, that she was no longer in pain, that she was now reunited with her parents and that I would one day be reunited with her as well.

But the pain of my loss was greater than I had ever experienced before. I now realize that the reason was that a major segment of my flesh had been ripped away, leaving a gaping wound. That wound may eventually be healed, although that possibility seems remote to me at this time. However, a massive and painful scar will remain. All of this is the result of Mary’s and my having become “one flesh”. A painful lesson, but I now understand the meaning of that term.

And one other Scripture has also come into sharper focus for me now: Ephesians 5:28

That’s how husbands ought to love their wives—in the same way as they do their own bodies. Anyone who             loves his wife loves himself.

How true that is! Because she is part of his body, as he is of hers.