by Dara Born (guest blogger)

It was a Wednesday morning, September 6, 2000. I sat in a hospital room surrounded by my family listening to my mother’s breaths become further and further apart. We were huddled around her bed telling stories and laughing. Nobody voiced it out loud, but I am sure we were all full of hope. Not the hope that my mother would soon fall into the arms of Jesus and be in glory for eternity, but rather the hope that we were going to get our miracle and my mother would be healed. Cancer free. Coming home. What we were praying for was good. It was righteous. God would grant us our desires, wouldn’t he? Nobody even noticed when my mom took her final breath. We were being silly, telling jokes…a typical “Terry” gathering. Our laughter was interrupted by Russell’s voice “I don’t think she is breathing anymore”…

A year earlier we learned my mother had breast cancer. At first I was shaken, deeply saddened and confused. Those feelings were quickly replaced. I began to tell myself “lots of people get breast cancer…it’s no big deal…she will be fine.” My mother was gentle and kind and loved God deeply. She had faith she would get better, therefore I was convinced she would get better. I gave myself permission not to think about it anymore. I started to attend CMA that year because my mom asked me to. I wanted to make her happy. It was during this time that God began to open my ears to His truths, His promises and His love. One week, Pastor Nate spoke about “drawing near to God and He will draw near to you.” It was many years since I felt close to God but I began to desire it. How? How do I draw close to God?

…a nurse came into the hospital room. She checked for my mother’s pulse, pushed a few buttons on a machine and stepped quietly out of the room. My mother was gone. She was not healed. She was not cancer-free. She was not coming home. But even so, the room was filled with a strange sense of peace. It surrounded me. It hugged me. Is this what “a peace that surpasses all understanding” means? Is this God?

Within a week I was back at work and trying to function in my new reality. I was still going to church and I was still wondering about “drawing near to God.” Then one week, Pastor Nate said, “use your struggles as stepping-stones, not stumbling blocks.” Wow. Everything inside me screamed to grasp this, to understand it, to change my old ways, to allow God to give me new ways to handle pain. All the struggles in the last 10 years of my life appeared in my mind and I saw myself using each one to stumble deeper and deeper into a world of darkness. Then I saw myself in a new picture. I was using stepping-stones and climbing up. I whispered to Russell, “I want to do that. I want to use the stepping stones.”

So began a 13-year journey of me drawing near to God and God drawing near to me.

In Pastor Greg’s sermon on Mother’s Day he said to allow God to take the old to birth the new. God took my old ways of negative self-talk, my old patterns of escaping pain and He showed me a new way. A better way. His way.

By the way, my mother is healed. She is cancer-free. She is home.