We recently completed a remodel of our home!  Exciting?  Yes!  Challenging?  Double yes!!  Our home was built in 1980, and we have been here since 1994, the year my husband began Bible college.  We have maintained our home, replaced the roof twice (Texas and the hailstorms!), painted various rooms at different times, changed wallpaper.  Nothing extravagant, just here and there as children grew up, left for college, came home at times, you know, life moving along as it does.  

It started out as a fairly small project, we were going to replace our countertops, paint, and replace the flooring and we were going to do the work ourselves with some help from others where needed.  The more we looked around and talked about what different rooms needed, our list of improvements began to grow!  We found a contractor that said he could do the work and began our three-week project!

What a mess!  Dust everywhere!  Furniture piled in the middle of rooms, the porch was full, the garage was the staging area for the workers and was just a disaster.  We were still living at home and working from home, so we both were using our offices and had the guest bedroom.  It would only be three weeks, so we would be okay!

Three weeks turned into five weeks and we were ready to be done!  Past ready!  Have you ever been there?  Just ready to get back to our “normal” if there could be such a thing in 2020!  The day finally came when the workers packed up all of their tools and finished their work and left.  We were so excited that the work was complete!  Every wall freshly painted, ceilings free of popcorn and freshly painted, new flooring, new countertops, even the outside of our home had been painted and looks fresh and beautiful!

As I walk through our home and look around me at the transformation that has occurred with this remodel, I’m reminded of the changes that the Lord has made in our lives over the past 26 years that we have lived in this home.  

Romans 10:13 “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” 

It was November 21, 1994,, just 2 short months after we moved into this home.  It was early on a Monday morning, around 3 am, when the Lord woke me from a fitful sleep.  You see I had knelt at the altar at church the night before, not having any peace in my soul, and had promised the Lord that I would talk to my husband after we got home that night.  I had not followed through on that.  I woke up and he was not in bed, so I tiptoed out to the family room and he was kneeling there by the sofa praying.  So I went back to our room and got my Bible out and began reading my Bible and praying.  I knew that I was lost.  I tried to find reassurance in the Scriptures, I had been in church all my life, made a profession of faith at 9 years old, been baptized, I was the church pianist, my husband was a deacon and had surrendered to preach and was in Bible college.  But I was lost.  

I prayed and cried and finally told the Lord, that if He wanted me to talk to my husband about my salvation, the Lord would need to bring my husband to me because I did not want to interrupt his season of prayer time with the Lord.  It was less than five minutes later that my husband came into our room and saw me sitting there with my Bible and told me, “Terri, that was the strangest thing.  I was praying and having such sweet fellowship with the Lord that it seemed I could reach out and touch Him.  Then all of a sudden, it was like the water faucet turned off and no matter how I tried, I just couldn’t get it back.  I guess it’s time for bed.”  I started weeping and told him that it was my fault, that I knew that I was lost, and I needed to be saved and had asked the Lord to bring him to me.  We knelt there together, and my husband led me to Christ that morning!  Praise the Lord that He is always listening for a sinner to cry out to Him for salvation!

Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

It was Labor Day weekend 2005.  I was 45 years old the day that I walked to the mailbox and received a letter that would bring some big changes.  I opened the letter to read the words that I had received a call, but this letter was to confirm that there was an abnormality on my mammogram, only, I had not received a call!  This was Saturday of a long Labor Day weekend.  We tried to call the imaging center, but of course they were closed and would not reopen until Tuesday.  I had not felt a lump in my breast, my GYN that I had just seen 2 weeks prior had not felt any lumps in my breast, this had just been a routine, you are 45 years old and so you need to have a mammogram appointment.

Tuesday finally came, I called and told them that I had received a letter but that I had not received a phone call as the letter had said.  I scheduled an appointment to come in that afternoon for a diagnostic mammogram.    I had no idea what that entailed, I had only ever had a screening mammogram, I assumed they would take more x-rays and then call me later with the results.  They took X-rays, and more, then took me to a separate room for a sonogram and the radiologist came in.  I had explained to everyone that day as I came in that the letter had said that someone had called me, but that I had not received any phone calls, just the letter.  The radiologist was livid with the staff and told them more than once that a letter should never be mailed without first contacting the patient by phone. 

He did the sonogram and showed me the place that was suspicious, about 5 cm in diameter.  They told me that they wanted me to come back the next day for a needle biopsy and explained what that was.  We had a funeral the next day for the oldest member of our church and so we scheduled the biopsy for Thursday.

My husband was able to come into the biopsy with me, they explained what would happen and proceeded.  As I was lying there during the biopsy, I was looking up at the faces of the doctor and the nurse.  As they proceeded and looked back and forth at one another, the Lord was preparing me for the results.  I was fairly certain by the looks in their eyes and the fact that the doctor had been so upset that the results were going to be positive.  

They called late Friday afternoon, just before closing time, and provided the diagnosis, “You have breast cancer.”  Those can be pretty chilling words, but my husband and I had prayed from the day we received the letter, “Lord, if this is your will, we know that you will use it for your glory and for our good.  Please help us to be an example to all of your goodness and if you can use this to bring someone to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, please use us.”

I did then and still today view my cancer as a gift from God.  I thought often of Job during the year and a half of surgeries, treatments, and recovery.  Every time I read the story of Job, I think of how the Lord was so proud of Job and his faithfulness to the Lord.  God knew that He could trust Job when those storms of losing everything that he had came into his life.  That is the same way that I viewed this diagnosis, this is a trial of life that the Lord has entrusted to me, I want to be faithful.  Praise the Lord that He is our Strength and our Helper.  “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.”  I Thessalonians 5:24

Our home is remodeled, it’s not perfect, it still has flaws, we still see touch ups that are needed in different places and we still find dust everywhere!  Such is life.  The Lord is faithful to save when we call out to Him for salvation.  The Lord is faithful to hear our prayers and answer in our times of need.  The Lord is our Strength when we are weak.  If we are going to remain faithful to the Lord, then daily we must be renewed.  “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”  Romans 12:2

Dear friend, God transforms you into a new creature when you accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour, and He continues that renewing process every day that you walk with Him.  That doesn’t mean that you will be perfect and that no problems will come your way.  But, He is Faithful, and you will never face any problems alone.  Give Him praise even in the trials of life, for God is good all the time!