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Walking through loss - Part 1
12 Plays4 years ago
Vernon Terrell and Tammy Rivenbark of Grace Ministries International share their stories of losing a spouse to cancer.
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Transcript
Introduction to Walking Free
00:00:05
Speaker
This is your host Vernon Terrell with Grace Ministries International and it's time for Walking Free! And I'm so glad you have joined us for Walking Free today.
Experiences Losing Spouses to Cancer
00:00:27
Speaker
I have with me Tammy Rivenbark and Tammy
00:00:31
Speaker
is on staff at Grace Ministries International, and we're going to talk about something difficult, something that we both have been through, and it's our experience of losing our respective spouses to cancer. We wanna talk about this, maybe share a little bit of our stories and talk about this,
00:00:56
Speaker
issue of when you're facing these hard times, facing death and grief and loss. So, Tammy, welcome. Thank you. Why don't we start it off? In fact, let me kick it off. Can I kick it off? Please, please do.
Vernon's Life Before and After Diagnosis
00:01:13
Speaker
My story in this context began in 2004, end of 2004,
00:01:26
Speaker
You know, we it took my wife and I were married and took us 12 years to have kids and we had our first kid in 1998 and Then then they just kept coming. It's like well, we must have read the right manual or something like it's 98 and then 2000 and then 2002 What's our last child? It's like wow, we got this kid thing going which we knew about it earlier how to do all this but so we've got that rocking and rolling that we are
00:01:56
Speaker
last child was born on Christmas morning, 2002. And so we're rocking the kid thing. And then my job is going great. I'm moving up the ladder in the corporate world and doing my ministry that I had started back in the 90s, doing that as well. Life is good. Life is just good. We started actually coming together more as
00:02:25
Speaker
uh, versus trying to, well, we weren't actually, we, we had a rough time, I think in our first few years. We just did. Um, I think that's why the Lord said, nah, you ain't having kids for 12 years. Y'all don't have it together. That ain't going to happen. But, uh, so things are going well. And, uh, so here we are, 2002 moving in 2003 and life is good. Well, uh, I,
Cancer Diagnosis and Initial Treatment
00:02:52
Speaker
in 2004 at the that my wife was going in for a normal checkup and The doctor said we need to run some tests, you know feel some lump here and there and so while she goes in and Goes through a number of tests and they we come back and we're thinking all you know not no big deal when we sit down remember sitting on the couch and
00:03:21
Speaker
and they had done a biopsy and sitting on the couch and the doctor comes in and you hear those words, you have breast cancer and you have stage two breast cancer. And I'm glad I was, at that point, I mean, my wife, I don't think she heard anything else of that conversation. And it's like, what is going on?
00:03:48
Speaker
And so, you know, they're going through all this stuff. It's like, you can't even process those first couple words, but now here's what we need to do. So, whoa, slow down, Doc. But, you know, I kind of compartmentalize and start, all right, here's what we need to do. And.
00:04:04
Speaker
very challenging point and so we go through the process and they said well it's good it's HER2 positive and we can address that specifically with some different radiation and chemo targeted drugs for this and so it's a good thing we said oh okay great so they said we want to do that we want to start you
00:04:27
Speaker
with chemo and see if it's affecting that tumor, see if it shrinks. That cancer will shrink. And sure enough, with the radiation and the chemo, that cancer started to shrink to where it was like nothing.
Cancer's Return and Aggressive Treatments
00:04:43
Speaker
Awesome. They said, well, we're just going to do a lumpectomy.
00:04:46
Speaker
and be done and we said awesome let's do that and you know and of course my kids are you know we have a two-year-old and a four-year-old and or five-year-old and eight-year-old and and of course my my son is autistic with another little angle of a challenge in there but um
00:05:09
Speaker
So that's the journey where my kids started seeing mom just being sick, lost all her hair. She had this bright red hair, lost all her hair and was real sick. But then we started that road of recovery and things were looking good. It's like looking so good.
00:05:29
Speaker
we went still had doctors treatments and We went about eight years. It was things were going well and then She was going back for a normal checkup and this was in 2013 She goes in for a checkup and they said Well Brenda We've got some bad news
00:05:59
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that breast cancer has come back and it's an invasive breast cancer and it's stage three and We've got to go through more radiation more chemo double mastectomy got to get just We got to take aggressive measures. Well, okay, we do what we got to do and So, you know the life was coming back to normal for a couple years, but then we kind of dip back down, right?
00:06:28
Speaker
And then here we are with going through that radiation and the chemo, sick, lost her hair again, just awful. And we said, okay, well, we made it to the first one, fine. And so we get through that and we start coming out of that. And we said, all right, we're getting back. Things are going well again.
00:06:55
Speaker
And my wife and I would often watch these dumb, these little murder mysteries like Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, and we had a little spare bedroom with a little TV in it. And we would eat our Chinese and watch these little murder mysteries. And so one day, this is in 2014, it's been about a year, we're watching this murder mystery and all of a sudden,
Seizures and Metastasis to the Brain
00:07:21
Speaker
I'm sitting in my little easy chair. She's in her chair and all of a sudden her hand goes up. I said, honey, what are you doing? Are you praising the Lord? What is this? We're watching Poirot. And she goes, I don't know, but I can't put it down. And then she went into a seizure. And, and so I go over and try to help her, um, uh, in the seizure. And I can, that dies down and I get a little hospital. She has another seizure in the emergency room.
00:07:50
Speaker
And then they start doing this PET scan and all these different scans. And they said, well, we need to tell you, we told you we got it all on the double mastectomy and the margins and everything, but you've got three tumors that had metastasized to the brain. And they said stage four, no chemo is gonna touch that. So here we are.
00:08:18
Speaker
at that point. And we said, well, they said, well, there's one thing, you know, we could, they gave some medicines and helped control the seizures, but they said, there's nothing really we can do where the tumors were located. And they said, well, we have this targeted high powered radiation
00:08:40
Speaker
that we can go in and really try to, because they did some radiation, more generalized, where she would go in and they put this head thing on her and try to target it. Didn't do anything, much of anything. They said, well, we can go in and really blast it, but there's a chance, there's a probability that you will be a vegetable. So now we're faced, well, this could, might do it, but then, and
00:09:08
Speaker
And you always say well should I've done we didn't do it. We just said no, we're not gonna do it and Then you look back high such should we have done that said more we could done, but we just didn't do it and so We she would just get she was just getting progressively progressively worse where she She was on steroids and it was just racking her body and getting her all puffy. It was just then she couldn't walk
00:09:37
Speaker
and all kinds of things that were just going on at the time. And he said, well, where is God? Did you pray in faith? Ask God to heal her? Absolutely. And here she's going on. Well, where was God? Well, God showed up in the middle of our pain
00:10:07
Speaker
crying with us, working with us. And he showed up in very tangible ways. We needed to get a chair lift, stair lift for the stairs to level all the bedrooms on the second floor. And it's a couple thousand dollars. We didn't have that at the time.
00:10:26
Speaker
And so I told us that we're going, you know, and we, and we had just called a ministry said, Hey, cause we've gotten some supplies from and say, Hey, would you supply us? Do you have a, uh, stair lift? They said, no, we don't have a stair. We don't, we never had, we don't do that. Okay. Um, so I said, honey, we're going to pray and we're going to pray. God provides 5,000 for 5,000 for this, uh, stair lift. So we prayed and, uh,
00:10:55
Speaker
Then I said, well, let's just go and find some reviews and find someone who doesn't get a quote. And so after we prayed, we looked around and went to the reviews said, well, this is a good company, kind of local. Let's go and ask them to give us a quote. And now that's on Thursday, that came out Friday.
00:11:14
Speaker
And he said, well, here's your quote. Uh, we'll call us 4,000 five. That what we thought. Well, thank you very much. Um, let's just go ahead and order it by faith. This is ordered by faith. And so we did, we ordered it on Friday. And, uh, then on Saturday, I get a phone call.
Faith and Miracles in Hardship
00:11:33
Speaker
And I said, you know, hello. That's what you normally say when someone calls. I said, hello. And I said, Mr. Terrell, yes. This is so-and-so from this ministry. I went, oh, hey, how's it going? They said, well, you're not going to believe this, but after you called us a day or so after, some guy called us up and said, he wanted to donate a stair lift.
00:12:00
Speaker
And I said, really? He said, yeah. I said, well, it's funny, because after I called you, my wife and I prayed that God would provide us with the money for a stair lift, but I guess he just wanted to provide the stair lift instead. And then God's going, what? I said, yeah. And we're all just like, and I didn't know if he's a Christian or not, but we're like, yes, yes. And he goes, well, we're going to have someone install it for you for your charge. Here's the company that's going to install it. Well, guess who that company was?
00:12:28
Speaker
It was the same one I randomly picked out, and I called them on Saturday, and they happened to be there. I said, can you cancel our order? They said, well, yeah, but why? I said, well, because God provided one that you're gonna install for us next week. And so was God with us? And he absolutely was. Psalm 23, which says, the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
00:12:56
Speaker
He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leaves me besides still waters. He restores and refreshes my soul. And it goes on to say that even though we walk through the deepest, darkest valley or the valley of the shadow of death, he goes, I'm with you. He doesn't say you're gonna avoid the valley. He goes, but when you do walk and you will, he goes, I'm with you. And in the middle of the valley, he goes, now let's stop for a minute.
00:13:25
Speaker
He goes, we're going to have dinner. In the middle of the valley, he goes, he prepares a table before us in the presence of all of these enemies. He anoints our head with oil and our cup overflows. And that's what he did for us. In the middle of this deep, dark valley, he goes, look, everybody watching, here's a stair lift. Just sit here for a bit.
00:13:52
Speaker
And that stairlift is still in my house today. It's a monument to God. And yeah, one day I'm going to give it away, but it's still there. And so God does provide, and He is with us always. He never leaves us.
00:14:10
Speaker
After that, it was, and they said, well, she won't last six months. Well, she did. In November, actually the end of October, 2015, she kind of, it was on a Saturday, I remember, because she wanted to watch the new movie at the time it was Inside Out, the Disney Pixar movie. She wanted to see it.
00:14:38
Speaker
Well, I went and got like a one-day delivery from Amazon and I didn't and I ordered it had just come that Saturday morning and Well, she went into like a coma.
Final Days and Saying Goodbye
00:14:49
Speaker
She just she just kind of she was upstairs in the bedroom in a chair She just kind of went blank and we're not responsive So I was able to get her pick her and get her into the hospital bed. We had in the room prompt that baby up. I said guys I
00:15:05
Speaker
I had this projector cuz our TV had happened to blown out so I said let's get the projector put it on this bedroom wall We are all going to watch got all the kids around we're gonna watch Inside out and that was the last movie she saw and I know she heard it. I know she did And could see it we propped it where she can we all watch that together and
00:15:27
Speaker
And then it was one week later on November 5th is when she passed away. And so all three kids there with me, God just worked all of that out for us. So that's my story. What's yours? How did it all happen? What was the context and the story for you?
Tammy's Husband's Cancer Journey
00:15:52
Speaker
You know, listening to you, there are so many similarities, you know, that cancer journey and the family journey and a marriage journey and all of that. I can relate to so much of that.
00:16:08
Speaker
So my story goes like this. My husband, John, he was 46 when we first learned that he had colon cancer. He was suffering from all the typical middle-aged American complaints. Overworked, overweight, tired most of the time, and just run down.
00:16:32
Speaker
But we would have never thought he had cancer Until we found the tumor and your your story of sitting on the couch and hearing that was Yeah, I have one just like that The news of course was shocking and it's your worst fear when you go to the doctors or you know and hear cancer but for us, you know after the shock wore off and
00:16:58
Speaker
We were quickly offered hope. Hope in treatment, hope in the latest breakthroughs, and, you know, as a Christian, hope in God answering the prayers of our prayers and the prayers of our church and our family to provide healing. And then it was like we were enlisted in this organized military-like campaign to fight cancer, you know, the war on cancer.
00:17:24
Speaker
And it gives you a new focus. You're given a mission, a strategy, a community of others doing the same thing. And for a lot of us, a new identity. He was a cancer patient. I was a caregiver.
00:17:43
Speaker
And so the purpose, this purpose of fighting cancer, it helps to replace the fear in a lot of ways. And this approach particularly appealed to John because he was a military guy.
00:18:01
Speaker
We fought cancer, and we fought to keep him alive. After the first round of surgery in chemo, we had a brief respite, kind of like you all. But then that turned out to be what we thought was a clean diagnosis, or was actually a false diagnosis, and within two years we were back in the battle.
00:18:23
Speaker
facing now what they call a second primary. So he now had, on top of colon cancer, pancreatic cancer. And that, you know, and the colon cancer had become metastatic. So it was all the way around bad. And we did this for another three years. But in 2018, John lost his fight with cancer and he died at the age of 52.
00:18:53
Speaker
And though I was never the type, people that know me will laugh at this because I've just never been the power of positive thinking. In fact, John used to give me a hard time about being so negative. And I said, no, I'm not negative. I'm just realistic.
00:19:16
Speaker
But I really tried. I tried to engage and be encouraging, you know, for him and for the kids and for everyone around us. But when the cancer re-emerged, you know, that second time around, I began to focus, you know, that realism came into, really came into play for me.
Family's Struggle and Healing
00:19:36
Speaker
And I began to focus myself.
00:19:38
Speaker
and force myself to consider on what was awaiting me. And so I began to prepare myself for one of my greatest fears all along, and that had been losing him and being left alone. He, let's see, he died, he died just after our 28th wedding anniversary. And we married young, so, you know, we, yeah, that was always a big fear.
00:20:09
Speaker
Like you, we had our challenges, but we had become a real team. John was a very strong type of person in whom I drew a lot of courage and my sense of security from. Also, all of this took place during the years that my children were graduating from high school and college and trying to launch. We had left our home of 20 years and relocated to a new state in the middle of his remission.
00:20:37
Speaker
So, you know, I offer all of this extra information in my story to provide the context in which death and loss came into my life. Cancer and death of a spouse and for my children parent is destabilizing enough, but my children and I were dealing with so many areas of change and loss.
00:21:01
Speaker
That it only made things worse Um that first year after john died we were all Raw and lost I think are the best words to describe that And as a family our grief expressed itself through depression interpersonal conflict Um, there was even some substance abuse and a lot of just despair but you know vernon when I look back over
00:21:30
Speaker
It's been three years, it was three years this year since he died. And when I look back, I can honestly say that we're in a much better place now. Eventually I moved back to Atlanta and we have all, my children and I, we've all lived near one another and worked hard on getting healthy again as individuals and as a family.
00:21:53
Speaker
We're very different people now and our family looks very different. We didn't have the option to remain in what was or even try to return to it. You know, the family home was gone and the kids were adults and one of my kids was married at that point. The other one was in the army. So we've had to just move forward and make big decisions and grow and adapt.
00:22:17
Speaker
And in doing so, we have slowly been creating a new family and a new normal, but it's just hell. It's hell some days. But I can also say that without a doubt that God has been like you. He's been in every part of it.
00:22:38
Speaker
He's been with us every step of the way. And like you said so well, that doesn't mean he spares pain. He doesn't spare us pain. He doesn't give you shortcuts most of the time.
God's Presence Through Suffering
00:22:53
Speaker
But I found that he invited us into a deeper experience of what it means to be human.
00:23:00
Speaker
And what it means to be a family and what it means to grow forgive heal transform and most importantly a deeper experience of his heart for us So while you know, I will never be thankful that John died and left us so early I am in awe of what you know
00:23:29
Speaker
I'm just in awe of God and what He showed me. You know, Christianity is a faith, and I've been a Christian my whole life. I was raised in a Christian home and just have always had an active relationship with Jesus. But it's a faith all about this all-loving God who conquered death and makes all things new, right?
00:23:55
Speaker
And I just feel like now I know that that's a living reality. That's not just something in church that we hope and believe and preach, but that's my reality. And that reality and experience has changed me and my life forever.
00:24:17
Speaker
So for that transformation and that experience, for that, I am truly grateful.
Misconceptions About God's Blessings
00:24:33
Speaker
God should be giving us these, quote unquote, blessings. It's like God's this cosmic slot machine. If we pull the right lever and do the right things, well, God's just going to shower us with blessings. And if he's not, well, therefore you're doing something wrong. And then we get all this shame and guilt and what more can I do? And God doesn't like me. And what did I do wrong? What did I do wrong to deserve this?
00:24:58
Speaker
All these things go through our brains, you know, and for so many. I think our concept of God is so important and it's challenged in these real life scenarios. And is God good? Is God good? And I have to answer a resounding, yes, he's good.
00:25:23
Speaker
The world isn't always good. Life isn't always fair. Life isn't always happy and good, but God is always good. Someone said, well, God did not heal your wife. Yes, he did. She is 100% healed right now, living with him in heaven. So absolutely. Now, it's not the healing I might have wanted, but she is healed and free from pain right now.
00:25:53
Speaker
I totally, 100% believe that. I cannot, and I don't know about you, but I cannot imagine going through an experience like this without knowing Jesus. Yeah, I can't either.
Finding Faith and Community in Struggles
00:26:11
Speaker
What would you say? And we're going to actually, we might just end up doing a two-parter here because we want to give you our stories a bit and then talk about some other ideas. Well, how do you navigate some of this stuff? And what really helps you?
00:26:28
Speaker
um, navigate these things. And, uh, what, uh, what about some spiritual practical, uh, what were some of the emotions? How do you deal with that? Uh, we want to talk about some of that on, uh, our next episode. So I do encourage you, this is the foundation. This is the teaser that we want you to listen to our next episode. And if you're going through this, if you're going through
00:26:57
Speaker
a very challenging situation with health or with job, finances, do not think that God has abandoned you. If the enemy wants you to feel that, that you are alone, his strategy is to divide and conquer, is to make you feel isolated.
00:27:18
Speaker
Well, number one, you're never alone with Him. Number two, find folks that can come around you. We're going to talk about that a little bit next episode. But you're not alone. God is with you. He's with you in the tears. He's with you in the anger. He's not scared of your anger.
00:27:38
Speaker
He's not scared of your depression, not scared of feeling that fear and all of that. He's not scared of that. Bring it to him. Let him enter into that with you. That's how you walk it out. That's how you walk out your faith. When you can't even physically walk,
00:28:02
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You can take that step of faith knowing that He is good and that He is with you and that you are so dearly loved in the midst of crisis. So let us encourage you with that.
00:28:17
Speaker
And so maybe in this episode, as I end it, and I always, and I try to end it with, well, let's stop talking, start walking. Well, for you, it may just be that step of faith that you need to take knowing that you are loved and cared for by your heavenly Father.
00:28:36
Speaker
You've been listening to Walking Free, a production of Grace Ministries International in Marietta, Georgia. For more information, go to our website at gmint.org. That's gminc.org.