“Always Rejoice”

“Always Rejoice”

            I’m not sure when I started listening to my dreams, but I know it was a long time ago.  As someone who has read the Bible from an early age, I remembered so many times in the Bible when someone had a dream, and the dream was from God.

            Probably the most famous story from the Bible about dreams was when the Pharaoh of Egypt had two dreams about corn stalks and cows.  He and his advisors couldn’t make heads or tails out of them, so when he heard about a Jewish slave in the dungeon who could interpret dreams, he sent for him.  The slave was a man named Joseph, and after he explained to Pharaoh that God was telling him what was about to happen and that he better get ready for it, the Pharaoh put Joseph over all the land of Egypt, next to him, of course. 

            One morning in early June 1996, I woke up with the words “Rejoice always” in my head.  I didn’t remember the dream, but the words stuck.  I knew the words were from the Bible, and I knew that God was speaking to me.  I was even enough of a Bible student to know that in the original Greek, that phrase is “ALWAYS rejoice.” 

            The only problem was that I was miserable.  I was borderline depressed most of my life.  When I say borderline, I don’t mean I always stayed on the one side of the border either. The borderline was more like the lines on a sheet of notebook paper.  You may want to stay above the line, but as often as not you were on the other side. 

            A month later I had another dream.  Now this one was clear.  I was teaching a class on the Bible and my text was: Count it all joy when you fall into various trials.  I felt like my whole life was a various trial.  But, again, I knew God had spoken to me, and He was making a point to make sure I got the message. 

            Oh, I got it alright.  Hardest thing I ever did.  So I would rejoice because I was so miserable.   I thanked God I hated my life.  I thanked God that my whole life turned out so very different from all my hopes and dreams.  This was a sheer decision to be happy, because God told me to.  I didn’t say I was now happy.  But I was determined that I would CHOOSE to live in the way a happy person would, as much as was possible within my miserable state.

            In October I was told that I had mixed cell non-Hodgkins lymphoma in stage 3 and that I should start chemotherapy right away.  What alerted the doctors to check for cancer was a test I had done back in early June for something else.  They had noticed enlarged lymph nodes then, but somehow I was never told.  

            Now I was still not a bundle of joy by this time.  Even with the four months of working on being a happier person, I still had a long way to go. 

            I told the doctors that I did not want to have medical treatment.  I told them that I tell my kids that if you have a problem, you pray about it and ask God to help you.  I figured that if I just rushed into getting treatment, I would be telling my kids that this problem was just too big for God.  And if I started the treatment, how would anybody know what God did or the doctors?  So I asked the doctors to monitor me and check me again in a few months. 

I couldn’t prove that my miserableness caused the cancer, but I knew I felt like I was dying inside emotionally.  I believed in God’s ability and willingness to heal people, but I also knew I had to change the way I thought and felt about a lot of things if I expected to stay healthy in the future.

The next few months God showed me many, many more things, too many to share here.  But one of the many things that God taught me in those months was to stop worrying about things, which went along with what He said at first about rejoicing always and counting things all joy.

But did you see it?  God started working on me 4 months before I even knew I had cancer, like I would need a running start to face this when the time came.  .

            Now I wouldn’t say that I always rejoice today, or that I count everything all joy when things go bad, but I will say I am a very different person now than I was back then.  It’s like I never go anywhere near that line anymore.  I have gone through things since then that seem far worse than having cancer, but I have been able to face them with a lot more joy and confidence that things will work out.

            Oh, the cancer?  Three months later I went back for a checkup.  The doctors said that I didn’t need chemo;  all my tests were within the normal range.  That was 8 years ago, and I still have not had any treatment.  I know the doctors would like me to go back every six months for the next 20 years for checkups, just to be sure.  But sure of what?  I wouldn’t do anything differently today than I did back then.  And I don’t think God would either.