April Newsletter
Happy Spring All,
I know for us midwesterns, it hasn’t been a sproutful spring yet. Spring is always my favorite time of the year. I love watching new life emerge in nature. It’s also a season of birthdays and anniversaries for my family.
As mentioned in January’s newsletter, I submitted my work to two writing challenges. Currently waiting to hear back about the brook proposal challenge, offering the winner a book contract. This would be very exciting to win! In the meantime, I continue work editing my book, Walking Restored.
I was not accepted as a winner for the devotional challenge, however I would love to share it with you here! It was my first shot at writing a devotional, and I loved doing it!
God’s Blessings and Satan’s Temptations
Do the blessings we inherit share the load of a burden? A load that sneaks worry into its parameters?
It was just the right mixture of anticipation mixed with nervousness. Panic ran through my veins while hope soared in my heart. This concoction of emotions would leave anyone confused. From the time my second was born, I knew a third baby was on the horizon. My soul felt the connection. For years I prayed to get pregnant. Faced with the fact that it may not happen, I surrendered the perceived loss to God. Tear-soaked cheeks were my attire many days throughout the past years. The days of expecting two pink lines were gone, or so I thought. So why on this Thursday morning, with my best friend waiting outside my bathroom door, was I afraid to see the positive two lines? Worry set in the pit of my stomach as I laughed in disbelief at my results. Believing the worry was the lost desire to have another baby, as I had already given this dream to God. My third blessing was somehow matched by a list of logical worries. Worry about surviving the all day pregnancy sickness. Worry about being an adequate mother to my other two children. Worry of how this would change my family that was finally feeling settled. This great moment was stolen. Stolen by worry.
My best friend threw a party of excitement at the news, and I smiled my way through the worry. I know I am blessed, but doesn’t every blessing come with a load to carry? Isn’t that just how Satan operates? He tries to cover our Godly blessings with loads of worry. Unfortunately, his case is reasonable so it’s not easily detected. Luke shares this perspective in his recount of Jesus’s tempter on the mountain.
Jesus had just finished his 40 day fast, when Satan came along with a series of temptations. Jesus was most likely experiencing the closeness of His father and the refreshing of his soul. Then of course Satan came in to try and ruin the blessing. Jesus was hungry and Satan had a logical answer, telling Jesus to turn this stone into bread. Jesus responds, “ Man should not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” Luke 4:4.
In the same way Satan was tempting Jesus to eat, Satan tempts us. One of his crafty successes is through tempting us to worry. He makes his case, and it’s legitimate. However, if we live by every word of God, we will see through his craftiness, his deceit. Jesus demonstrates to us that we should live by every word of God and God’s word says not to worry. How are your worries lining up with Every.Word. Of. God? Let him who steals, steal no more!
Dear Heavenly Father, as our hearts search your word, open our eyes to the devils deceits. In times of worry, no matter how logical, we pray your spirit will intercede for us. As we should not live by bread alone, but by every word of God, we pray you reveal Your application to our lives. In times of worry, give our hearts power, love and a sound mind! In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Encouraging word presented by Debra Wahlberg~ 8 time cancer overcomer
Abundant Life Through Jesus Christ
By Debra Wahlberg
John 10:10: “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they might have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
My first cancer was a non-Hodgkin lymphoma in my spine when I was 15 years old.. I am now 66.. My last cancer was in 2022, and was my 8th. I have had two non-Hodgkin lymphomas, the second one hitting my lung when I was 16.
I then had a 32 year reprieve of any cancer in my body allowing for an almost “normal” life. I graduated from high school, and went to college to become a vocal music teacher. I met my husband and got married. In the next few years of our marriage we learned how to cling to God and His Word as He clung to us. We lost our firstborn son at full term. This was followed one year later by my husband having an industrial accident, and having his spinal cord dislocated, resulting in paralysis from the waist down.
We experienced the true Grace of God in these years as we learned His Word and learned of His everlasting love for us. I remember singing a song that was based on Lamentations 3:22-23 that says “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
When cancer struck again, it was with a Bang, and I was on for the fight of my life. Extra skeletal Osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer, was found in my right hip in 2003. My Oncologist at the Mayo Clinic was right when he said that if I could make it through the chemotherapy needed to obliterate this cancer, I could make it through the surgery like a breeze. The surgery he was speaking of was no walk in the park, but when it came time for it, the doctors were amazed how the tumor was totally necrotic, or just plain “dead”!
Papillary thyroid cancer came two years afterwards as I was down at Mayo Clinic for a normal check-up. High grade breast cancer hit in 2010, causing a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Multifocal lung adenocarcinoma developed in the spring of 2017, and one third of my right lung was removed surgically.
I have had two occurrences of papillary thyroid cancer,15 and 17 years after the initial one. My last one was surgically removed six weeks ago by a surgeon at Mayo. He told me before surgery that he was 100% certain that the main vocal nerve was involved in the
tumor, and that I would lose my voice, most likely permanently. What joy it was to awaken and find that I could talk and sing! God is Good!
I have dealt with fear, but refuse to live in it. The Bible tells us over 365 times to “Fear not!”. He tells us that perfect love casts out fear. Isaiah 43 tells us “Fear not: for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name; you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you: When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned; nor shall the flame scorch you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”
The book of Joel talks about the Lord’s promise of restoring to us the years that locusts have destroyed. I am a grandmother to two beautiful little girls and a bouncing baby boy, and a mother to a beautiful daughter, and a hardworking son and daughter in law. My husband and I have been married for 45 years. I know that I am blessed by God, and as we abide in the secret place of the Most High God, He continues to restore us and fill us with joy.
This life that we live is all about serving a Mighty God that loves us more than we can understand. It is about keeping our eyes set upon Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. It is about gathering as many that will listen about the Good News of salvation of Jesus Christ unto Himself. It is about loving all people around us; not just the pleasant ones. It is about looking up, and knowing our redemption draws near.
| Check out my page at~Walking Restored~ – The scars that never heal. |
~Walking Restored~ 