Bill and Kandi Patterson's God Story

Father, I just praise you.

Thank you for being such a great God, for being our Father, for adopting us as your very own children.

I just praise you for that.

Holy Spirit, I just thank you for being our teacher and counselor and encourager.

I just ask you to teach and encourage each of us this morning that we could all leave knowing that we got something directly from you.

And Jesus, we just praise you for being our Savior, our lover, our friend, and uh we just thank you for that.

And this prayer is in your name.

Amen.

So last Sunday, we talked about how no matter what happens in 2012, we can have a prosperous year, you know, a healthy year on the inside.

And we saw where Jesus said, Um, I've told you all this so that you may have peace in me.

Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.

But take heart, because I have overcome the world.

And Paul said, I found the recipe for being happy, whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty, whatever I have, whatever I am, I can make it through anything in the one who makes me who I am.

Facing trouble, making it through anything with God.

That was what the last half of 2010 and the first half of 2011 was for Bill and Candy and Katie Patterson.

And uh, this is their God story.

When the doctors told me that I had brain cancer and the short amount of time that they expected me to live, I immediately got scared, but also felt that God would take care of me.

But I was scared.

I was I was petrified when it sank in.

There were so many things that were planned, you know.

Just I was thinking about graduating college, and how I wanted, you know, my parents to see that.

Uh when we came here, it was um the very first time, it was Easter Sunday three years ago.

And uh it was amazing.

From the minute we walked in, from the hellos at the door to the uh friendly faces everywhere, um, people just embracing us, and we had never met them before.

Um it was just a calming, peaceful feeling.

Yeah, the Easter sermon is such a powerful sermon that we were so moved by it.

We knew we'd be back.

The music was great, the people were amazing, and we finally found out what a church was really like.

And what three, four months later, we were baptized here.

That was amazing.

The whole family got baptized at the same time.

And it was more of just a recleansing, we felt like.

Because I think we'd all been baptized before.

Uh, but this was just made it so much more special, made us feel part of the church.

My uh sister came in from New Orleans and and did the baptism, and I told her that day, I said, I finally know what you've meant all this time about a church family.

Never really got that, but we get it now.

From there, we really got into the church.

I actually started at the um the youth on Thursday nights, and that was a lot of fun.

Before I found out, um, I felt like I was very close with God, and that's why I think He chose me to go through this ordeal so I could share my story.

We talked a lot about um how God prepared us for what was going to happen on July 28th, 2010.

One day I woke up and one part of my body felt kind of weird.

I thought I was having a stroke.

I was feeling a fatigue on the left hand side of my body.

What I remember most about that morning was he went to get out of the bed and he goes, watch this.

And he took his left arm and pressed down on the bed to like lift himself up, and he had no um strength.

Do you remember that?

No strength in his hand.

The whole bed shook.

And I said, Oh no, there's something wrong here.

So um he wanted to go to the doctor.

He didn't want to go to the emergency room.

I had to call his boss and speak to him, and um he met me at the emergency room.

First thing they did when I walked in, I told him, I said, I think I might be having a stroke.

Um so they took us in the back and within a matter of 20 minutes came back and said that he had a tumor.

He said, Looks like it's about the size of a lemon, but it has to come out because we can tell that it's growing.

And eventually, you know, it's gonna kill you.

I was so shocked, like, how could it happen?

That was um that was a lot.

You never think, honestly, and people say this all the time, you never think it can happen to you or someone you love.

Um, it only happens to other people.

So there's the initial, what do you mean?

What are you talking about?

You better check that again, there's just no way.

And um then the confirmation is just wow.

So there I was angry.

How did we not know this earlier?

How did I not know the signs?

And then the guilt kicked in.

What a horrible wife I am.

Why didn't I see he had cancer?

Why didn't I see he had a tumor?

Something must have been wrong if all of a sudden he turned into someone I didn't know.

And instead of trying to find out what was wrong, I'm hounding him and saying, You're not doing this, you're not doing that.

What is wrong with you?

Who are you?

What is going on?

I was petrified when it sank in, and we were at the hospital and trying to make plans and thinking about insurance, and then it's like I was getting answer after answer.

Oh my gosh, the insurance.

All we have is long-term disability.

I told him not to get the short term.

Boom.

He tells me he has short-term disability.

Okay, what about my job?

What am I gonna do?

I travel all the time.

Boom, his mom's living with us.

It just seemed like every need was followed up by a resolution.

We don't have the power to do that.

I don't have the power for those kind of resolutions.

So we brought him home, and um downhill doesn't even describe really what happened.

He couldn't really talk all that well.

He couldn't sit up.

Um, it was very hard to get him mobile and moving him around.

Um, and that morning before church, um, I was helping him to the um bathroom.

He fell and we fell through the shower door.

We came to church.

And you don't remember a lot of this, but it was one of the most moving and amazing um moments of my life.

We went in the prayer room after uh service was over.

Everyone was there, and um, I remember Erica the most, I think, because she was holding my hand, but the prayer, the um, the asking, begging, crying out to God to please help us.

There wasn't a dry eye.

His family was here, my family was here.

When we left, I was like, we got this.

August 3rd, Sponnie had a surgery.

We were all in the waiting room, and goodness gracious, there were so many people.

It was like, it was like when we have our Christmas family gatherings back at home, and like the whole house is filled up full of people and just everywhere, and you're just talking to someone always, and you're never alone.

I can't describe how that felt to constantly be able to just go hold someone's hand, and it I could just go from person to person and just draw strength off whoever I wanted.

And then Steve came, and we all got in a circle, and um, and we prayed.

And umce again, and right after that, the doctor came out, told us that it was uh grade four, the worst possible outcome, um, that they got most of it.

But um Bill had about six to twelve months, was what they told us.

And Steve looked at me and he goes, We're gonna in a year, we're gonna do a God story.

I tried not to cry and you know, break down because mom was already doing all that and both of us couldn't be breaking down at the same time.

I could not have made it through any of this without the strength of my daughter.

She um never cried a tear the day that we got the news.

It was um, it was the hardest day of my life thus far, definitely.

My dad's a very strong man.

He's very strong and I'm brave and he's a great father.

Like I'm blessed to have him.

He was so brave throughout it all.

That was really great because you know, when you don't really know how he's feeling because you don't know what it's like to go through surgery and have cancer.

You know, it is it was amazing to see how strong he was.

He was he was very brave.

There was some who said, don't tell him what the doctor said yet, you know, just wait.

And I thought about that.

So I prayed about it, and I knew right then and there I needed to, I needed to tell him that exactly what was going on.

One of my first memories is that conversation when her, my mom, and my sister came in a room.

I could tell she didn't have anything good to say.

I was scared to hear whatever it was.

And I looked at him and I said, six months to 12 months is what they're saying.

And you know what he said to me?

That's what they say.

That's the medical prognosis.

God has different plans.

And that is something that you have said so many times through this whole thing.

And uh to the doctors, they will tell him, you know, you're doing good right now, but okay, alright, I will do everything you tell me to do.

But the only person who knows when I'm gonna die is God.

When the doctors give me bad news, I knew I had God on my side.

And I'd be able to do things that they didn't expect.

It gave me hope.

Seeing how brave he was and how confident he was about things.

And I could feel God giving me strength to fight through this.

I was his servant.

You know, do with me what you want me to do.

Even beyond the hospital, right?

I mean Yeah, once I got home.

Yes.

Started the radiation and the uh chemotherapy.

Her brother uh started doing some research for us.

That's when he sent us the video from Dr.

Friedman.

Yeah, who said this type of cancer doesn't have to interrupt your life or or even end your life.

He said, you know, what we want to do is restore your quality of life.

So uh she called Duke University and asked to speak to uh Dr.

Friedman.

Dr.

Friedman.

Uh left a message.

I said, no, I want to talk to Dr.

Friedman.

Okay, well, um, you know, we can certainly get a med, I can leave a message for him.

That's fine.

And I basically told Dr.

Friedman, um, we were led to you.

I know that we were led to you.

We need to talk to you.

Please call me back.

And I was laying in bed, the phone rang, he was sleeping.

I said, Hello, Dr.

Friedman.

Well, I was like, oh my gosh, it's Dr.

Friedman.

And they're like, from the YouTube video.

You know, he's like, ma'am.

He listened to the facts and he wanted everything.

I want you to come to Duke on such and such a date, bring this, this, this, and this, fax this over to me.

If you do all of this, then I'll consider entering you into the trial.

The trial ended the day that we went to Duke University.

If we would have been one day later, he would not have had the trial medications that he needed.

Yeah.

Another, another God moment for sure.

He took the majority of the tumor out and had to leave behind some residue.

By the time I got to Duke, some of that had started regrowing.

They had two experimental drugs they wanted to try on me.

Um, the drugs themselves were so outrageously priced, there's no way we could afford it them.

It was free being in the trial.

It's definitely just like what everybody talks about, that you hear people that have to take chemotherapy.

It's definitely it, you know, you get very sick.

They try to fight it off with anti-nausea drugs, but they hold it back a little bit at best.

When I got to the end, they told me I had two cycles left.

I was like, oh yeah.

I was I was so happy.

We had to go to Duke every four months.

No, every other month.

Yeah, every two months.

Every two months.

So they could um look at his scan.

Every checkup we had.

It was um it was positive.

Yeah.

We never got a bad checkup.

The tumors fading.

What was left of it every day.

It was just keep my dodge on.

And we knew.

We knew where it was coming from.

It was all God.

This whole thing has been God.

There were many moments where I'd ask God, you know, late at night as you're laying in bed, I've got cancer, you know, I may not be alive this time next year.

A lot of scary moments, a lot of scary thoughts.

And I just feel this relaxing calm come over me.

My last appointment at Dupe was uh October 20th to do what they call a PET scan.

Uh that's where they inject a radioactive chemical into you and do like a thorough scan of your whole body.

Once we got through with that, we waited for a while to see my main doctor.

And uh, after she reviewed it, she came back and she was the one who told me the great news that I was in 100% remission.

From here, they said they didn't know what to tell me.

They said because, you know, I beat their expectations.

We didn't have a tumor anymore, and that was uh that was great news.

That was good stuff.

If we ever had doubts before of just, where are you?

You know, why aren't you here?

How did you let this happen?

Every day we're reminded.

Every day he opens his eyes, um, we're reminded that he's right here.

Every step of the way.

My faith in God became a lot stronger just through all the miracles that he played in our family.

My first conversation with God after I heard the news was that um, you know, thank you, you know, for taking care of me.

I don't feel worthy, you know, but for some reason he chose to to heal me.

And um I feel so blessed, so I thought maybe if uh Katie and Bill wanted to just come over here, we'll maybe pray for that.

We should just thank God and uh now.

It was a couple days, I think, when he could first see people after uh they got the diagnosis.

And so I'm driving to Northside and I'm really nervous because I don't know what to say.

And and uh, you know, as I'm praying the whole way there, you know, please give me uh something to encourage Bill.

And I walk in and I'm like, Well, how are you doing?

He says, Great.

He said, The last couple days were kind of rough, but I'm ready to get out of here right now.

And um, that's the way he's been.

He really is a brave, great man.

But uh let's pray.

So, Father, we do praise you, we do love you, and just thank you so much for uh healing Bill and giving them the strength to to get through this whole uh situation and not just uh not just for his health, but just what you've done in their family and how you've uh grown them together and made them strong and brought them closer to you.

So we just praise you and thank you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And that's that we're so thankful that God healed Bill the way that he did.

But if for some reason in his ultimate plan God had needed to let Bill come home early, it would have been okay.

He would have given them the strength to to get through that, it would have been hard, you know, on Candy and Katie and the family and all of us that love him.

Um but it it would have been okay.

And you know, some of us know that from experience because we've lived um through that.

And Jesus' ironclad promise is not just healings that last temporary, you know, for 40 years or however long um we have.

Uh Jesus' ironclad promise for all of us, his guarantee is a healing that will last forever.

He says in John 5, he says, I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life.

They will never be condemned for their sins, but they've already passed from death into life.

First John 5, he says, I've written this to you, who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life.

Jesus' ironclad, guaranteed promise to each of us is that one day soon we'll live on a renewed and restored earth without the pain of loss or even any nagging fear of losing someone that we love.

We'll be together, we'll be healthy and strong forever.

God is going to heal every single one of us one day.

Now, thankfully, he often heals us here, and what he does is such a gift and such a such a blessing.

And he's healed so many people here at his hands.

I mentioned it a few weeks ago, but you know, I was even thinking about it driving here this morning.

I I can think of five different people that had terminal cancer that have been healed.

I can think of a couple uh major heart conditions.

Um I think of uh Patty who was healed from Lou Gehrig's disease.

I think of several couples who who couldn't have children and uh and now do, uh some more than uh more than one.

You know, and uh and he and he's he's healed us of so many things, and not just physical things, but you know, emotional pain and and broken hearts and and broader families um together.

And Candy mentioned after church on that Sunday where they went back in the prayer room, which is out those main doors to the left, is the prayer room.

And every Sunday we have a prayer team um here, and um there's just so much power in in prayer.

And I just feel like today is just a great morning for God to heal a lot of people.

And um what the prayer team does is they share their faith.

You know, and when we talk about sharing faith, we think about telling someone about Jesus, which is which is right.

But there's times when we just don't have enough enough faith, you know, and and the prayer team does, and and they share that with us.

And it reminds me of a story.

It's a it's a guy in the Bible that I can relate to, and it's a dad, and his his daughter is sick, and he asks uh Jesus to to heal her.

And Jesus says, Do you believe?

And and the man says, Yes, I believe, help me with my unbelief.

And I'm like, man, I can relate to that.

And and that's all of us at sometimes, you know, and so it doesn't take I mean if if you have enough faith this morning to just walk in that room, there's someone there that'll grab your hand and has got plenty of faith to ask our dad for whatever it is that you uh need this morning.

We got an extra uh team, a bunch of people, even if you had to wait a little bit, it it would certainly um be worth it.

Um God is so good to all of us, and really uh each of our lives uh is a God story.

But uh we'll stop there, and if the worship team wants to come up, uh let's stand, we'll get ready for this last song.

You know, connecting with Jesus is such a simple thing.

You know, whether you've uh need to connect with him for the first time, or you know, sometimes we just kind of wander off and we need to reconnect with him.

But it's just talking to him in our own words, in our own way, saying, you know, whatever it is that that we would want to tell him, you know, uh, help me, save me, heal me.

I'm sorry, whatever, you know, whatever it is.

And he really takes over from there.

You know, for the when when that happens for the first time, you know, we're created with the spirit and and it comes alive, and and God's spirit connects with our spirit, and he starts changes from the inside out, you know, and he brings people into our lives and situations, and we change first on the inside, but then the things around us start to um change as well.

Um, and you just I guess I just want you to know that uh for all of us is that that uh God loves you.

You can ask him for anything.

He's you know, it in the in the Bible it talks about calling him Abba Father, which is just the Hebrew word for daddy.

You know, and so even when we pray, we're not so much fighting as we're just together asking our dad for whatever it is that we need.

You know, and and he loves you and he hasn't given up on you, and he's not mad at you, and you can trust him.

So let's just uh pray.

Father, we do praise you.

Thank you for being such a great God.

Thank you again for what you've done in the Patterson's life, thank you for what you've done in so many of our lives and are about to do in so many of our lives.

We just uh love you and trust you in Jesus' name.

Amen.