Redemption. Is it a heart matter?

Phoenix Children's Hospital with Mom - May 2023

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

I remember when Chris first got taken. I didn’t think I could make it two weeks without him until the court date, where I just knew they would release him to come back home. That didn’t happen. But something that did was that the life of Jesus and His followers came alive to me. Up until that time of my life, when I would read the new testament, I remember praying things like, “But God I am not an apostle or a preacher. I am not a leader in your church.” But through my trial, the scriptures opened up to me in a way that I could relate to their very words, and words of suffering, and all of Jesus’ famous sermons were coming to life about how I was to treat my enemies and people that persecuted me.

One afternoon in Walmart, I walked up to the cash register to check out. Normally Chris and I would minister to people while there, but I had an invisible wall around me, suffering in my own little world. The lady at the register asked me if I wanted to donate to Phoenix Children’s Hospital. I almost threw up. They had held my son against my will and had him removed by CPS. But I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me to give.

There were big signs of PCH kids in the front of the store, and yellow hot air balloon papers all over the walls with the people’s names on them that donated. I can’t remember if I obeyed that day, but there came a point where I realized that God was asking me to give my heart to Him so that He could do a work there. And so I gave. I gave to PCH, and to God I prayed that they would be blessed. Jesus said to bless and not curse. I prayed for the kids to be healed and the Spirit of God to move there and for cures to childhood cancers. I prayed that they would be at peace with me and release my son to come home.

Every time they asked, I gave.

My rights to my son were severed and six years went by. How I made it two weeks, and then six years, can only be explained by God’s mercy and grace. I didn’t know if my son had lived or died, or anything about him. But in August of 2019 I got a message from an adoption agency recruiter concerning him. He had survived cancer! But was still in foster care without a family. He needed a home, and the door was opening for us to talk about him coming back to me. It was an absolute miracle! September 1st came two weeks after the call, and it was childhood cancer awareness month.

You know your heart is healed when you can give to your enemy with joy.

St. Jude is a research hospital driven by the pharmaceutical industry. But again, parents don’t have a choice in treatment when it comes to childhood cancer, it is the government and the industry that is driving the treatment. At St. Jude, families are given a place to live and food to eat while their children fight the cancer battle. All their living expenses are paid, and parents never get a bill for treatment. I became a monthly donor to St. Jude in faith. One of my prayers since 2011 is that God will raise up scientists within the industry that will discover cures. God is always good and wants to turn what the enemy meant for evil to good (Genesis50:20). Through our trials, He wants to reveal our hearts, and captivate them, to make us like Jesus. I have felt led to give to bless the very industry that still had their grips on my son. So that I could be changed.

Go read Luke chapter 6. It opens with Jesus breaking the law to heal on the Sabbath. Then He calls the 12 apostles and they have a healing crusade. Next comes “The Beatitudes” where Jesus says:

21Blessed are you who weep now,

For you shall laugh.

22 Blessed are you when men hate you,

And when they exclude you,

And revile you, and cast out your name as evil,

For the Son of Man’s sake.

23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy!

For indeed your reward is great in heaven,

For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.

The doctors thought I was crazy for believing Jesus could heal my son without a bone marrow transplant. The government psychologists labeled me with a “Delusional Disorder” for my “strange” religious beliefs. They took my son and blasted me for my choices. My decisions on how to treat my son’s cancer, believing for Jesus to touch him, had made me an enemy of the people we needed to help us walk out his healing. But Jesus said I am blessed and that I have a great reward waiting in heaven! I needed my heart to line up with the Word.

Jesus goes onto to tell us to love our enemies and not to judge. Then in vs 38 He gives us, what I believe, is a huge key to breakthrough regarding those who persecute us:

“Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”

He goes on to say a tree is known by its fruit and that we should build our lives on the Rock.

Right smack dab in the middle of all this enemy and heart talk, Jesus gives a promise from the prophet Malachi, to give, and it will be given back to us. We have a part to play. The promise is conditional; we have to give. If you want to bless your enemies at a heart level, sow financial seeds into them. Jesus said so! Give an offering and bless them with your secret prayer life. Both, a truly sacrificial offering. Keep giving and keep blessing them until you feel released to stop and until your heart is not hurt, angry, or bitter. You will be transformed into the image of Christ. This is what our Father wants.

Chris did come home and is nine years healed of leukemia. It took two years of jumping through CPS hoops again, but God did yet another miracle. During those two years, I sowed and prayed. I still give to St Jude and Phoenix Children’s Hospital to this day in faith for cures, and because my son is under their court ordered oversight until he is 18.

Today I am thankful to the doctors and nurses that Chris grew to love, that took care of him in my absence and still love on him at his yearly cancer screenings. In the place where I was banned from the hospital, there has been redemption, and I now bring my son once again. We celebrate the miracles of him being healed from a rare childhood cancer and us being brought back together as a family.