Life is good – in a new direction - by Peter

intro - Something new
part 1 - Peter Begins
part 2 - Peter Part 2
.... and now he continues his telling .....

We had a great vacation in 2006. We spent a week with friends in Kanasikis Country. I saw this t-shirt that just seemed to describe my life so I bought it – “Life is Good”. After that Carol and I headed for Glacier and Yellowstone National parks. Yellowstone is such a diverse and unique place.

On the way home Carol suddenly got this really high fever that lasted all day. We stopped in this small town for night and after a good nights sleep she felt much better. Hmmmm. She had developed a problem with acid reflux which had prevented her from singing - truly her physical gift. In the fall something just didn’t seem right and she eventually went to the doctor to get checked out. An ultra-sound was scheduled for after Christmas as the doc thought likely she was having gall bladder problems. She had another bought of high fever in January 07 that kept her from substitute teaching, it lasted a week or so – no reason found.

The night before the doctor was to review the results with her, Carol came to me and said look at this – showing me something on the web about possible causes of unexplained high fever – liver cancer. I put that out of my mind (well not really – how can you – but I tried). I came home early as her appointment was the last one of the day – my cell phone rang at 5 PM. It was Carol – she said: “Peter, it is the worst possible news – there are two tumours in my liver”. I hung up and shrieked at God – “What are you doing?! How am I supposed to live without her? I can’t do this!!” We just clung to each other when I got home. What now?

People generally wanted us to take the most optimistic option – preliminary results; don’t really know exactly what it is; stay positive. Somehow we both just knew. Six months earlier we had downed tools at church and walked away – asking God to give us a new direction. Now it had arrived. We both had the sense that God had other options in mind besides a miracle cure.

A biopsy confirmed that it was indeed Ocular Melanoma spread to her liver. The oncologist talked to us for 2 hours but basically said – go home, keep on taking Tylenol, come back when the pain gets too bad. OM metastasis has no standard treatment options that are at all effective.

So how do you live when your timeline is short – measured in months?

I was reading in Ecclesiastes at the time and had bumped across some verse that seemed to be God’s message for us. They are still on the fridge and taped to my monitor at work. Check them out – Ecclesiastes 5:18-20 – “Make the most of what God gives”. The key word is today. Each day is God’s special day.

Carol kept a journal and this is what she wrote on February 16, 2007.

God, when you start thinking you are going to die it bowls you over. Then another strange emotion which is unnamed takes over. Acceptance and? So I ask you to keep my mind in order. Keep it on the track of wisdom, keep me always aware that you are in charge and that’s a very good thing. I love you Father. I need you every step of the way.

We started doing things together. First up was a trip to Palm Springs with our friends.



Wow, we had a great time visiting and exploring. Here we are in Joshua Tree National Park.
Carol’s family came over to visit. This is Carol with her niece’s baby daughter. Two people. Two ends of life’s journey.

We got organized and took the whole family off to Hawaii. We had always planned to do that – always seemed off in the future.
This was, I think, one of my life’s highlights – Carol would agree.
Just a super time to spend with our family. We had rented a house right on the beach about 45 minutes out of Honolulu.

We could relax and eat together, sun bath on the beach or go sight seeing.

We went snorkelling, sailing, visited Pearl Harbour, Waikiki beach, Diamond Head, Banzai Pipeline (home of 70ft waves).

We took in a luau one evening – I think it was my birthday actually.

I think you will agree – not bad looking after 27+ years of marriage - don’t you think?!

God did something amazing on this trip actually. As we were flying Carol turned to me and said – this might be a big mistake – I am really uncomfortable.
The tumours in her liver caused pain and swelling and sitting too long was not pleasant. Our bed in Hawaii seemed way too hard.

The amazing thing? Every night in Hawaii? She slept like a log and had no discomfort or pain AT ALL!! She was able to do everything we all did except the hike up Diamond Head.









I think I will leave you here for today – see you soon.

Peter Part 2

Here is the next entry from Peter ( Need some back round? Read the Intro and Peter Begins)

A Changed Life

Twenty years actually goes by pretty fast. Those first twenty years of married life were about getting to know each other, starting and raising our family, getting tied up (or is it down?) with stuff like a mortgage, working like crazy, doing church stuff; Carol taught Sunday school, sang in the choir, we managed to become deacons, led a care group. Like I said last time, lots of time and energy doing things for the Father; not much time being with the Father.

Mark Buchanan in his book Your God is too Safe calls this living in the borderlands. Not really fully with the Father and not against him either (well at least not obviously). I think most of us fall into this place way too easily; it is such a comfortable place to be.

Change happened slowly and largely un-noticed (at least by me). You can see it on the chart from my previous entry. Something happened that has changed me forever. A couple of things actually. The first occurred when I took a position as our church leader (NO, not a pastor!). One of the Pastors asked how she could pray for me. I also started attending Saturday morning prayer times. Turns out this changed my life – somewhere along the way I fell in love with my Abba, my true Father.
Now that I think back on it – quite amazingly – Carol was going through the same experience. What a gift to a married couple to both be moving toward the Father – together!

Speaking of gifts, I now realize that we both received one. I was given the gift of being able to strongly relate to my Abba through worship. I get such strong messages from him by worshiping him – mostly through music but not always. I remember when it happened. We were having Thursday evening services during the summer (and we got the weekends free!) We had a visiting band playing. I remember the leader just inviting us to enter the Holy of Holies and worship. Something flung open in my heart and ever since – well if you see me, my eyes are closed and tears are flowing – don't be alarmed – just me and my Abba having a conversation.

I discovered after we got married that when Carol thought of her father she became anxious and was really unsure of her relationship with him. He had the power in her life to reduce her to tears by saying just a few words. Slowly, over the course of years together, we learned how to disconnect her father’s words from having that power in her life. She became able to see past the rough edges of her father’s personality and look deeper and see the love that was there all along.

After her Father died, Carol received her gift while we were visiting a church. A woman started describing the incredible love of the Father for his children. The true Father opened Carol’s heart and the incredible, hard to fully grasp, too good to be true but isn’t, the love of the true Father for her; just for her; poured into her. In the years that followed this love sustained her; drew her ever closer to her true Father and spilled out of her.
In her own words she described her life’s journey:

“I began a relationship that at times was close, many times distant and often confusing. I experienced many things that at times made me wonder how much I really wanted this relationship. I came to realize how much God actually loved me as I am. This realization gave me a joy and purpose in my life. My relationship with the God of creation is worth living for.”

One more thing happened. In July of 2000, Carol phoned me at work after a visit to her optometrist and said: there is a lump in my left eye. One week later we were in the office of an ocular oncologist who said: You have a malignant tumor about the size of the tip of my little finger in the lining in the back of your eye. A very rare form of skin cancer. Skin cancer – in your eye – who knew?!

There are a number of treatments; if your tumor is small enough they use radiation. Hers was, so one day she checked in the hospital for treatment. They took her eyeball out, sewed a radioactive disc to the back of eyeball – carefully aligned so it would radiate the tumor, put her eyeball back in and 24 hours later we came home. She lay on the couch for a week while the radiation did its thing, then back to the hospital to do the reverse. Simple, eh?

The radiation did its intended job of killing the tumor slowly – we went back every six months or so for a checkup – always a bit anxious – the news was always good, tumor dying, not much leakage. The radiation also had the side effect of largely killing her vision in her eye – she eventually was reduced to seeing around the edges and then mostly in black and white.

Life carried on and you know what, it got better. Let me tell you – being married to your beloved, your soul mate, it actually gets better.
This is a picture of our family on Erik’s wedding day – our 25th wedding anniversary year. No, you are not mistaken, a VERY good looking family – and this before digital cameras!

A couple of thoughts to leave you with:

1. When God comes calling, let him have his way. Borderland is not any way to live your whole life.
2. I never could have imagined back in July 1979 the depth and width and breadth that would make up being married to my beloved. Stay the course, IT GETS BETTER PEOPLE!
3. I believe in hope that every marriage can be rescued. That the Father can and will restore love even when it is lost.

See you next time.

What AM I doing?

I was telling a friend the other day how I have a certain time of year when I reevaluate my goals and purpose in life. Ask the "why?" questions. I don't really choose it it seems to choose me. I ask it of myself but it feels like something outside of me is asking me. "What ARE you doing HERE? Why did you move away from family to be in this place? Why do you stay?" maybe it's God asking? I've written about this before. And here I am 2 years later and I am at the ..."What ARE you doing HERE? Why did you move away from family to be in this place? Why do you stay?"
.....
I know somethings it's not, it's not to live the "good life", have a "good" day and survive Manitoba, yet that is what most of my days appear to be about. About surviving.. at least it seems this past winter was (Ok and I'm talking about the overall focus not the obviously necessary daily routine. and yes I do want to have a good day but I hope you get my point that it isn't, or shouldn't be, focused on ME)
Really I appreciate this "question time" because for as long as I can remember mediocrity has a bad taste to me, I'd rather be weird and foolish to this world than mediocre ... and yet I don't seem to get it because I slip into a groove and what I don't want to do I do ... yap we've heard this before, Paul wrote it in his letter to the Romans "I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway."
.....
So what now?
....
I guess I ask Abba to show me,... to inspire me,.. to encourage me, to teach me, to refocus me, to reduce me, to increase Him, so I can serve Him, know Him, love Him, bless Him, be focused on Him.

Do you question too? Do you live to survive? Do you ask why?

(More from Peter in a few days)

Peter Begins

This is the first post in a series of writings from Peter Wolfe about his life, just for us, see here for the intro.

My Normal Life

I am currently just short of 54 years old. I was married for 10,192 days, or 27 years, 10 months and 22 days – about 10,192 days too short in my view. I always knew my wife Carol. We grew up in the same small town, Yarrow, BC. There is a picture of us sitting side by side in Sunday school when we were 4 or 5 years old. Except for one year, we went to the same public and private schools thru graduation. We both graduated from UBC, Carol as a teacher in ‘79 and I in Engineering in ‘81.

We never really spent any time together until university days. Carol’s best friend married my best friend – both also from Yarrow. They arranged us spending time together and soon the sparks flew. I fell for Carol hard – I still remember lying on my bed in my dorm and feeling this flush come over me and realizing – I LOVE HER - and then feeling panic because that meant marriage and I wasn’t ready!
We must have been fast learners because we started dating in September ‘78 and by Christmas we KNEW. We got married on July 28 1979.

This is Carol’s UBC grad picture … my favorite early picture of her.

After I graduated from UBC we went off to Europe for what I thought was a vacation but Carol had a plan – her name turned out to be Rachel. After Erik then Kelly were born – 3 years, 3 kids – we put a stop to all that and began the life journey of being parents – what a pleasure that was. All three are now married – and NO, no grandkids (yet).














This is a picture of my family. Left to right is Holly & Erik (son), Conrad & Kelly (daughter), me, Rachel (daughter) & Chris. Yes you are right – a very good looking family.

I have worked in the software development field in positions of increasing responsibility for almost 30 years now. I can truly say that I love what I do. Most days, going to work is something that I enjoy.

My journey with my true Father began when I was very young – I think I was 6 or 7 years old and “gave my life to Jesus” at home after one of those fire and brimstone and “just as I am” evenings we used to have at church. Church was always part of my life growing up as was true for Carol. Looking back I think one of the reasons for the joy on earth that was our marriage was because we were similar in lots of ways including our spiritual journeys. This picture shows a graph of my passion for the true Father over the years. As you can see there was a flat line period. The jump came when I met Carol – on Christmas Eve ’78 I decided to say yes again to following Jesus. The next 20 or so years, well, there was lots of energy spent on doing things for the Father but not much energy being with the Father. That’s part of the next installment.

So what would you do if you could have your life to do over? You know, start again, a new beginning? From this period of my life I would:

Spend less time at work. Carol said she used to sit with the kids by the window and say “Daddy, we need you”, waiting for me to come home. Work matters, just less than we think.
There are a few arguments I wish I could replay. In ALL cases I was the stubborn ass. I wish I could have those back and say “I was wrong” … very powerful words, for men particularly I think.
Mostly, I imagine falling in love with my true Father much sooner.

See you next time.

Peter

Leave a comment for Peter if you like.