Angelic Help

God is the awesome God that just amazes me at everything He does.  Even when we don't understand things, in time He gives us revelation of how awesome and wonderful He is.  God uses what we see as a tragic situation to show us and others that He's the sovereign God. He does what He wants to do when He wants to do it and how He wants to do it.  Cancer just didn't affect Rondell, it affected our whole family. We all felt the emotions, pain, uncertainty, loss, hurt, fear and stress of it.  Just having the uncertainty of not knowing if he was going to wake up every morning or what the next doctor's visit would be like was so emotional for everyone. Cancer is a disease that so unpredictable; especially when it's at the advanced stages in which Rondell was diagnosed (Stage 4). Through it all, God showed me that He sent us Angelic help to go through the things we endured.

In the movie, "God's Not Dead," which everyone needs to see, the professor wanted his class to declare on a piece of paper that "God is Dead." There was only one student in the class that said he couldn't do what the professor wanted because of his faith.  Well I won't share the whole movie, but in the end, the student asked the professor why did he hate God and asked again and again until the professor broke and said "Because He took everything away from me!" The professor lost his mother at a young age to cancer.  He said he prayed and prayed and asked God not to let his mother die and she died. He went on to say what kind of God takes a young boy's mother from him? (Sounds so familiar, I said the same thing). The student told him sometimes God answers no.  Again, so REAL to me!! Ok I won't share anymore.. Go see it for yourself!!! 

When it was time for Jesus to go to the cross to be crucified for our sins, Jesus could have easily changed His mind or God, who sent His Son Jesus, could have said no these people are not worth dying for. Isaiah 55:8 says, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." God's gracious thoughts exceed all human imagination. No one can fathom the depths of His wisdom.  But us in our human nature just want to try and figure things out or try to tell God how we want things to be. God knows what He is doing. It may be hard to accept at times, but He created us. So how we come in 2014 and think we have all the answers or better solutions than God.  I just love the angelic help that God gave my family.  God sent angelic help for Rondell to go through what he went through, and he sent us angelic help as well to stand with Rondell and to be there for him every step of the way.  We prayed and prayed for cancer to go away, but God chose to strengthen Rondell through the cancer instead of eliminating cancer. I still have all the little notes that the kids wrote to their father about staying strong and keeping the faith and declaring healing and how much they loved him. Angelic Help. Go back to Jesus praying in the Garden for God to take the cup away from Him. God's answer to Jesus' prayer did not allow His Son to avoid suffering.  However, God did provide angelic help for Jesus to face what was coming.  Sometimes God answers prayer by eliminating trials; sometimes He answers by strengthening us in the midst of them.  God gave Jesus strength to go the cross.  Even though Jesus prayed to take the cup away from Him (the cross), God chose to strenghthen Him that Jesus could go to the cross.  When God takes trials away easily, we tend to forget about it and God.  But when God gives us strength through a trial, those are the ones that stick with us. The greater the trial, the greater the Glory God gets!!! I promise you, the trial of losing a spouse sticks forever. When we first told the kids that their father passed away, Rylee our second daughter asked in tears, "Mommie what are we going to do without daddy?" God that broke my heart. How do I respond to that when I was thinking the same thing? I couldn't tell her I don't know. My response was, "we are going to live and keep on living for the Lord and one day we will see daddy again." That was God speaking at that time. Angelic Help. When I was about to walk out and just leave my kids and everything because of grief, hurt and so much pressure, God spoke through Jornea our third daughter while I was lying on the floor screaming and crying, and said "Momma, sometimes you just have to let God handle it." Angelic Help.  When some said I wasn't going to make it without Rondell or that I would go running back home because I just couldn't do this by myself or take care of 6 children by myself. No I am not doing this by myself.  It is hard sometimes.  I know it looked impossible, but with God ALL things are possible.  There is nothing too hard for HIM. Two words Angelic Help. I've had so much angelic help that I cannot even put it all on this one post. Just know that God takes care of His people. God is GOOD!!!

I will always thank God for the angelic help and the strength He has given me.  He's still giving me strength. All I can do is just shake my head in amazement and just thank GOD!!!! He is truly a wonder!!!!

 

Memories of Words

Hello everyone. I know you are probably wondering where I've been.  Well I've been one busy person. I haven't had time to really sit and continue this blog.  Last month marked 2 years since Rondell has been gone. Time is certainly flying by.  Of course I think about Rondell quite often.  I think about who he was as a person, as a husband, as a father, most of all as a true man of God.  I saw God transform him into a new creature. 

When cancer came into our lives, I remember Rondell saying he asked God why him? Why was he dealing with cancer? He said God told him "because you can handle it." Whatever Rondell went through in life, he said he could control or fix.  But this was one problem he couldn't fix.  This was the one thing he had no control over.  He had to completely and totally depend on God for this particular situation. I can still hear him saying "Tangie, God has put me in a place where I cannot fix this...There is nothing I can do except pray and live everyday as if it is my last day. For once in my life, my hands are tied." What a hard and tight place to be in. 

I cannot tell you how many times we prayed and fasted repeatedly for total healing and deliverance of cancer. Some may say God didn't answer our prayers. Honestly, yes I did too think the same way when our whole world changed once again on January 30, 2012. I would be lying if I said I was acceptable to everything on that dreadful day. Of course I questioned God. "God Why?" "God where were you?" "Why didn't you answer our prayers?" "What kind of God are you to take a father away from his children?" Yes I caught a tantrum with God. But after I had gotten all of the frustration and anger out, I quickly apologized and repented to God because He's still God.

God then brought back to my rememberance June 6, 2006, when the door called cancer was opened. The doctors really weren't hopeful for Rondell's recovery back then. God then showed me the time that the cancer was trying to literally "choke" Rondell's tubes to his kidneys which caused a great deal of pain and sleepless nights for Rondell. Then God showed me how I could have been left pregnant with our twin girls giving birth to them by myself. But Rondell was here for that and for 9 months of their lives. Rondell was a miracle. If God really wanted to take Rondell, He could have taken him in 2006. However, that wasn't Rondell's appointed time to leave the earth.  There was more work to be done and more of God's glory to shine through Rondell.

So yes God did answer our prayers, but the answer was no to healing on this side. We must all come to realize that God's answer to prayer is not always yes, yes, yes. His answers are yes, no or wait.  The will of God is perfect. He does not make mistakes. He knows what's best for us. He knows what we need and when we need it. He knows what we need before we even know what we need.

Through all of this God has shown me that His will is going to be done no matter what. It's okay to make plans and have dreams for the future, but God's plans will always supercede your plans.  I look back and think about all the plans Rondell and I made for the future. We were going to travel after retirement, watch our children grow up, see them off to college, see them have a family of their own and most of all traveling with RJ playing college football for Alabama and Nick Saban!!! (Rondell loved the Roll Tide!!!) At the blink of an eye, all of that changed. I've learned to look at things differently. I don't belong to myself. My life is not my own.  I am nothing without God.  I cannot breathe without God. I can't even move without God. Life is but a vapor.

The Journey Begins....

As I stated previously, doctors said that Rondell would need this and need that.  They threw out several scenarios that could have possibly happened.  But overall, Rondell just had to do chemotherapy.  We were very hesitant about chemo, because we thought if he did chemo that we were not relying on God to deliver and heal him from this disease.  What we came to realize that God heals in so many different ways and He does what He wants to do regardless of what we do or don't do because He is God.

While on chemo, Rondell didn't have any of the normal symptoms that came with chemo.  No hair loss, weight loss, or tiredness, but with every type of chemo, there were some slight side affects.  Most of them made him vomit and feel really yucky and clammy.  He had several different types of chemo which came in different forms from pills to the "chemo buddy pack."  (I never liked to call it that).  The chemo buddy pack was a little device that looked like a walkman radio that he carried on his side.  While he did his normal daily activities, the buddy was pumping chemo into his system through a port that was put under the skin on the left side of his chest.  He would do two full days of chemo this way, one day at the doctor's office and the rest at home.  Then they would remove it the third day.  This would be done twice a month.  The pills would be done for 14 days straight.  Some of these treatments would have his hands, feet and tongue with black spots.  Others would have his hands, tongue and feet sensitive to anything cold.  If he touched, stepped on or dranked anything cold, he told me it felt like needles going through his hands, tongue and feet.  So while taking treatments, at times he would have to drink lukewarm drinks or drinks without ice.  During the winter times he would have to stay indoors pretty much or protect his hands and face from the cold weather.  At any little touch of coldness, he would feel it. 

Even though Rondell endured all of this physically, he still managed to live life and to enjoy it.  He didn't let cancer hinder him or keep him down.  He never missed a day's work, nor one single worship service unless he worked that Sunday.  If he wasn't at work, he was at service.  He was very faithful and diligent in both.  Rondell would get treatment on a Monday, go to work Tuesday night, get off Wednesday morning, go the clinic to have the pump removed, and then go back to work Wednesday and Thursday night to finish his shift.  Even when he had the pills to take, he would work while taking the pills.  When working nights on weekends, he would work 12 hour shifts Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday night.  On Sunday morning, he would get about 3-4 hours of sleep, get up for worship service, leave worship service, drop us off at home, grab something quick to eat and be right back at work that Sunday night.  There were times when I would tell him he needed to stay home and rest.  His reply was "Tangie, God has been too good to me to skip out on Him."  My God, if we all had that mindset....  Some skip out on God when He don't give us what we want or when we are just too tired to go to church.   I really admire and look up to him for that, because he taught me so much.  He taught me how to press through no matter how I was feeling.  If he could continue on with everything he was dealing with, what's wrong with me?  "Someone is always worse off than you are," he would say.  If he could endure and persevere through all the pain he dealt with and still give God praise and glory, what's wrong with me?  Can you imagine yourself going through something like this for 5 1/2 years??  Just think about it for a minute.  Being poked, stuck by needles, having a poison called chemo being pumped into your system, being up at night vomiting and gagging, not being able to really rest at night because of the buddy making it uncomfortable to sleep, having your family see you go through all of this, being told that there was no cure for this disease and that you will die from this disease.  Who would have imagined that my husband, Rondell Lee Honor, Sr., would have to deal with such a great trial at a young age???   I didn't.......

Stage 4 Colon Cancer, are you serious??????

My husband Rondell was a very active and energetic person all his life.  He always played sports and worked out quite often.  I still cannot see how colon cancer invaded his body at such a young age with no prior family history of cancer.  He had the number 1 symptom, rectal bleeding.  I am not sure at what age, but he had a case of hemorroids.  After we got married, he started telling me that he had been noticing blood in his stool.  He went to the doctor and the doctor told him it was probably from him straining and working out a lot.  Then I look back and think about how he would get shortness of breath every now and then.  He went to the doctor for that and they couldn't find anything wrong.  So we thought it was just something seasonal going on with allergies. So we move up North and the bleeding becomes worse.  He goes to the doctor and the doctor asks for a stool sample finding a great amount of blood in the stool.  The doctor sets up a colonoscopy with the gastro specialist where he tells us it is indeed colon cancer.  So Rondell has surgery the next day to remove the diseased part of his colon.  Surgery goes well; however, the surgeon comes to us with the news that it was Stage 4 colon cancer.  It was no longer confined to the colon where it started.  It had gotten into his liver and his lungs.  Are you serious??  My mouth dropped.  He told us there was no stage 5.  Stage 4 is the final stage of this disease.  He said that Rondell was going to have a fight ahead of him, with chemo, possible radiation, radiation and chemo and maybe even a liver transplant.  How could something like this been overlooked for sooo long?  If he was diagnosed with Stage 4 at 30 years old, how long had this disease been progressing in his body.  Who gets colon cancer at such a young age?  Colon cancer is supposed to be for people aged 50 and over.  They don't recommend screening until the age of 50 unless there is family history of cancer.  Rondell had no known family history of colon cancer and certainly he was too young to even consider colon cancer; therefore, doctors didn't push the issue for further tests.

I think for us, we just didn't know about colon cancer.  I do know that when I heard those words, it felt like someone punched me in my stomach.  It was like a blow I never had before.  We didn't know the signs and symptoms of this disease.  This disease would have been the last thing I would have thought was Rondell's problem.  We just took the doctors word for everything we were being told. 

I am posting this to inform people about how serious it is to be proactive about your health.  No matter what the doctors may tell you, if you feel that something is not right, be persistent about your health.  Request more tests.  Know your family history so doctors can serve and help your situation.