Endurance for the Journey, Featured, Grief

It was good for me that I was afflicted,
That I might learn your statutes.
PSALM 119.71 (NKJV)

By God’s grace, Nanci fixed her attention on His attributes. Only eight months into her cancer journey, she wrote,

“I honestly would not trade this cancer experience to go back where I was. These last months have been used by God to propel me into a deeper understanding and experience of His sovereignty, wisdom, steadfast love, mercy, grace, faithfulness, immanency, trustworthiness, and omnipotence.”

Psalm 119.71 says, “It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” If affliction was good for the psalmist, then withholding that affliction would have meant withholding good. The universe is first and foremost about the purposes, plans, and glory of God. God sees eternal purposes and plans and knows ultimate good in ways we cannot.

Our sovereign God weaves millions of details into our lives. He may have one big reason, or a thousand little ones, for bringing a certain person or success or failure or disease or accident into our lives. His reasons often fall outside our present lines of sight. If God uses cancer or a car accident to conform us to Himself, then regardless of the human, demonic, or natural forces involved, He will be glorified.

“Oh great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord of hosts, great in counsel and mighty in deed” (Jeremiah 32:18-19). God is at work behind the scenes, and one day we will understand our sufferings hidden purposes.

Written with permission by Randy Alcorn
and Eternal Perspective Ministries.
http://www.epm.org/

Excerpts taken from Randy Alcorn’s Blog.
Please learn about Randy’s new booklet to
be released this summer, Grieving with Hope.
https://store.epm.org/future-products/

On the journey with you,
Jan & Dave Dravecky

Endurance for the Journey, Featured, Grief

And we know that God causes everything to work together
for the good of those who love God and
are called according to His purpose for them.
ROMANS 8:28 (NLT)

Nanci and I experienced many glimpses of God’s sovereign purposes for years before her cancer diagnosis. We saw that my becoming an insulin-dependent diabetic 35 years ago was God’s plan to increase my dependence on Him. And we saw 30 years ago, that a lawsuit by an abortion clinic for $8.2 million was His way of moving me from pastoring a church we love into a ministry that reaches further than we ever imagined.

God’s hands were not tied by our difficult situations. He took bad situations and used them for His glory and our highest good. His sovereign grace far outstripped our hardships.

If this were not true, anyone facing a terminal illness would have to believe they experienced bad luck, and that God is either not as powerful or not as loving as He claims to be. Parents who have lost a child would have to believe the death was a meaningless accident, and that it wouldn’t have happened if only the child hadn’t been at that place at that time, or if that man hadn’t been driving drunk, or if a thousand other circumstances had been different.

If onlys and what ifs can rule our lives and drive us crazy. Instead, embracing God’s higher purposes – even when invisible to us in painful and tragic events – affirms God’s greatness. This is not fatalism. It is trust in the character and promises of our faithful, all-wise God.

My friend, David O’Brien, told me, with his slurred and laboring voice, that God used cerebral palsy to deepen his dependence on Christ. Was he better off? He lived convinced that his 81 years of suffering were no cosmic accident or satanic victory, but a severe mercy from the good hand of almighty God.

Written with permission by Randy Alcorn
and Eternal Perspective Ministries.
http://www.epm.org/
Excerpts taken from Randy Alcorn’s Blog.
Please learn about Randy’s new booklet to
be released this summer, Grieving with Hope.
https://store.epm.org/future-products/

On the journey with you,
Jan & Dave Dravecky

Endurance for the Journey, Featured, Grief

Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and
all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house.
And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil
that the LORD had brought upon him.
JOB 42:11 (ESV)

When our ministry, Eternal Perspectives, posted Nanci’s words, “My cancer is God’s servant,” someone responded “WHAT? God does not give people cancer. Jesus bore our sicknesses and carried our pains on the cross.”

That reader is not alone in trying to distance God from suffering. But by saying sickness comes only from Satan and the fall, not from God , we disconnect Him from our suffering and His deeper purposes. God is sovereign. He never permits or uses evil arbitrarily; everything He does flows from His wisdom and ultimately serves both His holiness and love.

Joni Eareckson Tada often shares the words of her friend, Steve Estes: “God permits what He hates to accomplish what He loves.” God’s “permitting” something is far stronger than it may sound. After all, whatever God permits actually happens; what he doesn’t permit doesn’t happen.

In the final chapter of Job, God reveals that Job’s family and friends “showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). The author told us from the beginning that Job’s troubles were Satan’s idea and actions. Yet the inspired wording indicates Satan’s efforts were, indirectly, by sovereign permission, God’s own doing. Many find this truth disturbing, but properly understood, it should be comforting. What should be profoundly disturbing is the notion that God stands by passively while Satan, evildoers, diseases, and random accidents ruin the lives of His beloved children.

Charles Spurgeon suffered terribly from depression, gout, rheumatism, neuritis, and a burning kidney inflammation. Yet he said, “It would be a very sharp and trying experience for me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me … that my trials were never measured out by Him, nor sent to me by His arrangement of their weight and quantity.”

Written with permission by Randy Alcorn
and Eternal Perspective Ministries.
http://www.epm.org/

Excerpts taken from Randy Alcorn’s Blog.
Please learn about Randy’s new booklet to
be released this summer, Grieving with Hope.
https://store.epm.org/future-products/

On the journey with you,
Jan & Dave Dravecky

Endurance for the Journey, Featured, Grief

By your appointment they stand this day,
For all things are your servant.
PSALM 119:91 (ESV)

In March of 2022, my beloved wife, Nanci, lost her four-year battle with colon cancer. All 54 years I’ve known her, Nanci loved Jesus. But from a front-row seat, I watched a wonderful – and supernatural – change in those last four years.

In 2019, Nanci wrote to a friend and fellow cancer sufferer, “The cancer battle has been tough. However, my time with the Ancient of Days (one of my favorite names for God) has been epic! He has met me in ways I never knew were possible. I have experienced His sovereignty, mercy, and steadfast love in tangible ways. I now trust Him at a level I never knew I could.”

I saw Nanci meditate on Scripture daily, read great books about God, and journal – writing out verses, powerful quotations from Spurgeon and many others, and personal reflections. One unforgettable morning, after meditating on Psalm 119:91, “All things are your servants,” she shared with me what she’d just written:

“My cancer is God’s servant in my life. He is using it in ways He has revealed to me and in many more I have yet to understand. I can rest knowing my cancer is under the control of a sovereign God who is good and does good.”

Brokenhearted and Thankful
Nine months later, at Nanci’s request and on short notice, our daughters and their families gathered to hear her speak final words of overflowing love for us and unswerving trust in her sovereign King.

As one of our grandsons sat beside her, listening to her struggling to speak and to me reading powerful words from her journals, he said, “Grams, if you can trust God in this, I know I can trust Him in whatever I’ll go through.” Another grandson told her, “I will never forget what you said to us today.”

Exactly one week later, I held her hand and watched her take her last breath in this world under the curse.

Every day during those four years, I witnessed God’s sanctifying and happy-making work in my wife: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope … because of God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 5:3-5).

Nanci and I – and thousands worldwide – prayed daily for her healing. God’s final answer was to rescue her from suffering and bring her into his presence where it is “better by far” (Philippians 1:23). Through her afflictions, He achieved in her an “eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17). She praised Jesus for it, and I will forever do the same, though I miss her immensely.

Written with permission by Randy Alcorn
and Eternal Perspective Ministries.
http://www.epm.org/

Excerpts taken from Randy Alcorn’s Blog.
Please learn about Randy’s new booklet to
be released this summer, Grieving with Hope.
https://store.epm.org/future-products/

(Last year we had the privilege of meeting Randy Alcorn and spending some time with him over dinner. We were both so encouraged by him and what he shared about his wife’s journey with cancer and the grief journey he had personally been on since she went to be with Jesus. Randy leads the ministry of Eternal Perspective Ministries and has written many excellent, encouraging books on heaven. Here at Endurance, we send out Randy’s devotional “50 Days of Heaven” in every Encouragement Grief Box that we send out. We feel honored that he would allow us to share with all of you excerpts from his Blog on his journey with his wife, Nanci, and his insights into his journey through grief. May you be encouraged by Randy’s words.)

On the journey with you,
Jan & Dave Dravecky

Endurance for the Journey, Featured, Grief

For everything there is a season,
a time for every activity under the sun.
A time to cry and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve and a time to dance.
ECCLESIASTES 3:1,4 (NLT)

It’s okay to grieve your new normal! People too often try to suppress the expression of other’s grief by making comments dripping in positivity or redirecting the sufferer from their grief because it makes them feel uncomfortable. Grief can rub others the wrong way because happiness and positivity is much more acceptable and comfortable to society overall. When a person is out of their comfort zone, they do what they can to change things to get back into their comfort zone even if it means they diminish someone else’s emotions. Humans like to fix things if they sense they are broken.

Even the DSM-5, which is the book of official diagnoses for psychological illnesses, created a new diagnosis in 2022 of “prolonged grief disorder.” I have such a problem with this because every human grieves differently in different ways and for different lengths of time. To force humanity into a box that squelches emotion is so wrong. Grief, about losing your body’s ability to function, does not mean you are broken, no matter how long you grieve or how you grieve!

Taking time to grieve yet trying not to dwell on the sorrow is a lifelong process and should be accepted, embraced and allowed. There is a time to grieve …

(Written with permission from the blog of Abi Gordon)
(Sign up for Abi’s Blog at EphemeralandFaithful.com)

On the journey with you,
Jan & Dave Dravecky

Endurance for the Journey, Featured, Grief

My heart cries out over Moab;
her fugitives flee as far as Zoar,
as far as Eglath Shelishiyah.
They go up the way to Luhith,
weeping as they go;
on the road to Horonaim
they lament their destruction.
ISAIAH 15:1-5 (NIV)

The ancients seem a lot better than we are at expressing deep emotion. We often bottle it up; they raised their voices in loud laments. “My heart cries out over Moab,” Isaiah wailed. We might follow their example.

I used to deny my feelings of sadness until my doctor insisted I let them out. One Christmas I was upstairs alone in our guest room, wrapping presents for the kids. I thought of past Christmas seasons when I would delight in choosing just the right gift for my parents. How I looked forward to watching them open their presents! But both had passed away years before and I would never be able to give them another Christmas gift. My heart was sad.

My first instinct was to run, get the children and cheer myself up. Then I recalled my doctor’s voice: “Stop!” So I stopped and allowed myself to feel. Soon I started to cry. I didn’t just cry; I wailed, feeling the sorrow from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. Yet after I was done, I felt lighter, cleaner. Crying felt so good that I wondered why I had avoided it for so many years.

A time to cry and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve and a time to dance.
ECCLESIASTES 3:4 (NLT)

On the journey with you,
Jan Dravecky

Endurance for the Journey, Featured, Grief

Then Joshua tore his clothes and
fell facedown to the ground
before the ark of the Lord,
remaining there till evening.
JOSHUA 7:6 (NIV)

When Joshua was overcome with grief and despair because of Achan’s sin, he didn’t try to keep a stiff upper lip or to stuff his emotions. Rather, he fell on his face before the Lord and expressed himself openly.

Here are a few thoughts on expressing grief, compiled by a panel of grief therapists: Don’t suppress the pain you feel; it will only resurface later. Experience it, feel it, and resist the temptation to “stuff it.” Grieving is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of integrity. Grief means you are being honest about the feelings in your heart.

Talk about your loss instead of trying to protect your friends and family by your silence. Seek out people who understand what you are experiencing.

Perhaps join a grief support group or see a grief counselor. It’s okay to tell family and friends what you want them to do to help you grieve.

No matter how you feel, talk with God. Even if you are angry, tell God. He’s big enough to handle your pain and your questions.

You’re blessed when you feel
you’ve lost what is most dear to you.
Only then can you be embraced
by the One most dear to you.
MATTHEW 5:4 (THE MESSAGE)

On the journey with you,
Dave Dravecky