Sarah Denman

Several years back when our family was undergoing a lot of changes, God brought these amazing ladies into my life. Little did I know how much I would grow to love them. They came into our life shortly after my best friend had moved away, my father had died and some other groups we had been part of had dissipated.

From the beginning there was something special about these sweet ladies. They invited me to participate in their weekly study group. They cultivated an atmosphere of trust that allowed me to be real and vulnerable with them. It was a beautiful, rare group. After a long time of meeting, a couple families moved, and it made it difficult to meet weekly. However, we still found reasons to stay in touch and meet on a regular basis.

Through the years we have grown as we have laughed and cried together, shared in joys and sorrows. We’ve watched our kids grow and mature together. We’ve celebrated new babies, grieved over the loss of family members, supported and prayed together through different illnesses, rejoiced over healings. Over the years we have walked through various life events, and each event has knitted us closer together.

When I was diagnosed, I fully expected these ladies to come along side us with prayer. I did not expect the rest. Not only have they fervently prayed on our behalf, cried with us, laughed with joy at each triumph. They organized and set up the care calendar, child-care help, grocery help and set up and ran the garage sale for fundraising. I cannot even comprehend the amount of things done “behind the scenes” to help our family.

James and I have continually been amazed. We never expected the help or the love we have received. All of you have given us such a sweet glimpse of what the body of believers should look like. We have been humbled and yet honored by the continual show of love. Now I cannot imagine what it would be like to go through this alone. I know that what we have is rare, to have all of you supporting and rooting us on. I can tell you we feel loved. Our burdens have been lifted in more ways that we can count.

I am not sure how to articulate all of this very well, but I have to tell you that God is trying to show me his love for me. Our sweet nurse told me, “you must be a bit stubborn.” James says I am going to need a flying pig to tell me of God’s love. Um, yes, I am a bit hard headed (okay, more than a bit-sheesh), I am not the best student when it come to receiving and absorbing these lessons. BUT I am getting better, and I am catching on at a faster pace.

As another sweet friend told me, God is reparenting you, he is showing you how much a father loves his daughter. He is teaching me to rely on him for every need. He has been gentle in his dealings with me but also firm. I feel like he is calling me out, saying “It is time, let’s go to the next level.” My heart is being softened, my eyes are being opened.

Thanks, friends, for being Keepers and showing me God’s love in so many tangible ways.

The kids have really been enjoying the humming birds around our trailer. Our neighbor Rhonda donated some feeders so we have had numerous birds each one with its own color. We have not told anyone because it just has not been something significant to talk about.

Today my supervisor gave Sarah a card with the following quote in it:

“Legends say that Hummingbirds float free of time, carrying our hopes for love, joy and celebration. The hummingbird’s delicate grace reminds us that life is rich, beauty is everywhere, every personal connection has meaning and that laughter is life’s sweetest creation.”

I am still in love with these events where things connect and are given life. I can’t ignore them. There is no science that can define them, and soon as I try to apply logic or find a way to increase the presence of these connections, they flee from me.

They seem to be gifts of grace given from above, a gentle physical reminder that He is with us.

Another piece of the puzzle and an answer to prayer:

Early in our diagnosis a friend (Kristin) had set up an appointment with a Nutritional Counselor. We had forgotten all about it.

Around Monday or Tuesday out of frustration with all of the supplements, “dos’ and dont’s” James vented, “I really wish we could find someone with knowledge to help us go through all of this and tell us what is truly needed.”

Not long after this we received a text from Kristin asking if we wanted to keep our appointment with this doctor. Our first response was one of reluctance because we are kind of tired of doctor appointments. Slowly the light finally came on and we realized we had JUST asked for this very thing. 🙂

It took considerable effort to make this appointment, but we plowed ahead and made it.

We are SO glad we did. We took all of my lab work, supplements etc.; he went through all of it with us and told us specifically what we could eliminate, what to keep and what to take after treatment for recovery, and he explained why. Some of the stuff I was taking could have blocked the chemo from working as effectively.

He also talked about my diet. I feel like he cleared up so much for us. We walked out of the appointment feeling like we had received a piece of freedom! He added some things back into my diet that I had been avoiding (and missing). He also gave me instructions on some things to eat that will help me stay healthy through chemo but not interfere with the chemo. For instance, I need to be eating only cooked vegetables and eating easily digestible foods and cooking with meat (bone) broth to support healing of my gastric track. He also gave some tips to minimize weight loss as  this could be dangerous going forward.

He spent close to 2 hours with us instead of the allotted 1 hour slot. We closed his office down! We are getting good at this!

We are still processing much of what he taught us. We feel so much better about what we are doing nutritionally. We keep learning and absorbing as we go through this. There is so much information to filter.

God has given us a peace about what we are doing and an assurance that He will see me through it. To have this doctor come along side of us and provide knowledge and experience to compliment the chemo is just priceless to me.

Though we are in the worst storm of Sarah’s life, I continually feel we are in safe place. We are experiencing amazing things during this time. I am learning so much about our connection in the body of believers. There is something between all of us that holds us together; some call it the Holy Spirit, others say it is because we are one body in Christ.

There have been several times that something comes up that could have been a concern, but then almost immediately someone calls/text with a solution, an encouraging thought, maybe a scripture that we were already reading. Someone could dismiss these experiences as a one off or a coincidence, but these experiences are happening often times with 3-5 different people.

Just a few examples:

Sarah was driving home from an appointment in the beginning, and somewhere between prayers she had thought to herself, “It sure would be nice to get some family pictures done before all this gets going.” She quickly dismissed it because the idea seemed too complicated. Within a few days we received a few offers to have our family pictures taken for free and on her schedule. Sarah had not mentioned it to anyone, she merely thought it.

During all of this I have been responsible for figuring out logistics of how and where we were going to move into Austin. I had mentioned to Sarah that I wasn’t sure where were going to put the trailer. Within a few hours a friend texted that we could move the trailer to his place, and within 2 weeks we had several offers.

You all know the story of the house we will be living in over the summer. It is a total gift.

There have been several times that people have sent encouraging scriptures, often the same scriptures come up over and over again. But in the beginning  it was the timing of when the scriptures were mentioned and then the scripture itself and finally the fact that the people who were sending them were from completely different walks of life, God knows no denomination. There were people praying for Sarah that usually don’t pray or aren’t really sure what they believe.

Other situations have been conversations with several different people (6+) that do not know each other and some did not know Sarah, but they would say specific things about emotional baggage or about the digestion of foods. These people would encourage her to have quiet time, meditate, let go or process anything that she was holding on to. They would also talk about the importance of her diet and talk specifically about her digestion. It has been hard not to chuckle or laugh when these events happen over and over again.

Even small events like the one during Chemo.  If you reread Sarah’s post about my vision of her circling the boxing (cancer) ring, it will make more sense.

We were sitting in the infusion room, she was already hooked up to the hose getting saline. I said “Wait a minute, we need to start this all over. Lets unhook you and go back to the car.” She looked at me strangely. “I was supposed to play Eye of the Tiger for you!” she laughed it off. Within a few moments the nurse, who could not have heard me, set this brochure in front of us.

There are no coincidences, we have been surrounded with an army of loving people supporting us through this time. We are drawing closer to God more than ever before, and many people are being touched and encouraged through this journey. I am honored, humbled, perplexed, enlightened, encouraged and ultimately strengthened by this experience.

Finding Faith

To know without knowing
Trusting those quiet words
To believe without seeing
Trusting in your love for us
To follow your light
Feeling your warm embrace
To listen to the whispers of wisdom
Knowing we are safe

Update from 4/24-5/3

Over the last week my body has gone through numerous changes. Overall, it has not been as bad as I had envisioned. We’ve had a few bumps, but we’ve learned a lot and will hopefully be able to avoid some of them the next round. I am super grateful.

The day or two after chemo I felt fairly spry. They had me on a steroid that gave me a boost of energy. I thought, “Man if I feel this good, I can play soccer or go out on the boat or…”

Reality hit soon after. It started with a slow decline in energy. Sunday and Monday I spent a lot of time laying around. I felt similar to how you would feel when fighting a bug off, low energy, headachy and just an overall “blah” feeling.  Again, not too horrible but not so fun. My mouth and nose started drying out, nose bleeds started happening, and my mouth didn’t feel so great, kind of raw. My appetite was suppressed for sure.

Thankfully my husband stepped in and made me drink water and eat. Had he not insisted I probably would not have consumed much and would have paid for it later.  Normally, I know better, but I was feeling poorly, so nutrition was the last of my concerns. I am grateful for his care and his continual love and support. I am really blessed to have him in my camp.

Tuesday my energy levels felt better, and I was up and around more. Mid afternoon my chest started hurting. By evening it felt pretty tight, we decided to call the after-hours number to speak with the on call doctor. She dismissed the pain as heartburn with instructions to treat it accordingly. This diagnosis did not ring quite true.

Wednesday the pain was still there and increased as the day wore on. By this time I was confident I was not dealing with heartburn. Because of this and some other weird side effects, James called the head nurse, Colleen. We really like her; she is super spunky, down to earth, compassionate and on top of things. She determined we needed to go in to be checked out. Not what we wanted to hear, but off we went.Continue Reading