Romans828

The following occurs between 10am and 10pm on 4/12/2010 in at Providence Hospital in Beaverton Oregon.

Events occur in real-time

My mother has been fighting metastasized breast and colon cancer for 12 years.  After having a full mastectomy, lymph nodes removed, and several other surgeries, her tumors recently  progressed into her liver, and abdomen. After a long fight her Oncologist confirmed the frightening reality that her cancer appeared to have progressed past a treatable stage. Additionally, the treatment was making her more sick because of the devastating effects of chemotherapy.

After painfully swallowing this reality, my father and I retreated to a waiting room where we discussed the next steps. The overwhelming reality that she had reached what appeared to be a terminal state was difficult to comprehend, yet it was upon us. The social worker came to discuss outpatient options for home hospice care. On top of being emotionally overwhelmed and drained we were unknowingly in for a life shocking surprise.

Kathlene discussed options from hourly rate in-home care, nursing home full time care, to at home 24/hr care. It was immediately apparent that it would cost between $2000-$9000+/month for care. Medicare would cover the occasional hospice visits, however should we require ongoing 6-8 hour+ at a time care we would have to pay for independent providers. The cost being approx $200-$400/day.

The shocking reality of the projected costs for several months of care were devastating. It was discussed that the only perceived options would be for myself to move in with my parents to care for mom, which would cause an extreme hardship on my family in Las Vegas, or we would have to convince mom to move in with me in Las Vegas. Neither being viable options.

After hours of agonizing discussions about the fate of our beloved mother I prayed for guidance and began to feel that there was a reason this was happening. To understand this feeling consider that over the past few months my mother and father had been positioning themselves to purchase my late grandmother's house and thus buying her sister out of her share of the inherited property. The sisters greed and stated they were merely waiting on the final contract. However, their behavior displayed a different story.

Without going into specifics, the pattern of behavior exhibited between the time grandma passed and led us to logically conclude that there was the appearance of an alterior motive surrounding grandmas house. More specifically it was suspected  based on this consistent pattern that the sisters were shockingly waiting for my mother to pass so they could re present the house to court so they could sell it for a higher cash price. This was consistent with the position they took surrounding the final appraised value of the house.

Facing this potential reality was devastating to my mother and father but was a reality they had been preparing to contend with. Their plan was to utilize all of Dads credit and financial resources to finance the house after the signed agreement, then pay back (buy out) the other sister from her 1/2 of the property. I would then take over the payments and move into the house thus keeping it in the family. Both he and mom where frustrated because they desperately wanted to keep grammas house as a way of honoring her wishes about family.

Dad and I went out to dinner and searched for possible solutions and we were out of options. I then believe God gave me the answer.

I confidently told Dad that if we allowed Grammas house to go up for sale and not attempt to purchase it, then he could use the money he set aside for home purchase expenses and apply that towards mom's immediate health care needs.  I told him that this I perceived this as an absolute God inspired win-win. He can take care of mom without risking taking time off and potentially losing his job, he will have the money to take care of her immediately, he would later recoup those expenses from the sale of the house, and she will be confident that the two of them can work it out without her feeling she has become a burdon. They were concerned whether my wife and I would be disappointed because we would be giving up moving into grammas house, and we assured them absolutely not.

I told them I believe this was an answer that God gave me to present to you. It was his way of telling me/us that there is a choice. The choice can be made to go after the materialistic possession (i.e. house) and struggle to fight what WE feel we want and is best, or we can look at the amazing opportunity He presented for us to provide what is NEEDED should we so choose. I explained how there is a reason why the contract for sale had not been approved days or weeks ago. There was a reason the sisters had stalled in the contract approval process. There was a reason that he was in the position to take care of everything he needed IF he made the right choice.There was a reason why I was here and was literally forced to stay as long as I did because I had completely run out of cash and was awaiting payday!

I told him that an excerpt from the Bible that I truly live my life by is from the book of

Romans 8:28

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love God, and who have been called according to His purpose.

In this case I felt incredibly blessed to have had a direct experience where I can unquestionably see how God took a bad situation around the strife and unnecessary resentment and pain caused by the adversarial position my mothers sisters assumed around the sale of grammas house, and He turned that into an opportunity to DO GOOD by helping my mother and providing for her exactly what she needs.

I will never forget this experience and will always believe it was God communicating directly with me to provide His answer.