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Do you have a “God Story”.  I have many, and this account is one of many that sticks with me.  I’d love to hear yours; you can leave a comment or send a message. 

“We’re moving to Florida”. We announced this to my parents in 2002, it was hard to believe, and we couldn’t figure out why we chose to move there. It wasn’t like we had been discussing this for years, heck not even months.  My parents lived there, and my husband thought maybe we’d like to retire there when the time comes.  He wasn’t overly happy in his current position at work and figured it would be a good time to move.  We did some internet searching at the housing market and he began looking for jobs near Brooksville Florida where my parents lived.  He went to a few interviews and had a few offers, but they weren’t the type of facility he wanted to work in.  He had another interview very close to Brooksville and was, basically, told he had the job, and he would hear from them in a couple of days.  He never heard back. It was pretty perplexing, but we figured with all of his experience, they didn’t want to pay what he was earning; they were a couple who owned the business.  He finally had an offer that he liked, and we decided to go for it. We were moving to Ocala.

We put our house up For Sale by Owner and started looking at houses via the internet.  We secured a realtor and decided to go house hunting in a month.  I had been putting in applications and had someone reach out to me for an interview.  I went down to see my parents and my sister came along.  I went to the interview and was hired on the spot.  My sister and I planned to go see a few houses with our realtor and bring some of the literature back to my husband.  We didn’t find anything that I liked, but it gave me a good feel for the town.  I still couldn’t believe we were doing this; I liked my job, I liked our hometown, and I hadn’t thought about moving, but something just felt like this is what we should do.

I was very involved in our church and was determined to find a church home in Ocala. In Illinois, I had been involved in several small groups and Disciple Bible studies and didn’t want to give that up.   I found a few church websites and reviewed what they believe in, what the worship style was like, and where they were located.  I found one that kept popping up called Ocala Word of Faith.  It seemed like the kind of church I could feel comfortable worshiping in, but I kept looking.

We planned a trip to Florida, giving ourselves 6 days to find a home.  No pressure, right?  I remember that week; we looked at so many homes and couldn’t find what we wanted in our price range.  Yes, our house sold on the first day we had an open house. We got the full asking price; we couldn’t believe it.  Things seemed to be lining up just the way they were supposed to.  On the second to last day in Florida, we found a house that we were going to put a bid on, but we just couldn’t decide if it was right for us.  It was empty and we sat there, with our realtor and looked at all of our options.  On a whim, we decided to look at a house that was just slightly out of our price range.  Our realtor called and the people were having a small party but decided to let us come over once they heard we were leaving the next day.  We fell in love with the house and made an offer.  They accepted and we started making our plans to purchase, move, and take the next step.

At work, my coworkers held a small going-away party and gave me some gifts.  One of the girls gave me a coffee mug with the word “Journey” on the front and the bible verse Jeremiah 29:11. If you aren’t familiar with that, it reads: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  She told me it was for my new journey in life.  I looked at her and told her it was peculiar, in a good way, that she would choose this cup with this verse because a few years earlier, one of my Disciple Bible study friends gave me a large poster-type paper with this verse.  She told the class that she found these really cool frameable verses and chose a verse for each of us. She didn’t know why she chose that one for me, but said it seemed to fit.  Prior to our decision to move, I had been praying deeply about this move. God just seemed to tell me that we were doing what we were supposed to.

Once we moved into our new home, in our new town, my husband started working. I had 3 weeks before my job started.  One day, I told my husband that I was going out to explore and church hunt.  He asked me how I planned on doing that when it was a weekday.  I told him I was just going to drive around and take note of where churches were, and we would go down the list, attending each one on a Sunday, until we found what we wanted.  I knew I needed gas, so decided to stop at the closest station, praying on the way there that God would bless this search.  As I started pumping gas, a white van pulled up next to me and parked next to me to get gas.  I looked at the van and on the side of it read “Ocala Word of Faith.”  I was dumbfounded.  I walked up to the gentleman and told him that I was out church shopping, just moved to the area, and had seen that church’s website.  He looked right at me and said, “looks like your search is over, come join us this Sunday”. That Sunday, we walked into the church, sat down, and hoped for the best.  When I looked up to the right of the altar, I saw a bible verse painted on the wall.  It was Jeremiah 29:11. I gasped and thought to myself that this must be the church I am meant to attend.

Five months later, it was Christmas time, and we were at my parents’ house.  My Mom told me she had been to the doctor for some back pain and had an MRI.  She said they were sending her to the Moffet Center to get more testing.  He told her it was a benign tumor.  Now, I did MRIs, so naturally, I wanted to see the images.  When she showed them to me, my heart sank.  I didn’t know what it was, but I knew what I was looking at in her spine was not good.  I kept my poker face and did my best to enjoy the rest of the day and not worry.

My Mom and Dad asked if I would come with them to the appointment because they might not understand what the doctor said.  When the Doctor called us back to his office, he explained what my mom had.  It was a Chordoma, and it was cancerous. He proceeded to tell us that most of the time they grow in the cervical spine, and they are operable.  Hers, however, was 8 cm large, at the base of her spine, and was not operable unless they removed her sacrum which would leave her in a wheelchair.  He also told us that the only treatment was to have therapy with a proton-beam which would turn the outer portion of the tumor into a hard shell, trapping the cancerous cells.  The problem was there were only two of these machines in the United States; one was in California, and the other was in Boston Mass.  I had been watching my parents as the doctor talked.  They were devastated; their world had just dropped out from them.  

The drive home was mostly quiet except that my mom said she just wasn’t going to do anything; they couldn’t go to Boston, and she couldn’t have surgery.  I told her that not doing anything was not an option.  I drove home from their house and cried and prayed.  I didn’t know what to do but I had to do something.  After calling my siblings, I talked to my husband and told him that I was going to get busy the next day, making phone calls.  It was a blur, but somehow, I found a social worker to help us out with arrangements to get my mom and dad to Boston, secure a place to stay, and get her treatment started.

I had asked my family to engage in a 24-hour prayer chain; the times were taken very quickly.  Many family members sent money to me to deposit into my parents checking account to help with their expenses.  Everything was coming together, and I realized that had I not been with my parents, they would not have taken the action to go to Boston.  My mom most likely would not have even told us that treatment was an option.  This is why I was here, I thought to myself.  So, seven months after moving to Ocala, my parents were on their way to Boston for treatment.

Fast forward to the following June; my mom was doing great, her cancer-shell was created, and she was feeling good.  My husband got a call from his old boss, at the same clinic I had worked. They wanted him back to manage the department.  They knew that I would need a job as well, so my old boss agreed to create a position for me.  We talked about it and decided that we were moving back.  We hadn’t really enjoyed the location where we were, and we missed our friends and family back in the Midwest.  We broke the news to my parents, and they were very gracious.  My mom told me that I was her angel and accomplished what God had planned for me.  I believe she was right; it wasn’t anything I did; it was a God-thing that happened to work out exactly the way it should have.

I have experienced so many times when I knew God was talking to me and giving me direction.  I know in my heart this was a journey he sent me on.   My husband and I moved back into our old positions at work, found a great house, and settled in from a crazy year. 

Footnote: the doctor had told my mom that she might only have five years until the cancer broke out and become uncontrollable.  It eventually started to escape its shell and she had several surgeries but a great quality of life until 2022, when she succumbed to metastatic breast cancer.  She died 19 years after her initial diagnosis.  She told me when she was lying on the table, receiving her treatment, and praying she distinctly heard a voice in her head saying that everything would be okay.  She was perplexed by that, but I told her I wasn’t perplexed.  I knew it was the Holy Spirit talking to her. God is good.