HEY!!! The infection in the port is subsiding! We are very thrilled. Thank you all for praying for Betty this week. She’s doing great and feeling much better. Her white cell count is very low. 600 at last count. She can’t go out in public right now for fear of catching someone’s cold and not being able to fight it off. But she says she couldn’t ask for anything better than to be cooped up in the house with me for weeks at a time. That made me feel good until I started thinking about the phrase “cooped up.” I looked it up and it means, “An uncomfortably confined space. An enclosure with a claustrophobic nature.” So…I’m good with that.
We’ve encountered some wonderful experiences in the last few months of Betty’s illness. Her taste buds are going crazy with all the medicine and chemo, so we’ve tried to find food items that taste good to her. So far the best things are potato chips and lemon drops. Go figure! So a few nights ago, after we’re already dressed for bed, she asks if we have any potato chips. We keep them in a cabinet above the stove and she can’t raise her arms very well to reach anything that’s high, so I have to get anything that’s up, down. I looked and we were out of chips. She said, “Well what I’m really hungry for is french fries.” I said, “Hey, I can do french fries! We have potatoes, we have oil and believe it or not, I know where the skillet is. I’ll make you some french fries.” She said that it was too much trouble and it would be a lot of clean up and just forget that she said anything. I told her I didn’t mind and it would make me happy to do something for her. As I’m reaching for the potatoes, she said, “You know, by the time you cut those potatoes and fry those fries and clean up the mess, you could drive to Wal-Mart and get me some potato chips. I said, “Betty dear, it’s after midnight and it’s cold outside and I’m already in my sleeping pants. There’s no way I’m going to Wal-Mart to get chips!”
So… I’m on my way to Wal-Mart to get chips…. when I think, there might be some other things we really need and are out of that I should pick up while I’m there. I call Betty, she says “Yes, there we are dangerously low on ice cream.” I have never used any form of the word dangerous along with the words ice cream in the same phrase. Ice cream and danger just aren’t sentence buddies. I mean you can be dangerously low on heart medicine. Or, even dangerously low on toilet paper, but ice cream? Well I certainly didn’t want to be the cause of any danger while we were “cooped up” together, so I put ice cream on the list.
I got to the chip aisle at Wal-Mart and was amazed at the various types of potato chips that were available. Flat, rippled, canned, original, bar-b que, vinegar, blue cheese, and the list just went on and on. So I bought one of each. I’m telling you, that’s a lot of chips. The lady at the check out counter looked at me and said, “So you’re having a party?” I said no, that these were just for my wife. She asked, “Is she pregnant?” I said,.....“Uh….yes she is.” She stared at me for the longest time. I guess she thought that “Abraham” story was happening all over again. Then I told her that really my wife had been recently diagnosed with cancer and potato chips were all that tasted good right now. She looked at me and smiled and said that she would pray for my wife. Now a lot of people have told me that they would pray for Betty and a lot of people have. Most pray at church or at home or at the hospital for her. As I was about to tell her thank you, she just started praying. Right then and there. With every potato chip that Wal-Mart stocks piled up on the counter, with ice cream melting in the carton, this lady began praying. She didn’t wait until later when she was at home or in her car, she cranked it out right there. It was the sweetest prayer and it was from her heart. She prayed for healing and comfort for my wife and that I might be all I needed to be to her in this hour. It was beautiful. I am so glad I went for chips at midnight. It’s the first time I’ve ever been blessed at Wal-Mart! Those Christians are everywhere! Thank you all for your prayers. They’re working beautifully. We’re home in our “coop” just resting in Him. We love you all!