God’s Faithfulness Through Holly’s Journey

How becoming a victim set us up for our greatest victory

Chapter 1

Some of you reading this have been following along with the rollercoaster journey my wife, Holly, and I have been on the past few weeks. For those of you who are new to all the happenings, I’ll elaborate on things from the beginning to get you up to speed. For the rest of you, this may be mostly a recap, but I’ll fill in some of the details you may not have known.

Monday

The week started like a typical week. Holly and I have been doing a detox program throughout 2020 and have seen amazing results in our physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional health.

We’ve gotten to the point now where we’ll detox pretty hardcore through the week, and then we tend to splurge on the weekends. Weekends are usually when we eat out after church or have a cookout with family here or there. It may or may not include some trips to DQ for our favorite blizzard!

When we get into this pattern of heavy detox through the week and eating what we want on the weekends, Monday’s usually all start off the same. We typically have “eaters remorse” that gets coupled with a light or mild headache. We know this is just our body telling us that it’s not used to the sugar and junk food.

So when Holly told me she was experiencing a mild headache this particular Monday morning, it didn’t sound any alarm bells for us. We just knew we needed to get some healthy food in us and cut out the sugar. No big deal.

Tuesday

Tuesday came around and Holly’s headache was still there. On the pain scale of 1-10, I’d guess it was at about a three at this point. That was a little alarming, but again, we just doubled down on eating healthy and detoxing and assumed the pain would go away at any moment.

Wednesday

Wednesday is when things really started to shift. Holly said her headache had transformed into a migraine at this point. For a normal person, this still might not have seemed like a warning sign, but Holly rarely, if ever, gets a migraine.

It was about this time that she also began experiencing dizziness and nausea.

With all the craziness that is 2020 going on, at this point we just concluded in our minds that she had CV-19. I let her have the bed to herself and started sleeping down on the couch in hopes that she wouldn’t pass the virus to me.

About the middle of my work shift Wednesday night, Holly texted me and said she couldn’t take the annoyance of the pain anymore. She told me to stop and get some Tylenol on my way home so that she could finally feel some peace.

Again, for a normal person, this might not have raised any red flags. If you know my wife, though, you know this is unheard of. In fact, the only time she’s ever taken pain medication since I’ve known her was the couple days after her four pregnancies. She’s the toughest human being I know and I could count the number of times on one hand where she has complained about any physical pain.

I gladly stopped and got the Tylenol and was hopeful that her migraines would soon end. Deep down, I was still preparing myself for the c0vid verdict.

Thursday

When I woke up Thursday, I was excited to hear that the pain in my wife’s head was all but gone. To my dismay, she let me know that the pain was the same, if not worse.

This is when I became absolutely certain that something was not right. For someone who never takes medication, the Tylenol should have zapped her migraine and the discomfort should have completely vanished.

After delaying what seemed like the inevitable, we scheduled her a c0vid test. The next time they had available was Friday morning.

While we continued to pray for healing and for the pain to go away, we began to think about the arrangements we would need to make with work and with our kids when the test came back positive.

Friday

Late morning on Friday, Holly drove herself to the testing site. She did what she needed to do and they told her it would be 4-5 days until she would get results back.

She continued to pound the Tylenol and we prayed all night that God would heal her from this virus.

Saturday

I got home from work on Saturday morning to the sound of Holly upstairs moaning. She sounded like a woman in the 9th month of pregnancy going through labor. It was too much for me to take knowing how terribly she felt.

I woke the kids up and we all packed into the van to take my wife to the hospital.

A theme you’ll see play out throughout the entire story happened in that van on the way to the hospital. We remained faithful that whatever was happening inside Holly’s body, God was ultimately in control and He is always faithful. We continued to call upon His name and believe him for complete healing.

Little did we know at that time the magnitude of the situation. Even still, we knew no circumstance in our life was too big for God.

The CT

Due to c0vid-19, Holly had to check herself into the hospital as I stayed with the kids in the van. After a little while, she texted me to inform me that they had given her a “migraine cocktail” —combination of three drugs— and her migraine went away almost instantly. She was feeling better and the nurses were going to give her a standard CT scan just to make sure nothing bigger was going on.

An hour or so went by when I received another text —this one with some less favorable Information. When reviewing her CT scan, the doctor noticed what they called an abnormality. They weren’t sure, but it looked like there could be a mass on Holly’s brain. They said they’d need to transfer her to a different hospital to give her an MRI.

Since they didn’t know how serious it could potentially be, they transferred her in a squad. I took the kids home and had my parents come over to watch them so I could visit Holly at the new hospital.

The MRI

By the time I arrived at the new hospital and got through all my c0vid checks, the MRI was done and we were just waiting on the results.

About an hour or so later, a doctor came in and told us what the MRI showed. There was a golf ball sized tumor on Holly’s brain. The doctor said he couldn’t tell much about it until he removed it and got it tested, but he did tell us that if they didn’t remove it, it would eventually kill her.

I know there may be some saints reading this who have a lot more faith than me, but if I’m honest, my heart sank. I was flooded with so many emotions at this point, but I knew that I had to push my feelings aside and be as strong as I could be for my wife.

I’ll end up writing about so many topics and takeaways from this whole experience, but I could literally write 10 blog posts on this one subject alone. My wife is the strongest person I have ever known. She has been such a rock for our family for so many years. I’ve battled a few personal demons and gone through bouts of anxiety, depression, worry, and fear. She has always remained strong for me through those times and I told myself right there in that hospital that the devil wasn’t going to let this destroy us by allowing it to destroy me.

I knew what I had to do. And don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t on my own strength, but by the grace of God that I remained so strong throughout this whole journey. I knew I had to be a strong tower for my bride in a moment where the enemy was trying to steal her away from me.

I chose to fight for her. I went to battle, but the battle wasn’t mine and it wasn’t fought alone.

While the enemy, Satan, thought he would try to destroy us, God raised up an army of prayer warriors to fight alongside of us.

TO BE CONTINUED...

To keep things into digestible, bite-sized pieces, I’m going to break this story down into different installments or chapters. At the time of writing this, I’m not sure how many installments this will end up being.

There have been so many amazing stories, lessons, and testimonies that have come out of this chapter of our life together. I’m excited to put “pen to paper” as I spill out everything God showed me through this incredible experience and I hope and pray that it blesses and encourages everyone who reads these words.

I’m excited to share how God used this entire year to prepare us to fight and overcome everything that we went through these past several weeks. I’m excited to give you all the praise reports along the way. I’m ecstatic to open up and be vulnerable with you as I show you the lessons I’ve learned as we became battle-tested during this process.

And of course, without giving too many spoilers, I’m honored to share the victory the Lord provided as He remained faithful this entire time.

I thank you for taking the time to read this story and if you forget everything else I say, I want you to remember just these three things:

1. God is good all the time.

2. God is always faithful.

3. All glory belongs to God.
   

Stay tuned. Chapter two of this story will be coming shortly!