Mark's Blog

Our children all married well–wonderful, thoughtful Christian spouses. Today I want to introduce you to Amber Rogers Woodward, Ben’s wife. She is a dental hygienist, a mother of three, and much more. She has a great blog about her family mostly, but a couple of days ago, she posted the following vignettes from her life that blew me away.

I had just been at a conference where the word missional was used thousands of times, often in an attempt to define it. Here, I thought, is what missional looks like in the real world. Missional is a Christian woman, listening at the right time, naturally talking about her faith at the right moment, a woman who is in tune with what God is doing and does not live in the false dichotomy of a life in the church building and another out.

I have to share this with you–with her permission, of course. I believe you will be inspired as I was.

Every day I have patients that AMAZE me with their stories of faith, struggles, fear, and joy.  I know I say this every time…but I never quite get use to the fact that I have such a unique job position that drops me into people’s lives, literally face-to-face:), to be a sound board for each of them. Hearing my patients stories  over the last 10 years has truly changed my life in SO many ways!  So every so often  I like to write a few of them down…to remember…and to share with whoever is reading this:).

Mr. J.  and I were talking about the fact that he use to smoke, how he quit 2 years ago, and how he managed to quit.  He was kind of ho-humming around about how he quit…I kept pressing  him saying, “I’ve heard it’s really difficult to quit…you just quit…no medication or anything?”  Finally he began to tell me his story.  He started by saying, “Let me preface this story by the fact that I am not all that spiritual…I believe in God…but I don’t really go to church anywhere…I’m a really good person…but just really haven’t had the time to look into church stuff.  So I had tried to quit smoking numerous times in my life…I tried everything…hypnosis…medication…cold-turkey…none of it had worked.  One day I literally decided that I could never do this on my own.  I got down on my knees one night before bed and I prayed to God to take this desire away from me…that I was giving up total control…and I needed His help.  When I stood up, I can’t explain it, but I knew I would NEVER touch a cigarette again.  I just felt different.”   I was telling him how great that story was and how neat it is that God chose that particular way to show Himself to him…when he tells me, “I know that God has WAY more important things to do in the world than care about my desire to quit smoking, yet I can’t explain it, that is exactly what happened!” Of course that led to a great discussion on how God cares about every little desire of your heart because he LOVES YOU!!!”     I smiled all the way home thinking about how Awesome God is to show that big burly man that he cares about every little desire…if you surrender it to His Will!

This next patient, 60 yo female,  I had not seen before.  She doesn’t come in all that regularly.  I had seen in her chart that her husband had died about 6 months ago.  While I was cleaning her teeth we were talking about her husband, life, etc.  I had seen on her chart that she had been diagnosed with sleep apnea and  so I asked her if she was sleeping with a machine to help at night.  She was telling me that it was uncomfortable and noisy and that ever since her husband had died she had not worn it.  So we kept talking, I was encouraging her to wear it, and I told her about my dad having had it and that he passed away at the age of 40!  I got up to go get some x-rays and as I was sitting back down to finish cleaning her teeth she looked at me with big tears in her eyes and said, “I think you are an angel that God sent to me today to tell me your story of your dad.  I’ll be honest I have stopped wearing it, because I want to die, and I feel like that would be the easiest way to go…just go to sleep one night and not wake up!  Because of our conversation today I promise you that I will never go another night without wearing it!”   I really do not even have words to describe how I felt…we talked a little while longer…she left…and I was in AWE of the conversation we had just had!  WOW!!

This next patient I had seen a few times before and I knew that her daughter was expecting twins any day.  So she came in to get her teeth cleaned and I was asking her about the babies.  She told me that about 4 months prior they had discovered in an ultrasound a large mass on one of the babies tailbone…and that they were told that it meant she would be born with spina bifida.  Her daughter had delivered the babies a couple of weeks prior and discovered that the mass was only a cyst…it was removed…and she is perfectly healthy now.  She was talking about how they had been praying for the mildest form of spina bifida to be the outcome.  What she said next was such a good reminder for me…she said, “I can’t believe that we didn’t have enough FAITH to pray that there would be NO spina bifida…we just believed the doctors…they said they were 99% sure!”  This was such a good reminder for me to have enough faith to be BOLD in my prayer life…that ANYTHING is possible with God!

See more of Amber’s posts at her blog site. You can get to it in the Blog list in the right column on this page.