Summer Sampler: Journey to the Summit
This year’s Summer Sampler theme is “Persevering in a Troubling and Ever-Changing World.” Life can be hard. Sometimes, really hard. How do we persevere through circumstances that threaten to break us? This summer, journey with some women who have been through it and have come out the other side with a deeper faith and confidence in God’s love.
By Pam Lyons
“I would rather die.”
People asked, was I serious? Totally. When the surgeon told me I had a ruptured bowel and I needed a colostomy bag, I refused. The hospital staff said they would make me comfortable until the end. That’s when my family came over the top.
They took my hands, begging me to continue fighting. I thought, “What’s the point?” I had stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer with not long to live. Finally, I relented, and a year later, I’m glad I did.
In that moment, I felt undone. I questioned why God would allow me to suffer more. Hadn’t I already endured enough? Fifty-six years of fighting through hardship and pain. Cancer, and my newly arranged plumbing, felt like the final expedition to climb the rocky and steep trail to summit Mount Everest. Perhaps you’ve been there – when every step requires more effort than the last, when each movement consumes a reserve of energy you don’t have.
Step back with me to an idyllic-looking childhood in Nebraska with a white house and beautifully manicured lawn. The outside of the house looked perfect. The inside, the complete opposite. My dad suffered from alcoholism and regularly lashed out with damaging words and painful fists.
When I was a teen, my best friend’s dad tried to make the moves on me. He exposed himself. I ran away and severed the relationship with my best friend, the only person in the world who understood me. My second home and family were no longer a haven.
In my 30s, I was pregnant with our second child, and the mirror reflected a face that looked like a landslide. The diagnosis, Bell’s palsy; the whole left side, including my cheek, eyelid, and tongue, was paralyzed. This is when I finally released my life to God. He met me crying on the floor of my living room.
It may seem odd given everything above, but this is when life got hard.
Over the next two decades, God led me (with my husband’s confirmation) to step out of the corporate world to be a stay-at-home mom. Soon after, the whole left side of my body stopped working; I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I relearned how to walk. When my kids were teens, one of them became a wayward child; we had financial difficulties; good friends took a hike; and I began having debilitating anxiety, fear, and claustrophobia.
My sweet sister, over the years I’ve suffered through many days of despair. I felt God was being unfair to me. I’ve carried all these heavy burdens, rocks of heartbreak, up the mountain. Until now, I’ve only focused on the weight of discarded dreams and deep crevasses crossed, to reach the final stretch home.
It may sound crazy, but this current trial of cancer has forced me to allow God to lighten my “backpack.” I’ve felt His surpassing peace after turning from trudging through the past to conquering the trail above. I’ve taken these “stones” and built an altar of praise.
Now, I see God allowed these burdens to physically train me to climb from my proverbial Mount Everest base camp 3, located in the “death zone,” to the top. My pack is now light. And in this rare air the Holy Spirit is filling my lungs to witness the summit.
Pam Lyons has been gifted as an author, Bible teacher, and retreat speaker. Her passion is to share scripture in an authentic and relevant way to deepen women’s love for Christ.
Most recently, she served a total of 10 years on the board and as the director of LIFT (Leaders in Fellowship Together). As a member of several large nondenominational churches, she held many leadership roles in women’s ministries.
Currently, she is a student at Phoenix Seminary because her heart beats for studying the Word. After 28 years of marriage, she is blessed to spend every day with her college sweetheart, Steve. They worship at Illuminate Community church in North Scottsdale, and they have two beautiful grown-and-gone daughters.
Pam is always available to talk, encourage, and share her experiences. Kindly reach out via email at rlyonsden@cox.net or cell phone 602-810-1623.