Satan's Games Versus God's Grace & Strength

Hello and welcome back to StrodeDad. I am a bit behind on this post but there is a reason for that. I'll get to that in a moment. I want to say thank you for taking the time to read this when you probably have better blogs to read or better things to be doing with your time. I appreciate that you read what I write and I hope in some small way it helps even just one person out there today. With that being said, let's open in prayer.

"Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for everything that you do for me in my life. Thank you for giving me the strength to weather the various trials and tribulations that I've made it through in my life. Thank you for your unending patience and love for me. Thank you for the gift of just getting to write what I am about to write and even more for the gift of people reading it. Lord through you all things are possible and I want to recognize that mightiness here and now. So thank you lord for your power, your grace, and your love. I ask Lord that as I write today you guide my thoughts and words where you want them to go. I ask Lord that you bring my message to whomever needs to see it when they need to see it Lord. I love you Lord, in Jesus' name Amen."

So let me start by telling you why I am late posting this in the first place. The past two weeks has been rough. Two weeks ago, Wednesday night, Adeline woke up stating that her throat hurt. I didn't think anything of it because it was the first time she'd said that and figured with this crazy yo-yo weather we were having it was simply an allergy thing. Most of the day goes by with little problem, maybe just a bit of itchy eyes, again leading me to the conclusion that this was just an allergy-related problem. Anyone might jump to the same conclusion and like me, they would have been wrong.

So it all took a turn when she woke up coughing Thursday night. Again I think to myself probably just allergy related now with a little post-nasal drip. I get up to go give her a drink of water and when I touch her to sit her up and she feels quite warm to me. I take the opportunity to check her temperature while she is taking a drink of water. Her temp is 100.7. I check it three times to be sure and each time 100.7.

100.7 is the realm of darkness for a child going through chemotherapy. 100.7 has already passed the doctor's max line for waiting to see them. The max line is 100.4. You might be thinking oh well 100.4 to 100.7 that's only .3 off what harm could that be? Well, the harm is that if her port (or her central line) which is where she receives all her chemotherapy medicine and is a direct line to her heart is infected it could kill her in a matter of no time at all. 100.7 could change to 101.7 or 103.7 in no time at all.

I left her room and told Erika what her temp was and she jumps right into action. She's up and getting dressed, she's grabbing things we need at the hospital and saying, "Brandon we need to take her to the ER now. We will call the oncologist on the way." As any mama bear would do she has entered the "baby cub protection mode". At this point, she could probably lift a car with the amount of mama bear protection mode juice flowing through her veins and I love her all the more for it.

We get her to children's and they access her port within like 20-30 minutes of us getting there. They immediately draw blood to test her numbers and to see what is causing the temperature. As soon as the blood is drawn they start pushing antibiotics. It doesn't matter what it is, they have to get the antibiotics in all the same. This was her laying in bed the first night.

Adeline Friday morning at Children's Hospital ER

The amount of fear and emotion running through us at this point is undeniable. We know that God has her, we know that He is protecting her and has a plan. We know this yet the Enemy still instills fear. At this moment, this scare is rooted in us. We want to become recluses, we want to shut the doors and not leave the house until she is done with Chemo. We may just do that. We will just do that.

I like to call these Satan's little games. He is playing games with our lives, always tempting us always trying to turn us to sin. He is always attempting to get us to question God and His plan for us. Recently I asked for prayers for a young girl named Jadelynn. She had cancer and had to have a bone marrow transplant from her sister to her. Something that should have been very straightforward, risky but straightforward, turned into a mournful event.

Jadelynn should have made it through this bone marrow transplant and come out the other side with a chance to continue fighting against Cancer. (Sometimes I just want to say curse words attached to that word. I try to refrain, but I'm not always successful. Stupid cancer.) Instead of getting that chance to continue fighting, a human error took that chance from her. Circumstances changed to her fighting for her life due to human error regarding her bone marrow transplant. In the end, she was received by God and her mom is questioning all things. She stood on the beach where she and her daughter talked about getting back to normal life and going to that very beach to have fun after the STUPID Cancer was gone. Instead, her mom was there to spread her ashes. It breaks my heart to even write that because I cannot imagine the pain this woman is experiencing. The first question that has to come to mind is the same question we asked when we found out Adeline had cancer, "Why God?".

We know that God has a plan for all things. Everything that happens on this earth is within his plan. What we fail to understand most of the time is that we can never understand that plan. Is it his plan that our daughter developed cancer? Was it his plan that Jadelynn died due to human error? If so, what a terrible plan no?

I'm getting to a point so bear with me. I am reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis in my college course this term. Reading this is quite enjoyable because he makes so many good points in it. But what I find most that I have considered in just reading the few chapters that I have read so far is this. Is it God's plan for the good and the bad to happen to us? How do we approach the bad things in life that are part of God's plan in relation to our view of God being full of love and grace and goodness? It's hard to imagine a "Good" God who allows such terrible things to happen to us.

I pose this though, is it more within his plan that we have free will? Is it more important to God that we be free to make our choices, chiefly the choice to love Him than to make sure our lives are nothing but good? Giving us free will allows us to use that free will for good or bad or both. Would not the good, the bad, and the both be all within God's plan if his plan is for us to have free will? Is having free will and letting us choose to do good or bad worth the risk to our souls? We cannot understand God's plan because he is divine so to even assume that we know what his plan is, good, bad, or indifferent is to think too highly of ourselves.

God allows us free will but what does that mean for Satan? Satan influences and attempts to take hold of you and your life. Do you not think that maybe Satan had more to do with Jadelynn's death than God did? Satan wants us to question God, he wants us to think we don't need Him. Because of that, he will take a life, he will influence a human to take a shortcut in their work that results in the death of an innocent girl already fighting stupid cancer. I want to believe that I wouldn't blame god if something terrible happened to someone in my family the way it has happened to Jadelynn's family but I can't say that with absolute certainty. It is hard to say God I trust in you as you spread your child's ashes, or at the very least I feel that it would be hard having no experience in this myself.

These are Satan's little games. He plays games with our lives and with the lives of those around us. Every day we are reached by his temptations. I am tempted to watch television versus doing my schoolwork. I used to be tempted by alcohol and other such vises to hang with friends. To be accepted by them was more important than my soul or my liver. To be the one that they looked to for fun and who they liked was important. I've grown out of that but I had given in many times to Satan's little games before accepting God's grace and strength.

I reach back to when I said that we would become recluses until this was over. We are undoubtedly going to do so because we have one treatment left and a few weeks after that treatment her port access will be removed. Once removed we only have to worry about a weakened immune system for a few more weeks or months if you count the time that she has to continue getting the weekend antibiotics. But what is a month or two of being reclusive if it means not having to be scared while headed to the emergency room because she got a cold from being too close to others?

Of course, this didn't stop us from having to go back to Children's Hospital later just two days later. Her fever spiked again, this time at 101 and we headed back. Again this unyielding fear enters our hearts. Not just fear though, but sadness as well. We are saddened because we are afraid. We don't want to see our baby laying in a hospital bed.

Adeline laying on a hospital bed asleep 2nd trip to ER.

Adeline's port accessed looking exhausted and sick.

But this is the reality of our situation. A common cold, RSV, the Flu, Covid, doesn't matter what it is it could kill her if she gets it. If her port line were to become infected with any of these things she could die because that port is a direct line to her heart. So PSA, keep your kids at home if they are sick, and don't take the risk to anyone else's life. You never know the situation at someone else's home. You send your kids sick to church or daycare or school and they seem like normal kids but if they get sick and take it home to a child who has cancer or an auto-immune disease it could spell disaster.

Both visits to the ER took hours but she was able to come home each time because her white blood cell counts, while low, were not too low. We honestly weren't sure if she was going to be able to get her chemo treatment this last week because of all of this. Of course, she was able to which puts at one treatment left, praise God. I will say to that every time we went we prayed over her. I always place a hand on her and we pray. I do this even at chemo, I pray for her, and then I pray for everyone else on the infusion center floor. They deserve the prayers as well.

We are still going to reclusive mode, our groceries are being delivered, we aren't going anywhere, and we aren't even having Thanksgiving with family in person but instead doing it over Zoom. Does that mean the Enemy won? He got what he wanted right? Possibly, yes. But God also still wins because we pray every day, and we worship from home (which is not nearly as fulfilling as worshipping with our friends (no not friends....family) at church.

Satan can play his little games but God's grace will always triumph. I remember how Jesus rebuked Satan.

"4 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted[a] by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’[b]”

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’[c]”

7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’[d]”

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’[e]”

11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him." (Matthew 4:1-11, NIV)

If Satan will attempt to tempt Jesus, the son of God, then he will surely attempt to tempt me. But with God's grace, his love, and his strength we can resist the Enemy's temptations. We may have to play his games because he will continue to influence our lives in an attempt to drive a wedge between us and God but we don't have to let him win.

God gives us what we need to survive in this world and never gives more than he knows we can handle. I will say that there are times in my life when I thought that I couldn't handle it. There are times when I thought my life was so much worse than it really was, which is a child's point of view. But in those same moments of weakness, God was always there lending a hand. I am reminded once of a time while I was in the service and just in a very low place. I had a friend whom I confided this with and she took me to see a chaplain because she was concerned for my well-being.

A long talk with the chaplain set me straight at this time but one of the things he said to me was that I was being selfish by having the thoughts that I was having and that taking action on those thoughts would be the utmost selfish thing I could do. Not something you would think a chaplain would say right? But he was right and it broke me from Satan's grasp. Was it not God who provided me with the right friend? Was it not God that convinced me to share my woes with this friend? And was it not God most of all that prompted her to take me to a chaplain instead of the 5th floor at the hospital? (the 5th floor was like the psych ward). God lead me to him, I didn't stay long (with god), but his Grace opened my eyes and broke me free from the grasp of the Enemy. Because he did this I was able to move on to new stages of my life that were both good and bad.

God has blessed me with the strength and courage to make it through Adeline's battle with Cancer. It's not that I'm not scared. It's not that I don't worry about her. It's not that I'm not scared she can get sick at any time. What's even more terrifying is the thought that she could develop cancer again at any time because she is now at more risk because of getting chemotherapy. But God doesn't tell us that we won't be scared or experience fear but that we can handle that fear because he is there to give us strength no matter what comes. So take heart in that fact. God is always with us, He is always giving us his strength, and He is always sending his love. It never ends, no matter where we are in life. It is whether we choose to acknowledge it that is the difference.

I know that I myself have turned myself away from God's grace and love time and again refusing to acknowledge that He was driving the good things in my life and not myself. But once I did acknowledge Him I see now all the instances where I thought I was alone in life but was always far from it. Satan can play his little games and sometimes you will get caught in them. They will be for you, to tempt you, to suck you in, to tear your life apart so that you question God and everything about Him. But just remember God's love is unending. We cant fathom why things happen the way they happen or if it even is God's plan in that manner. But what we can know is that God loves us. What we know is that when we leave this sin infused world we are taken into God's arms in heaven and fully healed.

There will be a day of reckoning for Satan, Jesus is coming but until that day try to remember God doesn't want you to suffer. Sometimes we need to suffer to see God's grace in our life and come closer to him. If his son can suffer on the cross for our sins then we can suffer to see his grace and love in our life as well. And to be perfectly honest, some of us (myself especially) need more suffering than others to break through our mindset of we are alone, we can do this ourselves, or we did this ourselves.

Thank you for reading this week's entry. Thank you for being patient with me and waiting for my next post. I hope this post enlightens you to a bit of what we go through as parents of a child with cancer. I hope it reminds you of God's love and grace unending. Thank you, until next time....