Dear Subscribers and Friends, It is with a heavy heart that I want to let you know about the loss of The Redbud Post’s editor-in-chief, JoHannah Reardon, on February 4, 2021, after an 18-month battle with cancer. JoHannah was a longtime Redbud Writers Guild member and had been the editor-in-chief of The Redbud Post since…
I have been taught in my Christian circles to put my feelings in their proper place through the truth of God’s Word, the Bible, and I absolutely believe that to be valid and wise. My emotions are often a runaway train heading toward certain destruction, so pulling back on the brakes of those and letting…
“I hate it when people tell me everything happens for a reason,” the 18-year-old missionary stated. Defiant tears were in her eyes. “Do people really think God ordains evil? Do they believe he wants these things to happen? Do they not understand that we have choice—choice!”? Her hurt and anger are palpable. The ancient debate…
Those who shake their family tree may be pelted with details they’d rather not know. The blight I encountered in my particular grove was cancer—multiple varieties, hereditary strains. Suddenly I feel a deep kinship with the unending parade of friends and acquaintances who are hearing the word cancer breathed into the air of clinical spaces….
Cancer grows in odd places and moves in unseen ways. A big mass in his chest. A tiny spot in his spine. The bad, old cells clumping together to attack and destroy. In the beginning, death seems like the biggest and only potential thief. You do not yet realize that cancer will steal his hair…
“Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.” The whispered phrase, repeated like a Gregorian chant as John leaned back against the bathroom wall submitting to my husband’s lifting of one foot, then the other. The immediate goal, get him into a clean pair of pajamas and prevent him from collapsing on the floor….
I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea when our phone rang. Our family physician was on the other end of the line. Dr. Love (don’t you love his name?) wanted to speak to my husband. I carried the receiver up to John, then left the room to give him some privacy. When…
We are both cancer survivors, my husband and I. Like many people, I had always feared hearing that diagnosis. My father, a non-smoker, had lung cancer, passing on at age 68 just three months after being diagnosed. My mother had bladder cancer in her 80s that required a long and difficult treatment plan. And then…