I Still Believe Read online

  “That cyst came back,” he said, “and they took it out. And it is cancerous.”

  Cancerous? Melissa?

  I wanted to go see her in the hospital—just as a friend—to support her.

  It was a ninety-minute trip, and I became sentimental on the drive. My heart felt heavy for her. We had become distant friends and hadn’t had much contact with each other, but we had shared a special time, and all those emotions came rushing back at me.

  I did plenty of soul searching during that drive—one more time when I needed to die to myself and be a friend. I couldn’t be mad at her or hold it against her for breaking up with me. She needed friends, I told myself, and even though I had resolved to move on, I couldn’t deny that I truly did still care about her.

  SURPRISE IN THE HOSPITAL

  I felt strange walking up to the hospital front desk and asking for Melissa’s room number. As I rode the elevator up to her floor, anxiety began building up in me.

  I stepped off the elevator and walked to the waiting room, where some of Melissa’s family and friends were sitting. There I was told that Melissa had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had undergone surgery to remove the cancer, but it was an aggressive form, and she would be starting chemotherapy immediately.

  To hear that her cancer was aggressive and that starting chemo was urgent rattled me. Melissa’s sister Heather told me she would let Melissa know that I was there to see her. I didn’t want to just burst into her room and say, “Hey! I’m here!”

  I walked slowly down the hall to allow time for her to tell Melissa. As I neared Melissa’s room, her parents, Mark and Janette, walked out. They were somber but seemed at peace.

  Why are they leaving her room? I wondered. I didn’t know how to act. I wanted to be there as a friend, but was I going to be viewed as the ex-boyfriend coming back?

  “Hi,” her parents said, smiling and embracing me. “Thanks for coming.”

  Mark and Janette walked away from the room, and my anxiety ratcheted up a notch. I didn’t want to be in the room alone with Melissa. I didn’t know what to expect. Cancer is an unnerving word, and I expected her to look sick and bummed out after having surgery.

  I collected myself, took a deep breath, opened the door, and was shocked. Melissa was smiling from ear to ear with a supernatural glow. Her big ol’ brown eyes were as bright as always.

  Why is she so happy? She just found out she has cancer. I would be devastated, I was thinking.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  Her answer still inspires me: “If I were to die from this cancer and just one person accepted Jesus because of it, it would all be worth it.”

  Wow! What an answer!

  I immediately felt both conviction and peace. Conviction because of my lack of faith compared to Melissa’s, and peace just from being in her presence and seeing her eternal perspective while facing cancer. Melissa was willing to suffer if it meant just one person would gain eternity in heaven! I’ve heard of others expressing something similar, and it’s a sentiment many of us would hope to be able to live out, but those words took on a completely different context when I heard a friend stricken with cancer say them as she lay in a hospital bed.

  A verse came to mind: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”4 As I later contemplated receiving that verse in that moment, I realized that Paul was talking not just about our gain when we go to heaven, but also the gain of others here on earth who would come to Jesus as they observed how we deal with difficult circumstances.

  Taped to the side of Melissa’s bed, in her handwriting, were the words to the ballad “If You Want Me To” by Christian singer/songwriter Ginny Owens. The final verse is powerful:

  So take me on the pathway that leads me home to You,

  And I will walk through the valley if You want me to.

  I later had the privilege of getting to know Ginny and telling her how much her song meant to the two of us. The lyrics—especially the line “Gonna look into Your eyes and see You never let me down”—carry even more meaning considering Ginny has been blind since a very young age.

  I can’t remember what Melissa and I talked about or for how long we visited in her hospital room that day. But I do recall that, as I was leaving, I told her I would keep checking on how she was doing and come to see her when I could. I wanted to be a good friend for her.

  LOVE NOTES

  The drive home from the hospital also was an emotional one. Melissa’s first words to me about “just one person” and the way she was handling the situation were a reminder of the heart she had for Jesus and others and the reason I had fallen in love with her in the first place. The feelings I had for Melissa that I had been suppressing rose up in me again. In trying to move on from our relationship, I had convinced myself that Melissa was wishy-washy. But I knew better. Melissa was an astounding young woman.

  My mind began to play back memories of our time together—memories I had pushed away because recalling them hurt too much. As I allowed myself, for the first time in a long while, to reexperience my old feelings for Melissa, I became overwhelmingly sad over the staggering unknown of what was ahead for her because of the cancer.

  As I drove, Ginny Owens’s song “If You Want Me To” began playing on the radio. My eyes were so filled with tears that I thought I might have to pull my car over.

  “Lord, what’s going on?” I asked. And then I blurted out these words: “Lord, if she tells me that she loves me, I’ll marry her!”

  I didn’t know why I said that, but I was certain those words had come from my heart. I spent that night praying for Melissa, crying, and longing to be near her again.

  I called my parents the next day and told them about our visit and how my feelings for Melissa had been rekindled. My dad didn’t say anything, so I asked what he was thinking.

  “Well, Son,” he said, “you know if you go down this path, you might end up being with someone you have to take care of for the rest of your life. It won’t be easy. Are you prepared to do that?”

  In the emotion of the night before, I hadn’t considered that. But none of that mattered. “Yes,” I told my dad, “that would be okay.”

  I returned to visit Melissa in May, during her first round of chemotherapy. I expected she would be in pain or at least very uncomfortable from the chemo. On my way to her family’s home, I thought, She’s gonna tell me she loves me. I just know she’s gonna say it.

  Melissa was in her bedroom when I arrived. She hadn’t been feeling good, so she was lying in her bed.

  I walked into her room with a big smile, wanting to be cheerful for her. “Hey, how’re you doing?” I could tell from the weakened voice in her return greeting that the chemo had been tough.

  We made small talk for a few minutes before her face indicated she had something serious to say.

  “Jeremy,” she began, “I never knew why it wasn’t working between us. I know how you felt. And I always cared about you so much. But there was this reservation, and I didn’t know why. Now I know why. It was God preparing me. He wanted me to be alone with Him for a while because of what I was about to face.”

  I nodded.

  “I want to show you something,” she said.

  She pulled out her journals and began flipping to pages she had written during our time apart from each other. The journals detailed how she had been praying for me and my future wife.

  “I cared about you so much,” she continued. “I even met this guy after our time together, but when we were hanging out, I couldn’t stop thinking about you and about how he wasn’t you. When I saw you that day at the hospital, after all these months of praying, I knew that I love you.”

  I love you.

  She said it! I couldn’t believe it. I had hoped to hear her say that, and I had certainly dreamed of hearing those words. I’d even had the feeling that she would say she loved me, but when she did, I responded in a way I didn’t expect.

  “This is—scary,” I told her.
“I don’t know if I can do this. Please just give me some time.”

  CHAPTER 9

  WALKING BY FAITH

  Melissa’s “I love you” came just as I was preparing for a trip to Colorado to play a few concerts. She graciously told me to take as much time as I needed to think about our relationship. Melissa said she didn’t expect me to make any type of commitment to her, but that she needed to tell me she loved me so I would know how she felt. I told her I would come back to see her when I returned from Colorado.

  I know what some of the female readers may be thinking at this point: Are you serious? She just opened up and said she loved you, and you promised God that you would marry her if she did! How can you back out now?

  I wasn’t trying to back out on the promise I had made to God about marrying her. Marriage is a big commitment as it is, and I realized—as my dad had advised me—that because of the cancer, a marriage with Melissa likely would face enormous pressure right off the bat. I was the one with the let’s-do-this personality, but there were so many X factors that I needed time to process what might lie ahead for us.

  One of the concert hosts in Colorado put me up in a quiet cabin in the mountains. It was a perfect place to pray and reflect. The day I was there, I stayed up most of the night praying and asking God what He wanted me to do about Melissa. It was such a long, emotional, and sleepless night that the next day as I prepared for that night’s concert, I thought I had an idea of what Jacob might have felt like following his night of wrestling with God.

  As I sought God, I remembered the words of James 1:5: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”

  Boy, was I ever asking God for His wisdom. On my own, I could not answer the question of what I should do next. I knew what I had said I would do, but I did not know how marrying Melissa would fit in with what God had called me to do in music. God answered me: You’ve asked me, Son. She responded to what you asked Me in the way that you hoped she would. What more do you need?

  The words were clear to me, but still I struggled with fear. I tried to follow the instruction of Matthew 6:34: “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” I tried, but it wasn’t easy.

  On the trip, I connected with John David Webster, a musician friend who lived in the Rockies. He could tell something was on my mind and suggested we take a drive into the mountains. He took me to a spot where we could sit on a large rock and look out over the beautiful mountains. It was an amazing place to be reminded of God’s power and majesty.

  I told John David about my relationship with Melissa, about what I had said I would do if she said “I love you,” and the uncertainty surrounding Melissa’s health.

  “If you love her with all your heart,” John David said, “you can’t let fear have any place in the matter. You just have to do what God has called you to do. You can’t consider the future. Go where the Lord has led you, and trust Him for the rest.”

  Trust Him for the rest.

  Those words echoed in my mind as though they were bouncing around the Colorado mountains. I looked out at the breathtaking scenery and considered just how big God must be. He had created everything I could see from my seat on that rock and so much more. If He could be in control and hold steady the entire world, there could be no doubt that He could hold little me steady. It’s like the old song says, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.” And that included me.

  There was only one thing I could say to God after considering that: “I will trust You!”

  As I had told Melissa I would, I went to see her at her parents’ house as soon as I returned from Colorado. She said it had been a rough day and she wasn’t feeling well. Her long brown hair had started to thin out because of the treatments. But, typical Melissa, instead of focusing on her situation, she wanted to know how I was doing and how the concerts in Colorado had gone. After we had chatted for a while in the living room, she said she wanted to go outside onto the front lawn and get some fresh night air.

  I was concerned about her because even though she didn’t want to let on that anything was bothering her, she seemed pretty bummed out.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  “What’s going on? I can tell something’s wrong.”

  “I’m okay,” she said again.

  I looked directly into her eyes. “Look, Melissa, if we’re going to get married, you’re going to have to be able to tell me everything you’re going through.”

  “Married? Are you asking me to marry you?”

  I could see the tears in her eyes and feel the ones in mine.

  “I love you,” I said. “And I see God’s hand and His plan in this whole thing, in how He orchestrated it. I see that He brought us together.”

  We were still crying, but we both started laughing, too.

  It was a spontaneous moment, for sure. I hadn’t bought a ring, and I hadn’t asked her parents’ blessing before proposing.

  We walked back into the house where her parents were.

  “Hey, can we talk to you guys?” Melissa said. “We’re going to get married!”

  Her parents were super stoked. I got along really well with them. They knew how much I cared for Melissa, how much she cared for me, and how much we both loved the Lord. What they wanted most was for their daughter to be happy, and I still can visualize the look of pure happiness on Melissa’s face that night.

  Even though it had been a rough day, Melissa had gone for a run/walk but hadn’t taken her post-workout shower when I arrived at her house. She joked many times later how she had always imagined that her proposal would be a glamorous scene, but instead she had felt all “sweaty and gross” when I proposed. Of course, she looked great to me. And Melissa would add to her joking that the proposal actually turned out better than any way she had dreamed it would happen.

  On my ramen noodles, tuna, and eggs income, I couldn’t afford an engagement ring. Melissa’s mother gave her a ring that had belonged to Melissa’s grandmother.

  I hadn’t told my parents that I planned to propose, but I had told them about Melissa saying she loved me and that I had promised God I would marry her if she said that. I couldn’t wait to tell them that we were engaged. But I had to. Because of the time difference between California and Indiana, I didn’t call my parents until the next morning. My mom was home when I called.

  “I asked her!” I excitedly reported.

  CONCERNING CALL

  Melissa and I set October 21 as our wedding date. It was only five months away, but we didn’t want a long engagement. Each of us had 100 percent certainty about marrying the other, so there didn’t seem to be a reason to wait. We wanted to be together. I hated having to say “See you tomorrow” at the end of the night. I wanted to spend all my time with Melissa.

  I also wanted to help her deal with the effects of her chemotherapy treatments as much as I could. Because we weren’t married, there were obvious limitations to how much I could help her, but her family was very sweet about allowing me to be part of her care. There were nights when I would be at their house late and get sleepy, and her parents would offer to let me spend the night on their living room couch.

  As would be expected for someone going through chemo, Melissa had difficult days. Anyone who has been through chemo, or been close to someone who has, knows what a physical and mental battle the treatments are. In the big picture medically, though, things seemed to be going well. But with cancer there is always a cloud of uneasiness that hangs over you.

  Melissa and I knew the importance of staying in God’s Word and receiving hope and strength from it at that time, both on our own and together. A key verse for me then was Jeremiah 29:13: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” We were seeking God with all our hearts and finding Him. We attended church together, and even on the days when Melissa
was weakened by the chemo, she continued to worship with her same unrestrained passion.

  That was a period I can look back on and identify that my faith was growing. One reason it grew was because of Melissa. Even though my faith had increased greatly previously, being around Melissa made me feel convicted about my need for an even deeper faith. I was serious about my Bible study and my walk with the Lord, but hey, I was young. I would have those silly moments with friends during Bible study or get a little lax in my devotion time periodically.

  But Melissa—man, she had an all-out devotion to God. She was constantly reading the Bible and praying. She never seemed to miss an opportunity to talk with someone about Jesus. She was so focused on her relationship with the Lord and being a shining example for Him.

  Sometimes when we were together, she would walk away from me to talk with someone else. I’d be like, “Hey, I’m here too.” But then I’d watch her talk to that person and share Jesus with him or her, and it would hit me how many opportunities were around us that she would see and I would miss. When their conversation would end and I would see how that person responded to Melissa, I’d say to myself, That was so unbelievable.

  I think our faith was growing too. As a couple, we both benefited from an assurance that we were supposed to be together, and in a sense that assurance overshadowed the uncertainty of the cancer. We still were concerned about Melissa’s health and praying consistently and expectantly for healing, but we shared a joy from knowing that God had brought us into each other’s path and had created one path for us to walk together. The joy of the Lord indeed was our strength.5 That joy was possible because joy does not come from circumstances that can change with the result of a test or a sudden pain. Joy comes from having a relationship with the unchanging God and transcends any trial we can face on this earth.

  Even though Melissa battled weakness, pain, and nausea from her treatments, we laughed a lot together. We learned to be thankful and content in all circumstances.6 When her hair had completely fallen out, I began calling her “my beautiful, bald, brown-eyed babe.” That would draw a good laugh from her. And I meant it every time. With or without hair, she was beautiful to me because, as attractive as Melissa was on the outside, she had an even more incredible inner beauty. In fact, as we made wedding plans and looked ahead to our life together, Melissa became more beautiful to me.