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CBN.com – “I’ll never forget that night, because I was sitting there again thinking, Where’s God?”
Bill is a doctor, and his wife Toni is a nurse. When she was consistently nauseated, they decided to have it checked out. The tests revealed an ovarian cyst. That was the least of her problems. The ultrasound also showed a mass the size of a golf ball. Toni had pancreatic cancer.
Toni explains, "I always felt like it was a death sentence. I was just praying that God would use me as a vessel to bring my family closer to Him. Of course, I wasn’t alluding to this.”
And there was still more bad news to come.
Toni continues, “Within two weeks I was scheduled for surgery, and I thought [that] we’ll get this thing taken out and get this thing behind us. We’ll all be blessed and feeling good about this. I thought this would be over in two weeks, and it just didn’t happen that way.”
The mass was wrapped around an artery. Doctors determined that Toni’s cancer was inoperable.
“’I’m sorry we cannot resect it,’ and that’s it,” Bill recalls. “Then the oncologist comes in and says, ‘There’s nothing really we can give you. We can try this or that.’ Radiation oncologist says, ‘We can try radiation, but it probably won’t help.’ And it’s just doom and gloom.”
Pancreatic cancer survival is rare. Of the over 31,000 cases diagnosed in the United States this year, only 360 will survive. Toni’s prognosis was bad, but her faith remained strong.
She says, “I really felt like I was going to be healed after the elders prayed over me. I just felt like it was going to be OK -- whatever OK was.”
Toni tried a new procedure at Johns Hopkins University. She also took as much radiation as her body could stand. Nothing changed. Seven months after her diagnosis, Toni was weakened. She was so weak that most days she couldn’t even get out of bed. She knew there was nothing she could do but pray. Her family came together giving their struggle to God.
Watch Bill and Toni's testimony online.
“At one point, you turn it all over to God, and you say, ‘God, if You need me on this earth, You’ll find a way to get this tumor out. If not and my work is over on this earth, then we’re looking at heaven and that’s OK too,’” Toni says. “It became a total surrender to God – ‘whatever Your will is.’ It was a peace that came with that.”
With peace came good news. Just weeks after her prayer Toni started feeling better and no longer needed her nausea and pain medication. This caught Bill by surprise.
Bill says, “I found out she had been riding her bicycle 25 miles a day and playing tennis. She wanted to know if I would play tennis, and it would be on a good day [when] she beat 6-3. I asked her for a rematch, and she beat me 6-0. I joked with her, ‘No fair, you’re on all those chemicals.’ She says, ‘No, I’m not. I’m not on any drugs at all.’ She wasn’t!”
Toni had another CAT scan. This time the results were nothing short of miraculous.
Toni says, “When he read this CAT scan result, he reiterated it every way he could. ‘Tumor gone! Tumor resolved. No evidence.’ He just kept saying [it] over and over. There was no scarring. There was nothing there.”
And as for her prayer that her family would draw closer to God…
“We were praying together. It was a great journey,” Toni says. “I’m not one of these that say I’m glad I had it, but I am just so thankful for the good things that came out of this. A lot of it was the bonding we did together and the faith we developed.”
Bill has re-dedicated his life to Christ and gives God the glory for healing his wife.
He says, “There’s a time when you have to close the medical books and open up the Word of God.
“Does divine healing happen today? Yes it does! I have since learned that it’s not to be asked: ‘God, if it’s Your will.’ Like salvation, it is His will to be healed. But the bottom line still is God’s grace. I think we were healed by the grace of God.”
Watch Bill and Toni's testimony online.
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