I’ll never forget that cold day in October 2015, walking out of the neurologist’s office with MRI scans and the unsettling words: “You have a mass in your brain, unlike anything I’ve seen.” Still trying to process it, I returned to work only to learn that the company was bankrupt and I wouldn’t be paid for my recent invoices. In a single afternoon, everything in my life seemed to collapse, and I found myself searching for God in the chaos.
Weeks later, the news grew heavier. The mass was cancerous, inoperable, and too dangerous to biopsy. Its location meant it could stop my heart or lungs without warning, and doctors gave me about two years to live.
One Sunday, as my family and I struggled to absorb it all, my friend Franck paused the church service so the entire congregation could gather around us, pray, and cry with us. I wrestled with fear, but God continued to shape my heart until my prayer became, “Why not me? How can you use me here?”
In the years that followed, God opened doors for our family to serve. I helped reestablish HOPE worldwide in France, connected with a donor whose support helped hundreds in Bangladesh, served in Togo, and walked with others facing their own mortality. We offered God our “two coins,” trusting him to use whatever we had left to give. Then the doctors noticed something unexpected: the tumor had stopped growing. We believed it was an answer to prayer, especially my wife’s bold prayer asking God to change his mind.
Eventually, specialists discovered the tumor sat in the same area affected by Parkinson’s, but only on one side. A dopamine medication reduced the symptoms and slowly gave me back pieces of my life. In March 2020, the doctors told us they believed I would live a long life, even though they couldn’t explain why. We could. We thanked our faithful God—because he is our why and our how.
