Heaven Rules Over a Surprising Diagnosis

Dannah Gresh: Connie Douglas was in the hospital dealing with the effects of three simultaneous serious health issues. She echoed the words of the apostle Paul, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Connie Douglas: My home is in heaven. So when he keeps me alive and lets me testify to His glory, for however long I'm here, I'm going to do that. He gives me breath. I'm going to breathe it out, to worship Him, to praise Him, and to thank Him.

Dannah: I'm Dannah Gresh, welcoming you to Revive Our Hearts this Friday, December 2. Our host is the author of Heaven Rules, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: When storms of trouble blow into your life, what's the anchor that's going to hold you fast? 

All this month, we're going to focus on the phrase “my anchor holds.” Mark and Connie Douglas are an amazing example of a couple who have tethered themselves to God's Word. Jesus is the anchor who has held them through one crisis after another. 

If you're going through some sort of difficulty in your life in this season, I know you'll be encouraged as you listen to Mark and Connie’s story and the amazing perspective they share.

Dannah: Here's a little background: Mark and Connie were married in their early twenties and had one son. When Connie wasn't serving at home, her interests included singing, she sang all her life at church, then started traveling with choirs and studied voice in college. But the main story we're going to tell today begins with a bang.

Connie: I was driving soccer boys in my van to home after soccer practice. I was hit from behind and sent to the hospital. The doctor on call took a CT scan of my back and my neck to make sure I was okay. They came to me with the report. “Did you know you have cirrhosis?” I looked around and said, “You must have the wrong file. I have absolutely do not have cirrhosis.” I have no reason to have cirrhosis because in my mind, that's what alcoholics got. 

And she said, “No, ma'am. You are Connie Douglas?” 

And I said, “I am.” 

And she said, “Well, I'm afraid you need to see a gastroenterologist quickly. A small number of liver patients who have cirrhosis have a genetic/autoimmune factor. That could be the cause.” But because I had absolutely no reason, this research doctor told us that was probably why the disease was present in my body, through my maternal line.

Dannah: Connie’s need for a liver was extremely serious. But the cirrhosis of the liver also developed into a secondary problem.

Connie: Portopulmonary hypertension. It’s very rare and in patients with liver disease; however, because it is very dangerous, and the odds of your life decreased significantly, that put my numbers way up for a transplant.

Dannah: In the midst of these two serious diagnoses, Connie was also dealing with a third medical problem.

Connie: My bones fused themselves together with calcium deposits, and they bend. That is very painful. And because I'm was a pre-transplant liver patient, I can't take medications for anything like that.

Dannah: For six long years, Connie waited for a liver transplant. At first, the symptoms were not that noticeable. But eventually, they became more and more serious.

Connie: I went in every seven to ten days to be drained of fluid because I was so swollen.

Mark Douglas: There were two to three liters of fluid drained every ten days.

Connie: I could not walk without assistance. I was very, very weak.

Mark: She started losing weight. She was wasting away, even though she was swelling up. 

Connie: I just was too weak to do anything. 

Mark: And so, it was emotionally terrible to see. But we had a peaceful confidence that it can only be explained by God.

Connie: I went to the Lord, and I went to the Lord, and I said, “Lord, it's irrelevant why I have this. It doesn't matter. What does matter to me is how do You want me to walk through this? How can I walk through this? It's hard. It's very hard.” 

And He actually gave me the twenty-third Psalm, which is a very well-known psalm. Usually you hear it at funerals, but to me it was a roadmap of how to follow Jesus through life—all ways would lead you for His righteousness’ sake. And He would always lead you to when you need refreshment to still waters, to nourishing grainfields the—Word of God. He would protect you; He would sustain you. And when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you didn't have to be afraid. You knew you were secure in Christ. His presence was tremendous during that time . . . and still is.

Dannah: One of the hardest parts of walking through this illness for Connie was watching her son grow up and not being able to engage with his new family the way she would have liked.

Connie: That's where your heart aches the most. Yeah, your child is a grown up, but he's still my boy, and he had given us the granddaughter. So of course, your heart as a mom, as a grandmother . . . You don't want them to worry about you. You don't want them to suffer because you're suffering. You want to be around, he wants you to be around for all those . . . 

Actually, I was very sick when he got married. But the grace of God gave me energy. I planned his whole wedding. We had it at our favorite spot at the beach. It was just lovely. And God graced me with that time and. Then the baby is born. And I'm just beyond, it's the best experience I've ever had. Being a grandmother, I'm so grateful for it. But yes, with my illness, there's where the grave comes in. Sometime I would be frustrated because I couldn't engage with them like I wanted to, or with Ellie Rose like I wanted to.

Nancy: I don't know what you may be facing today, or something that you're not even aware of that you'll be facing in the days ahead.

Dannah: Connie remembers being drained of energy, unable to get out of her chair, when a series aired on Revive Our Hearts. It was called “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

Nancy (on air): But my prayer is that God will use Psalm 46 to stabilize your heart and to give you His perspective on the storm that you may be facing.

Connie: During that critical time, I listened to that whole series and rejoiced in the Lord. It just built my faith so much. It cheered me on in the depths of very, very big unknowns. 

Nancy (on air): Let me encourage you to sing while you're in the storm—before you even experience His deliverance or can imagine where it's going to come from.

Connie: Oh, it just fortified me. It encouraged me. It built me up. In fact, when I meet Nancy, I'm probably going to just burst into tears, because it helped so much. I don't know how to express how grateful I was, and I am, for that time period. I listened to it more than once

Nancy (on air): God said, “I will be exalted. When you sing, you say, ‘Amen’—I believe that's true.”

Connie: Singing is a very important thing. Singing to God when you're suffering, crying out to God and worshiping God and abiding, just abiding, and hiding in His shelter. That's where you've got to go.

Dannah: Connie needed a test to prepare for a transplant. In the process of administering that test, the doctor damaged Connie’s vocal cords. Singing had been such a big part of Connie's life. But now her singing voice was gone.

Connie: That was disappointing. That was really hard. That was grievous. I mean, I have all eternity and I'll be praising God, singing at the top of my lungs forever. 

So, I think I take my disappointments in the light of eternity. That's reality, actually, for a Christian. That's reality. What is here is temporary. And it's what it is, and it's nothing to lose in the light of the gains of eternity with Christ. 

So, I try to comfort myself with that knowledge, that truth. 

Now, is it sometimes hard? Yeah, it's sometimes hard. But I still turn my face again to the truth of God's Word and say, “I'm going to be able to sing again, and it's going to be forever. So, what's a few more years here not singing?”

Mark: When Connie was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension in July of 2019, the cardiologist said, “If you do have pulmonary hypertension, and I think you do, and you have portal hypertension, which is the bad liver, that combination is called portopulmonary hypertension.” And he said, “It is not a good combination.” 

Now, we'd never heard that terminology before, but I'm a researcher. I Google everything, and I started researching it. The good part about that is you're very well informed. The bad part is, you can get overwhelmed. And that's kind of what God started dealing with me about into early 2020.

Nancy (on air): I'll tell you what, if you feel that you have to understand and make sense of everything that's going on in your life, you will drive yourself crazy trying. 

Mark: Of course, the pandemic hits, I went home from work to work from home in March of 2020. Sometime shortly thereafter, actually, it was one of Nancy’s podcasts.

Nancy (on air): Listen, if God is with you, if He's around you, if He's your fortress, if you have His presence in your life, you don't have to understand everything. You can be still. 

Mark: This was Psalms 131.

Nancy (on air): This passage has been a life preserver for me.

Mark: I heard some of that because I was home. It really struck me that no matter how smart I am, or how much research I do, or how many people I talk to, it's way too big for me. I won't figure it out.

Nancy (on air): You will never see or understand all the purposes that God has for what He does in your life.

 

Connie: She talked about being like a child weaned, 

Nancy (on air): Surely, I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned off his mother. My soul is even as a weaned child.

Connie: That parent will take care of everything, whatever you need, the parents got it. I think that image was very real to me, many, many times, many, many times.

Mark: I needed to be like that little, little baby, trusting God and leaning my head on God's shoulder, and just trusting.

Nancy (on air): And David says, “I'm not going to expend needless energy trying to figure out things that can't be figured out.”

Mark: In that spring, what I tell people as I learned to bow my knee to God's plan, His sovereign plan. Either God was sovereign in our lives, or He wasn't. We know who He is, and so we choose to trust God. And so, I bowed my knee before God, His sovereign plan. I never stopped praying for God to heal Connie. I never stopped. I was still praying for that. I did, but we didn't know how God was going to act. We didn't know if He was going bring healing miraculously, through transplant, or if He was going to call Connie home sooner than we chose. But we did know we could trust Him.

Connie: At some point, I think we both had to realize this could be unto death. I planned a funeral. I had my minister come, and we planned my funeral and things like that. Every time I drove by the graveyard, now I drove by it a lot, or well Mark does, I'm not driving yet again. But I always say, “You're going to have to wait.”

So, my home is in heaven. When He keeps me alive, and lets me testify to His glory, for however long I'm here, I'm going to do that. He gives me breath. I'm going to breathe it out to worship Him, to praise Him, and to thank Him. The greater glory is in heaven. But now, we walk very close together and with the Lord.

Mark: It just seemed like we started experiencing peace. It wasn't long after that, that people gathered in our front yard and prayed for Connie.

Connie: The entire church family came to my front yard. Now, this is during COVID. So, I have to remain separated. But they all came into my yard, and Mark helped me out to a chair a little distant from them. They had a group worship service, and a group prayer service for me in my front yard. 

And from that point, I think it was a turning point. Oh, the family of God. What a gift God has given us as a family. We can hold each other's hands. We can encourage one another. And we can do what God asks us to do: pray as if we ourselves were going through it.

Mark: There were people praying for Connie from all over the country and probably all over the world. We will never know this side of eternity.

Connie: And I, in turn, pray for others. Because what comfort I have received, I'm going to give to others as well.

Mark: That was early June 2020. From that point on, Connie's pulmonary hypertension started getting better. By November 2020, her numbers were good enough to be put on the liver transplant list. And February 18 of 2021, she had a new liver,

Connie: We have a picture of my old liver and my new liver. My old liver looked like a beat-up old Ford in a junker place, or an old football that was just . . . It was almost round, and just beat up awful. The new one looks like a Corvette just off the showroom floor. It's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. I would tell that to people, and they were just looking at me like I was absolutely insane. But it's beautiful, that new liver is absolutely stunning. 

I would lay my hands on my liver area, and I would pray that God would weave and mold and form this new liver just like He did my original one. And for many years, I've prayed for the donor’s family and donor. I've prayed for them faithfully, because I know that the anniversary of my new life is the anniversary of their grief. And so, we're sensitive to that. And we continue to pray for them.

Post-transplant, when I looked down and I have a scar that goes here, it goes this way. And then it goes way up here and it goes over here. And then I have two other scars and then a scar here from the transplant. I looked at that, and I thought, Well, that's a badge of courage right there. Then I thought, Oh my, the stripes that God has taken from me that Jesus bore for me, the scars that He can show us and His hands and His feet, and the torture. I let that remind me of Him every day in my life. When I see it. That's what I think of. 

And when the doctor said, “Well, that'll probably fade, and you won't even hardly notice it.” I said, “I don't want it to fade. It's a reminder to me of the Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrifice and what He suffered and endured for me.” That was a way we witnessed to a lot of people in the hospital. 

I was supposed to get out on day three, but I didn't get out of hospital. Instead, we were there on day four. I kept thinking, Why are we still here? When a doctor comes in, shuts the door, and says to Mark and I, what is it different about you? I need other people to have what we have in here.” What is the difference? Mark and I proceeded to share the gospel with her. Because that's the way, the truth, and the life. It was amazing. And that's why I had to stay an extra day.

So, anywhere you are, God is sending you there for a purpose, for a reason. You just have to wake up out of your own self-absorption and your own pain or whatever, and say, “Well, God must have a purpose in this. I need to look around and see what it is.” We were able to minister to many, many, many, many people.

Dannah: In life, doesn't it seem like sometimes storms come one after the other. After getting a transplant, Connie's trials weren't over. Her body was still suffering from damage from the earlier illness. And for ten days, she went through an episode doctors couldn't understand

Connie: Non-thriving is what they called me. At that point I said, “You have to turn your face like a flint, and you have to look at Jesus, His eternal shining eyes, His eternal powerful Word, and His presence through the Holy Spirit.” You keep your face focused like flint on that, your eyes on that. Because that's the only way you're going to live through the world of the hospital which tries to suck you in. It's isolating. It's scary. It's full of unknowns, and unpredictable things happen to and from your body. 

So, my word to myself and to anybody else in those predicaments is run like the wind to God. Hide yourself in the shelter of the Almighty and turn your face like a flint to Him.

Dannah: Even when it seems like Connie story refuses a neat happy ending. She knows the Good Shepherd is leading her.

Connie: My Good Shepherd. Every moment of this has never failed to provide everything I need. He's never failed to lead me in the paths of righteousness, and to feed me in the fields of green, and to refresh me, with waters from those clear, clear waters that help you flourish. And I've walked through those hard places where everything around me was out of control. My body was out of control, medicines weren't working, things were not happening the way doctors wanted them to, or how I wanted them to.

Those fears, they had no place in the arms of God as I walked through that valley of shadow of death. God is in charge of whether I live or die, not doctors, not counts. You're defined by numbers when you're sick. You know, your odds of living are this. Your numbers are this. Your blood works is this. It's all numbers. Well, I'm not in those numbers. I'm not in those doctor's hands. I'm in the hands of the sovereign God, and I don't have to be afraid, because God is so faithful.

Nancy: Dannah, I remember meeting Mark and Connie earlier this year, she was finally well enough to travel, and they took a couple of days and visited our ministry. It was so inspiring to see how someone who had gone through so many struggles continued to lean on Christ day by day, moment by moment, to give her strength. We all need that. 

We just heard how Connie's heart stayed connected to God's Word as crises came one after the other, rolling into her life like waves. And Dannah, we want our lives to be that way. We want to be anchored to Christ so that when the storms come, as we both know they will, our lives will not capsize.

Dannah: I want that too, Nancy, I do, and I'm so grateful. I'm grateful that God used Revive Our Hearts to play a role in Connie’s story. And you know, it can be hard work to prepare these programs and podcasts. But something that encourages us as a team is remembering that people like Connie are listening. Maybe they're so weak that all they can do is sit and listen and receive strength from God's Word.

Nancy: Yeah, it's so sweet to hear those stories. I'm grateful for everyone who has supported this ministry over the years to help us provide series like “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

If you've given to meet the needs of the ministry, you're a part of Mark and Connie's story. God has used you to help encourage them.

Dannah: And in the year ahead, there will be more listeners who are going to be in desperate situations, and they will need encouragement. They will need the truth of God's Word. We want to be there for them. I wonder, could you consider helping us do that? 

Typically, almost half the donations we need for the entire year arrive in December. So, as we make plans for the year ahead, your gift right now will make a huge difference.

Nancy: That's true, Dannah. Some friends of this ministry want to be part of stories like Mark and Connie's, so they've offered to match every donation to Revive Our Hearts during the month of December, as part of a matching challenge of $1.4 million dollars.

What a huge encouragement that is as we start into this last month of the year. We're asking the Lord to move on the hearts of friends like you to help us meet that challenge, and even exceed it. That will enable us to continue our current levels of ministry. 

And meeting this challenge will also help us move forward in places where we see God at work in special ways. 

Over the last few years, for example, we've seen the ministry to Spanish-speaking women explode. It's thrilling to see what God is doing throughout Latin America. 

And then recently, a couple of our team members spent two weeks in the nation of Brazil. They met with one group of women after another in one city after another. Over and over again, they heard how God has used this ministry in the lives of Brazilian women. What they experienced was so hugely encouraging, but they also saw the great hunger. The need there is for us to translate and provide more resources for these Portuguese-speaking women. And that's just one example of the amazing opportunities that we see God opening up for us to reach women around the world. 

That's why your gift during the month of December is so important as we make plans for the year ahead.

Dannah: If you'd like to support Revive Our Hearts and help the ministry meet this matching challenge you can call 1-800-569-5959, or you can always visit ReviveOurHeart.com. 

You may know that Nancy has a new book called Heaven Rules. Do you know the book is dedicated to a very special person? Samuel Bollinger never took a breath on earth. But he's had a big effect on the people who've heard his story. You'll hear it next week. Please join us again for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is calling you to greater freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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