Kay Schrieber: Finding Peace and Joy Amidst Chronic Illness

WHEN GOD WEEPS
JONI AND FRIENDS

In this podcast episode, Kay Schrieber opens up about her journey with chronic illness and the struggles she has faced. 

Drawing inspiration from the book 'When God Weeps' by Joni Earekson Tada, Kay discusses the questions surrounding suffering and God's intentions. 

She shares her personal experience of being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and the challenges of managing her health as a brittle diabetic. 

Despite the pain and uncertainty, Kay's faith remains strong, and she believes in God's healing power. 

Through her story, Kay emphasizes the importance of trusting God's plan and finding peace amidst the storms of life. 

She also highlights the need for compassion and understanding from fellow Christians when it comes to supporting those facing physical trials. 

Ultimately, Kay's journey teaches us about God's grace and the power of holding onto Him in times of adversity.

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Transcript

[00:02] Jan: Welcome to just talking about Jesus. I'm Jan Johnson, a seasoned believer who loves relationships and, you know, just talking about Jesus. Welcome to episode three of just talking about Jesus. Today, my guest, Kay Schreiber and I talk about chronic illness and suffering. We had read the book when God weeps, why our sufferings matter to the Almighty by Joni Earekson Tada, who, because of a tragic accident, became paralyzed and has been wheelchair bound for 30 years. Her intimate experience with suffering gives her a special understanding of God's intentions for us in our pain. If God is loving, why is there suffering? What's the difference between permitting something and ordaining it? When bad things happen, who's behind them, God or the devil? When suffering touches our lives, questions like these suddenly demand an answer. From our perspective, suffering doesn't make sense, especially when we believe in a loving and just God.  and lifelong friends Stephen Estes, pro beyond glib answers that fail us in our time of deepest need. Instead, with firmness and compassion, they reveal a God big enough to understand our suffering, wise enough to allow it, and powerful enough to use it for a greater good than we can ever imagine. So let's begin and see what God has done in Kay's life. We've been reading the book.

[01:39] Kay: I read at first and pass it on because I thought it was so much like things you've been going through when God weeps by  Joni Earekson Tada so what's your take so far? You're not through with it yet, but I'm amazed.

[01:55] Kay: It's questions that I had been struggling with for the past few years and things I had already resolved. And when I was reading this book, the conclusions were the same, and it was validation for me that I was on the right track.

[02:13] Kay: Yeah.

[02:15] Kay: In 2018, in July of 2018, I woke Dale, my husband, in the middle of the night and said, you have to take me to emergency. I'm in so much pain I can't stand it. The end result of that was that my pancreas was completely destroyed. There was nothing left of it. It was cysts, tumors, all levels of cancer. I had transplant team at Mayo clinic did the surgery, and through a lot of questions and things, I'll digress just a little bit. When they told me I was going to have surgery and that it was very dangerous and they were going to have to take the spleen as well because I could well hemorrhage to death on the table because the pancreas was totally destroyed and the spleen is connected to it. Perfect peace. I was a perfect piece. The next visit, which was just shortly before the surgery, they told me I would be a type one brittle by Bennett the rest of my life. I went to the car and cried. It's still, it's the funniest thing. I mean, perfect peace. If I was here, have the Lord. If I go home, I'm weeping.

[03:55] Kay: Except that, you know, when you think of a diagnosis like that, you know it's going to be a long haul because you're going to have to manage it throughout the rest of your life.

[04:08] Kay: Oh, yes.

[04:09] Kay: But you maybe not understood how much you would have to manage it.

[04:14] Kay: That's true. And I had to complicate it. I had been hypoglycemic my whole life. So low blood sugar issues forever. And I know that can turn into diabetes very easily. So I have fought this all my life to make sure that I didn't get diabetes right. And so now I'm slapped in the face with not just normal diabetes. Well, a lot of good that did what I was doing on my own. You make me laugh. So that's when the struggle for me really began, even before the surgery, because I didn't want to have diabetes. And now they're not telling me just normal diabetes, they're telling me brittle diabetes. And that means that it goes up and down so fast that I would go in from maybe the high three hundred s, four hundred s and a quarter.

[05:21] Kay: What's normal for most people?

[05:24] Kay: My range, they had set at 80 to 180 because.

[05:29] Kay: So we're talking a little high.

[05:31] Kay: A little high. If it gets too high, it can kill you because basically your blood coagulates and if it gets too low, you pass out and die. Well, when I'm dropping to 42 and I can't get it to turn around and you feel awful.

[05:50] Kay: Yeah.

[05:50] Kay: I mean, you. And it's dropping so fast that you can't get a handle on it. And I have worked with the specialists at Mayo and now away from Mayo, because Mayo doesn't take my insurance anymore. But it was very difficult, and it still is very difficult to manage. I'm having a very hard time. It swings. It looks like a giant roller coaster when you look at the chart.

[06:20] Kay: And so you wear a monitor all the time.

[06:22] Kay: I wear a monitor and I also wear pumpkin, but pump always doesn't work. I've lost so much weight. I lost about 45 pounds.

[06:30] Kay: You didn't have a lot of weight to begin with. On a good day, you might have been 100.

[06:35] Kay: Oh, yeah, I was over 100. The way they explained it, to me is your body now is like a twelve year old child, a normal child. You don't have a stomach. You don't have fat, you don't have. And that's where you put these monitors, right, the g six, which is the one that tells you how low you are. We found a spot under my. On my wings that I have left from losing weight. I see. Lord did something there, too, left me the wings. That's the only place under the shelter of his wings.

[07:11] Kay: Right? See, that's all you have to think.

[07:14] Kay: Okay, so I alternate. Every ten days, I alternate arms. And the pump is supposed to be into your stomach, and you can't have it very close to your scar tissue. From surgery, we're eliminating places. We're limiting. And now in the last couple months, it'll work for two or three days, maybe two days, maybe third day if I'm lucky. And then it stops working because I don't have enough fat tissue between the muscle and my skin to allow it to absorb. Sometimes it doesn't work at all after that.

[07:55] Kay: There are plenty of us who would love to share some of our fat tissue with you.

[08:01] Kay: I know. But as a Christian and faced with all this, one of my first questions was, do I have the surgery or do I just trust God to heal me? And I had to resolve that one. And I know all of us have heard the story of the guy in the boat, and he's asked for help and God sent him help. And. No, no. So that one, for me was pretty easy because for a long time I've understood that physicians were given knowledge by the Lord. You think Satan is going to give doctors this kind of wisdom to heal? Okay, so, all right, God, if this is my choice, there's your life. You know, if I. If it isn't removed immediately, the chances of it metastasizing was extremely great. So that decision was made not months later, rather rapidly. And I didn't have a problem with that either. It was like, God, I trust you. If I die and go home, I go home. Yeah. I talk to you because I'll be rented to you. I know. I talk to my children, three of my. The three children ahead of time. And I explained to them that if I go home.

[09:26] Kay: See you later.

[09:27] Kay: God is punishing me, right? Yeah. He's not punishing me, he's protecting me. Yeah. Because only he knows but lies in the future. And he says he'll not tempt us beyond that which we are able.

[09:42] Kay: Even though sometimes it feels like it.

[09:47] Kay: Feels like it it's like, almost daily. And even without the disease, you have to make a decision every morning when you wake up. Am I going to walk with him or not? Is he in the driver's seat or mine? In the driver's seat.

[10:04] Kay: Right.

[10:05] Kay: And I just made that decision. You know, I made my. Letting him be in the front seat may not be your front seat the way you would do it or you would handle it, but as long as I'm listening and trying to listen to his voice, I truly believe in my heart that he honors, that he does.

[10:27] Kay: What have been some stronghold scriptures for you?

[10:33] Kay: So many. I mean, there are just so many. One for many, many years, since surgery.

[10:38] Kay: You're an old woman.

[10:39] Kay: Yeah, I know I am. I'm 78, but I was sharper than that. The word says that ours is not a spirit of fear, power, love, and a sound mind. I know we gotta laugh. Lord's laughing. That is probably one of my biggest scriptures and has been for a long time, actually. I know that as long as my heart is towards him, it's not based on how much I pray, how much I read, how much I do. You get the word I every time? I. I. It's not based on me. Yes, I need to pray. Yes, I need to be in the word. Yes, I need to draw close to him. But that is not what heals me. He healed. And if he doesn't, he told Paul, too. No, basically, you're going to have to live with it. And when I was reading this, when God weeps, one of the things they had talked about is the witness to others. And when she was talking about this particular lady and her amputations from diabetes and her loss of sight and mobility, you know, I think, lord, I'm not even close to dealing with that kind of suffering and pain. I'm not. I mean, yeah, I've had to go back to the hospital a few times.

[12:11] Kay: There's always somebody that's worse off.

[12:13] Kay: Oh. You know, and you just keep your eyes off yourself. Do whatever. My mother had cancer, and she loved strawberries and had a huge strawberry bed. And while she was going through chemo and she was so sick, she would be out crawling on her hands and knees in her strawberry bed. At the time, I didn't understand it. It was like, why would you want to do that when you're so sick and, you know, your life is so short?

[12:41] Kay: Because that's what she enjoyed.

[12:42] Kay: That's exactly right. Yeah. It keeps your mind off yourself.

[12:48] Kay: Yeah.

[12:49] Kay: And I find Dale and I have remodeled homes many, many homes over the years and built from scratch. Both. And that's what we're doing. We're living in an rv while we are building. Again, I've had that question broached to me, why are you doing this? And it's like, you know what? It keeps my mind off me.

[13:11] Kay: And people without a vision perish.

[13:13] Kay: I know that's true. That's true. Of course, perishing isn't the worst thing that could happen to me. But you're right. Absolutely right.

[13:24] Kay: Yeah.

[13:25] Kay: I think that we get when pain overtakes us and especially when you're tired at night, when the pain increases and increases. And I'm not one to take meds. I know when I was a Christian wasn't really walking with the Lord, but I was working, trying to save a shopping center that we owned and the firewalls had collected water and the shopping center was collapsing. And I'm a farm girl, I grew up working. If something needs to be done, you do it. Well, I fell through. Not off, through the roof, onto 18ft, onto a concrete sidewalk that had just been cleared.

[14:15] Kay: And lived to tell and.

[14:16] Kay: Lived to tell about it. And God's hand was in it. I see it now, didn't then. But I was in intensive care for two weeks and when they started taking me off morphing, I went through. Through withdrawal. The pain was almost as bad as the pain I was already in. I had just determined long before that I was. If I had to use anything, it would be minuscule, you know, till I could even remotely handle it. And I did that through this. God helped me through that and I was able to only be on it a couple of days. And then I was able to get off of it and deal with it with prayer and tapes and music and, you know, feeding your spirit and feeding your spirit isn't always reading, because when you're in that kind of pain, you can't think. You can't think, you can't think.

[15:13] Kay: Yeah.

[15:14] Kay: Your mind just doesn't work. And what you do read, you don't retain. Another scripture was thy word I've hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. And sinning isn't always adultery or fornication or murder or whatever. Sinning can be all levels. It can be your thoughts or your suicidal thoughts for a lot of people. I didn't have that at that time at all. But I know that a lot of people struggle with that and it doesn't mean they're not christians. My heart to christians is when they are having real physical trials is to embrace them because you feel so. You already feel like I failed. What did I to resolve that one? You're already doing that. And to have another Christian, well, you just need to believe more. You need to get up and walk. You know, my one friend said, well, I sprained my ankle really bad and was supposed to stay off of it. And so I got up, and I was kind of gingerly doing, and I just started to run, and my ankle was just fine. In other words, well, I'm happy for you. Well, I was. I was happy for her, but she was telling me that I just needed to get up and. And get going. I could barely move. I could barely. I couldn't even lift my head yet. I mean, I could barely lift my head when they brought.

[16:41] Kay: To have an easy answer, to just have your own interpretation of what scripture is, to put it to somebody else's situation. Like going on the wrong track. Yeah.

[16:53] Kay: And you know what? God's remedy for you may not be the same as it is for me.

[16:59] Kay: He didn't do the same thing for everybody.

[17:00] Kay: Yeah. Even if we had the exact same symptom and we were both at the same level of faith, he may not do the same thing with us. Because in this, when God weeps, it's like God sees the plan he wants to accomplish through you would be very different from what he wants to accomplish through the other person.

[17:21] Kay: And he knows, and his ways are higher than ours, and we have to just keep clinging on to the things that we don't understand.

[17:30] Kay: Why didn't you take me home? Normally, pancreatic cancer is either smoking or drinking, neither of which I do. I've never smoked. I drank very little, and my alcohol consumption was a glass of wine where every month or a half a glass every month, minimal or last two months, very minimal. I had a first cousin, died with pancreatic cancer about three years before my symptoms. They wanted to do kind of use us for a study a little bit, and they had determined at the end of this that it was genetic. I don't know what tests they did or what all, but I had agreed to it because, I mean, if I can help somebody else, no problem. So the last since 2018, which is about five years in July, I have been struggling with the consequences of the surgery, which. They took the complete pancreas, the spleen, the gallbladder, a third of my stomach, and did a procedure called a whipple. And a whipple is usually done when there's some pancreas left. So you can. Your body does produce a little bit of insulin. When they take your pancreas, you're in real trouble. After dealing with all of those things in these last few years, I obviously can't eat anything with grease or oils, anything. I started out on a medication called Creon, and it has three different major elements. One is for dealing with oils, greases, that's lipase amylase deals with starches and protease deals proteins. So they put me on that. After a few months of sitting up in tears every night, upright tears streaming down my face, I was in such agony. They did tests, and the Creon caused the ulcers because I wasn't able to eat very much about tablespoons to four tablespoons at a time. And I was supposed to take this every time I ate.

[19:45] Kay: That's one way to lose weight.

[19:47] Kay: Oh, I did. I did. I threw up a lot. I was in such pain, I could hardly stand it. They took me off all the medications. I decided on my own. It was. I mean, I prayed about it and I thought about it. So without the doctors, as I went back on the medications, I went back on one at a time. We're not talking pain, we're talking agony.

[20:13] Kay: And then you're saying, take me now because death is looking pretty good.

[20:18] Kay: Yeah, I was gonna say the life doesn't look so sweet right now. And that's what they say in this book. They discuss those issues and I had had to work through them the hard way, and that's okay. But, boy, for anyone struggling or, you know, someone that's struggling, that's a Christian, that book is amazing. Absolutely life giving. Because you know that you're not off somewhere. You know that God isn't punishing you. Right. And which I already knew that anyway. I had seen his power in my life after that first accident where I fell through the roof. Five years and a week later, a drunk hit me head on on Scottsdale Road. Yes. Five years and a week after my fall through the roof, a drunk hit me head on on Scottsdale Road and he jumped a four foot median.

[21:21] Kay: Oh, my gosh.

[21:22] Kay: And came down into the car I was in, which was pretty heavy duty Ford Torino at that time. Otherwise I probably wouldn't be living here. I'd have been home a long time ago.

[21:36] Kay: Think of everything you would have saved. Scared, right? I know.

[21:41] Kay: Yeah. But I wouldn't have my youngest son.

[21:44] Kay: That's true.

[21:46] Kay: After this accident, I was in the hospital for about a week and my grandmother's, my paternal grandmother's sister, whom I love dearly came to the hospital and brought me a little book, and it was on job. I still hadn't sold out to the Lord, but it really spoke to my heart and it started making me think again. And it was a good thing. I mean, God knows God has his reasons and he didn't cause the accident, but thank goodness he's going to use it. Yeah. And that's what I see when I look back. He didn't do it, but he allowed. And how he is orchestrated and controlled and for what was meant for harm has actually turned on to good.

[22:44] Kay: In what ways? What things have you specifically seen?

[22:48] Kay: Number one, I started seeing more of his protection and his miracles and not blaming God, because I think all of us have a tendency within us to blame God. Well, if you're so powerful and you're so mighty, then why did you let this happen to me?

[23:08] Kay: Right.

[23:09] Kay: It just. That's human nature and I think that's.

[23:12] Kay: Well, it's our mixed up perception of really who God is.

[23:18] Kay: Yes, exactly.

[23:19] Kay: And that book really speaks to that too.

[23:21] Kay: It does. And instead of seeing him for who he is, it started me back on that path. Well, I was raised Christian, so I'm a Christian. But you have no walk and no relationship with him. And so it started me back really thinking about God and his place in my life. Hadn't completely sold out yet, but started that. And within a couple of years after that, I had been divorced and I was just lost, really lost. And I had the two young teenage kids at that time, they weren't teenagers yet, but they were preteen and trying to figure out my life and where my life was gonna go as a single parent too, how to put your life back together. And, you know, we don't have control over what other people think and what other people do.

[24:23] Kay: And isn't that a lesson?

[24:25] Kay: Yes, it is. And I'm so glad because I'm glad they don't have control over mine.

[24:30] Kay: Exactly. Vice versa. Right.

[24:32] Kay: And that's brings you back to God gives us free choice. Satan doesn't give us free choice. He doesn't come up and say, how would you like to have your pancreas destroyed this week? Would you like that? That would be really nice. But he doesn't do that. And God doesn't do that to us. Satan does. I mean, he'll just slap something on you. But not everything is from Satan either.

[24:59] Kay: I always go back to this, is that when you look in the old Testament and Moses and Joshua, they get to a certain point and they built an altar. Let's remember what happened here, what God did here at this point. And then they go through and some other stuff happens and they build another altar. It's like those are the things, those moments, those defining moment things that we need to build an altar and remember what God has done, because you can build the next time. You can always go back to, oh, well, he did it here, so this time he's going to do something. It may not be the same thing, and it probably won't be the same thing because he's building us.

[25:39] Kay: That's right.

[25:40] Kay: Into who he wants us to be. But, you know, each of those are another step forward.

[25:45] Kay: Yeah. And that's part of that waking up every morning, especially after this severe challenge, whatever it might be.

[25:55] Kay: Yeah.

[25:56] Kay: Is because you have to make that decision. Is he still God? What is my faith based on? Is it based on how I feel? Is it based on what he's done, what he's already done? Frankly, if he never did another thing for me ever, he already paid the price.

[26:18] Kay: Well, and then we say, oh, I.

[26:21] Jan: Want to be christlike, you know, but.

[26:23] Kay: Then you don't want to go through suffering and the rejection and the pain and all of that. You only want to maybe be able to pray and things are healed. Which part of Jesus life do you want to be like?

[26:36] Kay: Yeah, you know, I would like you.

[26:39] Kay: You need to do it all.

[26:40] Kay: I'd like to be the kind part and the healing part, but I don't think I would like to have thorns in my head and I don't think I'd like to be beaten, and I don't think I would like that kind of rejection.

[26:53] Kay: And the other thing is, if your life was just always rosy, how much are you going to be looking up at God?

[27:00] Kay: That's right.

[27:00] Kay: And how are you going to know who he is?

[27:02] Kay: Yeah.

[27:03] Kay: If you don't go through the valleys, you know, and where he's actually walking through the valley with you.

[27:10] Kay: Yes.

[27:11] Kay: Well, how are you going to know the character of God?

[27:14] Kay: Yeah, psalms, we all know that. 23rd. Psalms. And. And he says, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

[27:25] Kay: Right.

[27:26] Kay: Because I don't know about you, but I'm going from life to life.

[27:31] Kay: Yeah.

[27:32] Kay: Yeah, because that's what he said.

[27:34] Kay: Right.

[27:35] Kay: I believe him. So he didn't heal me here. It didn't say, you will be healed right now, today, because you asked me, you know, maybe I will. Maybe, maybe I will next week. Do I believe in miracles? Absolutely. Do I believe in his power to heal anyone of anything. To put back an ear or to put in a new pancreas. Absolutely. I do. I really do. I believe that. And I believe that if I don't, it isn't him. You know, maybe I have missed something. Maybe I have not understood something clearly, but it's not him. And once you get that resolved that, you know what? I'm not perfect. He doesn't expect me to be perfect. He just asked me to love him and trust him. Can I trust him when I'm hurting? Can I trust him when you want to take half the organs away? Can I trust you for the next, what? Maybe I have a year. Maybe I have five years. Maybe I have 15 years, you know, at 78.

[28:45] Kay: However, as long as you got me.

[28:47] Kay: Here, you know, do I trust you enough that you're going to do what is best and most rewarding for me? And the answer is every morning or every time you go through throwing up half the night or sitting up in pain, you can't stand it. You do have to say that. And that's those monuments. Yeah, that's that putting in my mind years ago, I used to remember how they used to grab the horns alter. I would do that in my mind, I would go, God, you know, God, you know, just hang on. I'm hanging on. And that for me was, you know, they always say, how you hanging on? You go buy my fingernails.

[29:32] Kay: Yeah, barely. And I don't even have any fingernails, so, you know, that helps, you know.

[29:39] Kay: And I love it that we can laugh and rejoice with God. Number one, he's got to have a fabulous sense of humor. He'd never put up with any of us, me particularly. But the fact that he has humor and he's given us a sense of humor that we can laugh and rejoice in his word without being disrespectful. We can go shake your head and roll your eyeballs or whatever you need to do, you know, and he's right.

[30:09] Kay: There because he loves you.

[30:11] Kay: Because he does.

[30:12] Kay: He is creation, and he loves.

[30:16] Jan: Thanks so much for listening. I look forward to sharing another transforming story with you next week.