Encountering God...Sue Mixdorf

I’m Sue Mixdorf and this is my story

When others tell stories of “hearing god speak”, I picture a lightning bolt where at one moment they didn’t know much about god and then BAM…they were 100% sure of their faith.  Yeah, that wasn’t my case.  That’s not my story.   Mine is a long meandering story.  I am a slow learner, a very slow learner.   In fact, I grew up going to church and attended church on and off as an adult but it wasn’t until I was faced with my own mortality that the puzzle pieces started to come together.

You know how when you take a puzzle out of the box, it’s just a pile of pieces.  There is no way of telling what the finished puzzle will look like unless you’ve seen the picture on the front of the box.   I think throughout my life God was showing me the picture but I wasn’t really paying attention until the last few years.   Let’s talk about the pieces of my life and how now, looking back, I can see that God was holding the box up…right in front of my face…but I couldn’t see it.

Growing up I think the outside pieces of the puzzle were put together…the framework.  Growing up my family attended church, I went to Sunday school and got confirmed but I was just doing what I was “supposed to do”, Church was really just a place to hang out with my friends.  I don’t think I ever consciously tuned in to what was being taught BUT the exposure was there.

At the age of 13, my dad died suddenly.  He went to work one day at the bank and never came home.   He had died of massive heart attack at work.   My brother picked me up from school and told me, but I never cried.   I wasn’t upset.   It just “was what it was”.   I didn’t know what I believed about God or Heaven for sure but I just knew that he was gone, that he was in a better place and we would be ok.   A piece of my puzzle was put into place that day, the first instance of the peace I felt, the calm I felt in a tough situation.   Looking back this is the first memory I have of really showing my gift of faith (a gift I didn’t really now I had until fairly recently).  

Fast forward, through many years of risky behavior and trying to “find myself”, and I am now married to an amazing man, living in our home town, have 2 beautiful daughters Maggie and Sarah.  Life is easy and there is another puzzle piece:  My husband goes to work one day and comes home without a job, his job “has been eliminated due to downsizing”.  Again, I wasn’t worried.  I couldn’t explain why.   We ended up moving away from our home town, which was scary but I just KNEW all was good.  

We moved to a small town near Dubuque, where we had a neighbor named Holly who was (and is) one of the kindest, sweetest people I have ever met.   She was SO strong in her faith in God and was 100% sure of what she believed.  I envied that and thought so many times, “how can I get to that point”.  But then life got busy and took over and religion took a back seat other things.  Throughout all of this, I would go to church periodically but I never engaged, I just didn’t get it.

Two years later, another piece of the puzzle, I find out that I am pregnant with child #3.  Did I mention that we had decided we were done having kids and that my husband had had a vasectomy after our second daughter was born….7 years prior!  (Yeah, I love to see the men in the room sweat when I say that).   Anyway…it was quite a shock but I never once worried about it.  I remember my sister-in-law saying “did you cry when you found out?” and I said “no.   It’s a baby not cancer.”  Something in me just knew it would be ok.   I was at peace.  I didn’t know why, I couldn’t give it a name but I had totally peace with the situation.

And then another puzzle piece, 5 months into the miracle baby pregnancy, I am at work and I get a call from my husband saying again that his job has been eliminated.  He told me and I literally took a deep breath and said “ok, what’s the next step”.   So, in May of 2006, when I was 8 ½ months pregnant, we moved to Ankeny.  18 days later, our miracle baby Gabby was born.  After we had been here a few months, I received a card in the mail from an acquaintance in Dubuque where we had lived and she said “Sue, I just wanted to say what an example of faith you were through this whole move and pregnancy”.  What?   “example of faith?”  I’m not even sure what I believe.   You see, I had always struggled with the idea of God because I am a detail person.  I need to see it, touch it, feel it to know it’s real.  None of those things can really be done with religion or God.

And then I met my friend Sara here in Ankeny.   Sara, like Holly, is secure in her faith and a true woman of God.  I remember actually thinking “God, why are you surrounding me with these women like Holly and Sara that are SO strong in their faith when I am not?”  Looking back, I must have believed more than I thought because I was ASKING God about it!

About the time my older girls reached middle school age, we started to sporadically attend the Ridge on Sunday’s.  I wasn’t sure what I believed but I knew I wanted them to get involved and to learn about God.  So, they got involved with the PRAY groups here at The Ridge.  This was a huge piece of the puzzle.  Our girls went from not attending church much to being true girls of God.  They GOT it!    I have to give Kudos to Doug Applegate and the The Junkyard crew….they were truly a gift and do amazing things.  For goodness sake, my girls figured out the puzzle way before I did!  

It’s now 2011, my girls are 15, 12 and 5 and life is good and easy.  For insurance purposes, I needed to get a physical.  It was a beautiful day in October and the sun was shining.   I am chatting with my doctor as she is doing an exam (because ladies we all know how awkward that can be) and she finds a “sizeable lump”.   This is the moment where most women cry and/or panic, but what came out my mouth was “I’m not going to panic until you tell me to” and I never did.   I knew it was going to be ok, whether it was cancer or not.  I know now that this was faith and a major puzzle piece for me.  My whole family took a positive stance on fighting this.  In fact, we had family pictures scheduled for just 2 weeks after my diagnosis and we decided to take pictures of us wearing breast cancer t-shirts and flexing our muscles.  It was cancer.   Triple negative breast cancer and we were going to fight it and win.  Only 20% of breast cancers are triple negative and I was one of them.  The bad part about Triple Negative is that they don’t know what makes it grow so it’s hard to treat and it is always treated with chemo.   Yup chemo, make you sick, make your hair fall out chemo.   The other bad part is that Triple Negative breast cancer is an aggressive form and is highly recurring.  Oh, and if it does re-occur it will usually go soft tissue like you brain, liver or lungs and it is usually deadly if it comes back.   But you know what, I read those words and I say them now but I still have a peace about it….I have faith that it will all work out as God planned. 

I ended up having a double mastectomy at the age of 43, eight chemo treatments and 27 radiation treatments and reconstructive surgery.   Throughout the whole thing I was at peace.   It was a decision to wake up and have a good day even when I felt lousy.   The peace I had was from within; it wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision.   I can’t explain it.  Looking back I know it was god’s peace, the Holy Spirit within me and I didn’t even know it.  

Cancer wasn’t easy but it was a gift.   Yup, a gift.  You see cancer gave me WAY more than it took away.   The best way I can describe it is having cancer is like being able to go to your own funeral but in a good way.  You get to hear what people love about you and why.  Phone calls end with “I love you” instead of goodbye. People come out of the woodwork to help you. 

Things like cancer that make you think about your own mortality will certainly make you take a close look at what you believe.  Throughout my cancer journey, I was never scared to die, but was scared to say goodbye to my family and friends and miss out on things in this world.  I didn’t even realize the level of faith that that statement required.

It’s like God was holding up the puzzle picture as close as he could to my face and saying “do you see it now?”  Yup, I was starting to get it.  

I made it through treatment and am cancer free today.  My body had changed and I changed inside too.  I decided to take the Alpha class here to answer the questions I had, the doubts I had.   I highly recommend it!   During the Alpha class another puzzle piece was given to me.   I would listen to others talk about their worries and stress related to life and I kept thinking “why would you worry about that” or “just move on” and then one of the leaders said to me “It’s so obvious to me Sue, your gift is faith”.     There it is again.

It was at this point that I started to realize that my faith had always been there, I just didn’t realize it.  Like God was holding up the puzzle box and showing me the picture…practically hitting me over the head with the darn box.   All these times in life where things were unsure, I had always known it would be ok.  I would be ok.

Through this journey I also realized that god didn’t GIVE me cancer but he can influence how I deal with this tumor.  What I do with it.  How can I use this adversity, this evil that entered my body, and make good out of it.  

I mentioned cancer was a gift and it is still giving to me.   This past fall I had the opportunity to travel to Peru with the Above and Beyond Cancer Organization, a group of 17 cancer survivors and 14 caregivers.  We hiked and camped in the Andes Mountains for 4 days and visited Machu Picchu.  One of the survivors was an amazing man by the name of Marcus.  After returning home, I found out that he was the brother of our very own Joni Pine, Director of Connection here at the Ridge.  Once again, God put these women of great faith right in my path.   And lucky for all of us, Joni and I along with many others were able to partner together to start the cancerCARE group here at church.  (Shameless plug, which meets the second Monday of every month.   More info can be found at the Hub.)

My gift is faith.  

The puzzle was coming together and I wasn’t even aware it was happening.  God was putting the puzzle together for me.  My only problem was that I couldn’t see the picture until a lot of the pieces were laid out for me. 

Thank goodness God is patient with slow learners like me.   In fact, that was my prayer every night as my beliefs were coming into focus these last few years.   I would say “thank you for being patient with me, I know I am a slow learner”

In the past I was sceptical of church because I figured a lot of people were attending out of obligation just like me.  I would attend and sit in the seat but didn’t really get it.  I knew “you don’t get points for being in the building” but I went through the motions.  I went from attending church periodically out of obligation and sitting in the back, to attending because I want to, because I am a better parent and person when I do and sitting in the front.  I’m worked my way to the front and now I’m on the stage.  In fact, I enjoy coming to church by myself so I can sing out of tune if I want and so I can focus on what the message is…no distractions, just me. 

As I was preparing this long winded talk, I thought: What do I want to convey?  What are the main points I want to get across by sharing my story?

(1)   If you are a slow learner, that’s ok.  God is patient and you need to be patient too.  Think of figuring out your faith like staring at the fog.   The longer you focus on it, the clearer the details will become.

(2)   All those people in church that you think have it 100% figured out and seem to have the bible memorized, don’t have it all figured out.  They are flawed just like you and me. They struggle with life and faith just like you and me.  You don’t have to be perfect…you don’t have to know all the verses in the bible.  You just have to know what you believe or at least be working on it.  Do some research, take a class, and talk to others.  

(3)   For all of your detail people who are struggling for proof that god is real, think of it this way.  God is like the wind.  You can’t see it, yet you know it is there.

(4)   You can have tough situations in your life and still have it be a charmed life.  Al Olson, in his Encounter talk in November said fighting cancer is 50-90% attitude.  I totally agree and think this applies to all tough things in life.  You can choose to laugh or cry.  To prosper or to shrink.  To have a good day or a bad day.  It’s a choice.

(5)   If you struggle with understanding the stories of the bible because you get lost in the thou’s and the begats like I do, come to church each Sunday at the Ridge.  I’ve learned more about the bible from Pastor Mike in the last 5 years than in the first 41 years of my life. 

(6)   I still don’t read the Bible a lot because it’s confusing to me.   BUT , I have found the one verse that speaks to me.  The words describing how I have always lived are right there. 

Phillipians 4: 6-7   “Don’t worry about anything instead pray about everything.  Tell god what you need and thank him for what he has done.  If you do this, you will experience God’s peace which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand.”  

I’m Sue Mixdorf and THAT is MY story.  (Click here to watch Sue's story.)