The Switch

No, not the Jennifer Aniston RomCom (though I must admit, I did see that this weekend, and it was much better than anticipated...had a relatively good underlying message for a movie of its category), a temporary career shift. One advantage of being a teacher is being able to use my summer for different purposes than educating the limited number of youth in my immediate vicinity of Columbus. I have officially made "the switch" to interning at Veritas, the church of which I have been a member since I graduated college in 2009.

I can't say the entire move has been flawlessly beautiful, though I am basking in the joys of being able to do ministry in what currently feels like a limitless manner as rules against speaking truth in my own office have been repealed. I have, however, come to learn and love specific things about my summer experience at Veritas thus far:

1. God provides new ways to pursue my passions-- One thing I have come to enjoy a great deal about the mind and passions God has granted me is instances in which I may facilitate an hospitable environment. Moving back home to save money and participate in the complex year with which my family has been blessed seemed to limit this gift in its development. But, God is gracious! He has invited me, via Veritas, to become a source of vision and execution of hospitality for the church. I'm absolutely adoring working in conjunction with women who far exceed my talents as we decide on paint colors, furniture arrangements, and landscaping. I'm also greatly enjoying working with other staff and volunteers to script a biblical/missional vision into which we may bring members of our church so that we best learn how to humbly pursue hospitality within the church walls (something that is far too easy to lost in a church, yet should sit in a place of primacy as it speaks so openly and cross-culturally about the power of the gospel).

2. With the extra hours I am able to spend at the church, God has provided an incredible opportunity to work with a few other women in planning a women's conference for women in our region of Acts 29. Those of you who know me well, know exactly the height to which my heart lept when I was given the "OK" to work on this project! I have realized over the years that women's ministry is something that challenges me and transforms me in more ways than anything else I have encountered (with regard to serving in ministry, that is). It is scary to plan something that will be attended by a number of women who hunger and thirst for the Word of God. It means that my beliefs (or misbeliefs) about God will directly impact the theology that is cultivated by women attending the event. It therefore requires me to leave "me" at the doormat and trudge on through the power of the Spirit alone. I  am not good at allowing that to happen. God must continually transform me so that I can both, trust him to be the one who shapes the hearts of the women with whom I pursue ministry and not my misbeliefs, and trust him to change my heart so that I actually am able to experience the pleasures and pains for doing ministry through him to the extent that he has intentionally measured out for my life.

More thoughts to come on this "switch" soon. I'm currently scripting my support letter for the summer internship... perhaps it will make an appearance here soon.

Evidences of Grace

My little sister is amazing! She is far better a writer than I was at her age, she is simply a beauty to behold and talented in so many ways. In the piece of writing that follows, she tells the story of how this year has unfolded for her thus far. Her story speaks so much to the necessity of seeing all things in light of the perfect character, wisdom, and graciousness of our Lord. I am stunned by how, despite her sinful heart, God has transformed her into someone who desires to seek his glory above all else. Please enjoy reading the winsome words she has penned. 

I believe in Healing

            Experience: an event or occurrence that leaves an impression on someone. That is, something that changes your life. For me, this year has become just that: a radical experience.  We all battle hardships sometimes; however, this year has brought about a few more than expected.  My family and I have been pushed to measures we never thought were possible to survive. Together, the only way we have made it through is because of our one true savior, Jesus Christ. In Him, I believe, is true healing. Though I have seen miracles occur in other’s lives, it wasn’t until I could experience it on my own that I could find their true meaning.

            On October 15, 2010, my family and I were brought together in our family room. My oldest brother with his guitar, and my parents, brother, sister, and myself all gathered around him. We had just discovered the most unforeseen news in our entire lives: my brother Jared, had been diagnosed with cancer. Despite the fact that each of us sat with tears running down our face, our only words were the praises we sang to our Heavenly Father.  As we ended the night together in prayer, I knew this evening would forever be engraved in my memory. I remember feeling confused and scared, but not just because  of the dreaded “C” word. For at this time in my life, there was a different struggle going on within me; something else controlling my own life:  an eating disorder.

Anorexia came into my life, preceded by nothing, only to become a stronghold that has taken over my mind, and made my relationship with food a minute-by-minute stress. While healing takes time, I have learned that recovery takes willingness, letting go, surrendering, accepting, and being patient.  Some days I can have a smile on my face, while other days are full of tears; regardless, I am constantly reminded of God’s love each time I read, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

(Matt. 11: 28-30 ).   I can already see that from this experience, my faith in Jesus is growing in ways I have always dreamed of; while Jared’s has been used to glorify God as well. As I watch Jared each week, physically taking in a poison I’m supposed to believe is the only way for him to live, he stands with spirits high setting a remarkable example for me. With my family at my side, I know that true healing is yet to come. The faith which I thought was only something little, can transform a life to reflect its true purpose on this Earth, to honor Jesus Christ. 

Flying High

Well, Jared's been doing a fantastic job taking all the pain and discomfort that comes from being in the hospital for six days. However, part of his ability to soar thru this experience can be contributed to the pain killers he is currently on. Here are a few examples. 

First, meet Jared's doctor, Joel Mayerson and his assistant, Jill, as they rewrap Jared's bandaging. 

Second, Jared was very frustrated with the construction going on outside his room; he was not afraid to let them know. Also, his friend from high school, Jessica brought him a balloon he is now obsessed with. 

He went walking, and leaping, and praising God

Ok, maybe not leaping, but all other things in accordance with scripture with regard to the Lord working a miracle in our lives. Jared has been in recovery since Wednesday night and is plugging along well through his time here, at the James. We have experienced moments of complete hilarity, closeness as a family, astonishment of the Lord's great mercy, and the stinging pain of the battlefield in the physical realm and that of the spiritual.


With regard to the great amusement my family has provided the hospital and its staff, Jared, of course, has been at the center of it all. For those of you who haven't had the privilege of witnessing Jared on pain killers, we'll work on sneaking a video of it to post it sometime soon-- it's truly the best source of entertainment I've found. He often falls asleep while texting or talking to you, and then wakes up just to tell you, "That was a good conversation. Thanks for talking," having finished the conversation in his dream. Tonight, he's begun talking in strange Russian and Southern accents to occupy himself. Sometimes he's exhausted and just gives you what I've started calling "the death stare," when he doesn't blink but simply looks shocked to see you in his room. Other times, he's wired and ready "to party!" He called me Friday morning, after my Mom spent the night at the hospital with him just to let me know, "Melissa, Mom was a buzz-kill last night! I woke up at 2 ready to party and she told me to go back to bed, so I had to sit there in my bed and try to party alone when I couldn't move!" Needless to say, his spirits are high, praise be to God!


Wednesday was my birthday, so friends of mine, kindly, wanted to take me out to celebrate last night. Since Jared had been having a tough day on Saturday, throwing up often and starting the process of weaning himself off his pain meds, I decided to stay at the hospital with my siblings. It truly was one of the best birthday celebrations I've ever had! I crawled up into Jared's hospital bed with him, Abbey and Drew huddled in chairs close by the side, and the four of us had a beautiful conversation reflecting on how God has continually directed our lives toward himself. What a miracle it is to see that God has chosen to glorify himself by making his majesty known in our depraved states, our mistakes, our pain, and always through the many blessings we experience! Some of the memories upon which we reflected were difficult to share and process together. We certainly, as children in the Sylvester home, have pursued our own desires and sought to make much of ourselves more than our Lord on far too many occasions. It was incredible to dive into the reality of those times together last night. The pain and the suffering were so real. God's grace and the truth of his gospel were certainly proclaimed as we sat there together. Even now, we are facing other things, outside of the physical ream of Jared's cancer that force us to stand behind the lion of judah and cry softly for him to bare his teeth at the enemy and chase him away. These trials are tough; Satan definitely wants us down. Please be praying with us as my family fights to proclaim the truth to one another. Fighting sin patterns as a team can certainly take a lot out of you. It's not easy to look in on the way someone you hold so dearly idolizes creation instead of the creator, God, and thus has wrong beliefs about our Lord Jesus Christ and the power of his saving work on the cross. But we must, despite all cost, fight these battles together.


Looking through the spiritual to the physical ream in which we now sit, it's amazing to watch the process of Jared getting his strength back. This morning at church my friend Caitlin and I were teaching little Adam Ripley, our friends Meredith and Wes's 7 month old boy, to walk. I held his hands as he grinningly and gingerly took tiny little steps toward the encouraging Caitlin. We cheered for every step he took, congratulating his courage and commenting on his strength. I looked up at Caitlin at the end of Adam's short lived race toward her and told her, "I fee like I do this all the time now-- I continually cheer on people who are learning to walk!" We've all been so impressed with how well Jared's been relearning how to walk. His pain is still consistent at this point, but he's becoming less dependent on his medicine every day. His doctors, nurses, and PCAs have all been incredibly helpful. We even had a mini worship service in his hospital room tonight with one of the nurses on the floor and his PCA.

While things seem to be moving along smoothly at the hospital, Jared would love to be out of here and back at home. Please be in prayer for his swift recovery and ability to move around enough to make it home. And, our biggest prayer request at the moment is that God would bless us with a pathology report next week that shows 90% or more of the cancer as dead. This would mean that his body has responded well to chemo and give us great hope for the upcoming months of treatment.


We thank you again for your love, support, and prayers.

The Giver of Great Gifts

“Our Lord Jesus differs from all other teachers;  they reach the ear, but He instructs the heart; they deal with the outward letter, but he imparts an inward taste for the truth, by which we perceive its savour and spirit... Had it not been for the love of Jesus we should have remained to this moment in utter ignorance, for without His gracious opening of our understanding, we could no more attained to spiritual knowledge than an infant can climb the Pyramids, or an ostrich fly up to the stars... Let us sit at the feet of Jesus, and by earnest prayer call in His blessed aid that our dull wits may grow brighter, and our feeble understandings may receive heavenly things.”

-- C.H. Spurgeon

I sit at the close of a ferociously busy day with these words written down by Spurgeon and cast onto a page that is forever dated January 19th in his devotional Morning and Evening. How easy it is to think we have attained something, earned our keep in life, or merely just accomplished the day’s tasks by our own good standing. Today has been a continual reminder that I can do none of those things apart from the good will of God above and the grace of Jesus Christ. 

I was the last of my family to casually roll out of bed at 4:45 this morning-- they had all beaten me up anywhere between the hours of 3:30 (props to you Mom and Dad!) and 4:30. Mom, Jared, Drew and Abbey piled into the car just before 5 and zipped off to the hospital just down the street; Jared made it barely in time to be admitted at 5am. He waited in the prep room until about 7am, and then was whisked off to the OR. Stories haven’t surfaced from these hours just yet, but be certain that leaving Jared in a room for two hours waiting for what everyone else would call a nerve-wracking surgery must have provided the hospital staff with some solid, free entertainment!

Next, we waited. I sat in meetings concerning the history, development, and usability of the Ohio Achievement Assessment (despite what you might think, at least the first 5 hours were interesting), Dad traipsed across Findlay, Ohio calling on offices for business, and Mom, Drew and Abbey truly just waited. Just before noon we received the good news that the tumor had been removed without any spreading! Praise be to God! Then, around two, we received word that the replacements had been made in Jared’s leg and that he would be heading to recovery shortly thereafter. 

Then, Jared waited. He was in what he calls “the dungeon” for four long hours. Jared found himself available to pray for another woman beside him in this dark and cold recovery room-- a woman who expressed being in sever pain. Praise be to God, he even blesses us with opportunities to share His love at moments like these. How far superior is His love for our soul than that of our circumstances! 

While in “the dungeon” the doctors gave Jared an epidural to diminish the pain he would experience in his leg upon waking. Apparently it was not working immediately because, just as they were about ready to move Jared to his room, they ran through their checklist again, only to stop when Jared rated his pain at about a 7 out of 10. If you know Jared, you know that this really means that his pain was more along the lines of a 12 out of 10, he just doesn't have a normal pain rating scale. Honestly, he ran 10 miles and hiked at Red River Gorge on the tumor in his knee for months! 

Finally, having made it out of recover and to his room, he was bombarded with family and nurses to take care of him. His new nurse, Melissa, did a great job dishing back to Jared all of his outlandish, drugged-up comments. Mom, at least, was thankful to have her around when Jared, with great frustration, realized just how many IVs, cords, and other various tubes he was hooked up to. You can see in the picture below some of the cords as well as the stitches (black line) and wrapping going up his leg to enclose the incision (more pictures from the ultrasound and xray to come showing what the replacement actually looks like inside his leg).

Dad and I finally joined the crowd in the hospital in time for dinner. Jared is sharing a room with another patient at the James, so our visit there was short, in hopes of not disturbing his neighbor or violating hospital rules of three visitors at a time for an unwarranted amount of time. I was around long enough to recognize that Jared is doing better than I could have ever expected. I went into this day with the thought in the back of my mind that the doctors could open his leg and find cancer spread everywhere. They could have had trouble with bleeding in surgery and the cancer could have spread then. Jared could have even woken up without a leg at all if things had gone along the lines of the worst case scenario. However, thus far, God has permitted us the blessing of learning of His glory by hearing good news. We thank Him for his grace and praise him for such astounding gifts! We will know next week, when the pathology reports come back, exactly how much of the cancer has been killed off and what his next rounds of chemo need to look like. At this point, we are just basking in good news and great promises from the Lord! 

As I began my post with a few thoughts from Spurgeon, these things have been revolving around in my mind all day. Surely, we could not even raise our voice in praise or bend our knees in prayer or process these circumstances in this way if it was not for the preliminary and preeminent work of Christ. Nothing that happened the way we prayed for it to today happened as a result of a work completed by anyone in my family. We prayed that Jared’s surgery would go well. It did, through the talents and gifts given to our surgeon by God. We prayed that the cancer would be removed from Jared’s body. Again, God used Jared’s surgeon to accomplish this. I am thankful to be offered the beginning of another year of life on God’s earth, but, just as I did nothing 24 years ago to make this possible, I do nothing to sustain the outcome of that desire now. “...Without his gracious opening of our understanding, we could no more attained to spiritual knowledge than an infant can climb the Pyramids.” God is love; God is grace. To him be the praise forever and ever amen!

Trust in Loss

This processes seems to have gone by so quickly for me. Yet, at the same time, I feel as though this phase of life has been my family's reality forever. In some sense, I suppose that is a true statement. If there is one thing I have come to better understand through this process, it is that the sovereignty of God must be viewed as the most acceptable and glorious of all things as we face life's most distinct trials, and surely He has known that this would be our reality "before the foundations of the world." He gave my brother the grace of eternal life and claimed  Jared as his own "workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph 2:10). Jared has certainly been brought to walk in them, and I believe, by God's grace, he has done so well. Even as I reflect on my own fretfulness in those first few weeks between the biopsy and the first round of chemo, it amazes me that God has allowed my brother's calm acceptance to be such a gift of assurance in this process. To be certain, we've each had our moments of doubt. The first time the reality of Jared's cancer seemed to permeate my heart is near unforgettable now...

It was his first round of chemo and I don't think he had stirred in his hospital bed all week. I'm sure no other pain in life thus far has compared to the first hours that drug ripped through his body. He didn't eat, he didn't talk, he didn't even move (which, if you know Jared at all, is incredibly worrisome. He broke my mom's rib in utero he moved around so much!). He simply laid in bed, wait for it all to pass. That Thursday night was my turn to stay overnight at the hospital. I had taking the following day off work, knowing that I wouldn't get a good night sleep and because I was speaking at our church's women's retreat the following day. Around midnight, I realized it was about time for me to start pulling together the details of my introduction talk. Unfortunately, my brain was altogether lost. I just sat their staring  at my brother, wishing their was something I could do to just make it all go away. So, I opened a sermon I had listened to for guidance this past summer, given by Matt Chandler (pastor of the Village Church in Dallas, TX  given back in 2003 on the same passage of scripture on which I was speaking the next day (Ephesians 3). The words he said hit me in the most profound way as I sat at Jared's bedside that night: 

“Let me be scary graphic and honest with you for just a second. There is coming a day for you, because you live in America, it will be a hospital room, and it will be 3 in the morning, and your wife or your husband and your children will be at home asleep, and there will just be you. And your lungs will labor to breath. And in that moment a foundation built on money, a foundation built on church attendance, a foundation  built on small group or a sunday school class, a foundation build upon cognitive understanding of God will not be enough to bring you peace. In that hour it will only be the nearness of God that will be your good, and it is on its way for me...” 

The Thanksgiving of 2009 Chandler was diagnosed with a brain tumor (Go to http://fm.thevillagechurch.net/blog/pastors/ for updates on Chadler's life as he too battles cancer). A year after that, I found myself sitting at Children’s hospital in Columbus, praying for my brother to recover from his own similar pain. Suddenly, the nearness of God was all the more precious. The reality that nothing else could carry us through was not just confirmed by what Chandler had said, it was something felt so deeply words cannot express how much joy and sorrow my heart felt in hearing them. 

Now, I sit waiting again for time to pass and my brother’s pain to be relieved. He is heading into the OR this morning at The James Hospital for his limb salvage surgery. The doctors will be removing part of his femur and replacing it with a titanium rod. They will wedge the titanium into the bone marrow left just above his knee and then adjust the muscles in his calf to sustain the new “bone” in his leg. The goal today is to remove the bone and the cancer in it without breaking anything or allowing the cancer to spread. It is amazing how much more calmly my family has proceeded into this day now that we have seen the goodness of the Lord go before us in so many other ways during this season. It is difficult to be sure. How does Jared Sylvester’s sister reckon with the notion that I will never see him run again? Really, he started running at 9 months! But his talent was a gift from the Lord. He did not “wrap on the uterus wall and ask for it” (Chandler), God chose it for him, he enjoyed it immeasurably, ad now God has taken it away. For what purpose? Surely to enjoy God still more. How? That we do not know just yet. But, what right have we to compare gifts or doubt God’s good and perfect will? At the end of this day, God will have proclaimed Himself more fully in our lives, I have no doubt. I will be sure to update you all then. 

With love and thanks for all your prayers and support. ~Melissa