24
Nothing Too Difficult
When Tim Nowak’s brain tumor mysteriously disappeared, his father knew why.
One of Tim Nowak’s favorite clothing items is a black T-shirt that says, “I Am Second.” It’s his way of letting people know God is in charge of his life. His dad, Dave, well remembers the events that helped them both realize the truth of those words.
In 2001 the Nowak family lived in the Fort Worth suburb of Burleson, Texas. Dave served in full-time ministry as a church co-pastor, jail system chaplain, and founder of a program for just-released inmates. His wife, Rhonda, was in full-time ministry too: She homeschooled their four boys.
Seven-year-old Tim was third in the line of brothers. Thin, blond, quieter than his siblings, he loved to escape the heat by swimming in the family’s backyard pool. That’s exactly what he and two friends were doing, and having a blast, the afternoon before Independence Day. He wore a plastic “water wing” float with blue and green fish on each arm as he jumped and splashed.
But then he crawled out of the pool and said to his mom, “I feel sick. I think I’m going to throw up.” Though he never actually vomited, he did take it easy the rest of the day.
The next morning Dave noticed him wobbling a bit as he walked. “Tim, you feeling okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Daddy.”
Concerned, Dave called the family doctor, who said Tim had probably swallowed too much water and picked up a bug.
Early that evening the Nowaks were ready to head out to a fireworks display, but Tim still wasn’t feeling better. Dave called again.
“You’d better get him over to Cook Children’s Hospital,” said the doctor.
Thirty minutes later they sat in a Fort Worth emergency room, watching nurses connect Tim to machines. They discovered that the left side of his body wasn’t working properly. He couldn’t touch his nose with a left-hand finger, couldn’t walk a straight line, and seemed disoriented. The staff thought he’d suffered a stroke. After a CT scan, a doctor motioned Dave from the room.
“I’m going to shoot straight with you,” he said. “Tim has a tumor the size of an egg on his brain stem.”
Only a short time before, Dave had been expecting to spend his evening celebrating with his family. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’ve looked at this several times and had a radiologist look at it,” the doctor answered. “This is what we believe caused the stroke. We want to admit him tonight and do an MRI in the morning.” He explained that the results would help surgeons who wanted to do a biopsy. They needed to find out if the tumor was benign or malignant.
Dave fought to control his rising fear. “Don’t sugarcoat it,” he said. “What are Tim’s options? What’s the worst that could happen here?”
“Well, it’s not good.” He spoke now in a hushed tone. “They might not be able to remove the tumor. He could die. Or he could be a vegetable for the rest of his life. We just don’t know until we get in there.”
Dave thought about his son lying in a bed on the other side of the door, scared and wondering what was wrong with him. This can’t be happening, he thought. It can’t be happening. He’s going to be all right.
When a counselor came and explained the situation to the rest of the family, Rhonda broke down, but Dave held his emotions in check. I’ve got to be strong. I can’t let my wife see me cry. I can’t let my boys see me cry.
Rhonda stayed. Dave drove his other sons home. “Dad, is Tim going to be okay?” one asked.
“Tim will be fine,” he said. “He’s in God’s hands.”
He put the boys to bed and walked downstairs to his own room at nearly 2:00 AM. He’d kept himself together throughout the traumatic evening but could hold back no longer. The emotion that burst through the dam was rage.
“God, I’m doing all this stuff for you!” he yelled. “I’m serving people to the point of exhaustion. I’m serving you. How can you let this happen to my son? How can you do this to me? Why? Why?”
He ranted at the heavens for three hours before collapsing on the bed.
In three more hours Dave was awake again. He dressed, made himself coffee, and sat at the kitchen table. Calmer now, he again turned to God.
“You’ve heard from me,” he prayed. “Now I need to hear from you.”
He pulled an old Bible off a bookshelf, the same one he’d received when he’d committed his life to God twelve years before. He intended to read from the Psalms, yet as he laid the Bible on the table, it opened to Jeremiah. He noticed 32:27 underlined in green, but he didn’t remember ever marking it.
“Behold, I am the Lord, I am the God over all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?” (NASB).
Dave stared at the words. God is speaking to me, he thought. It’s a question of my faith. Do I believe this is too difficult for him?
He shut his Bible. “No!” he said aloud.
A strange sensation washed over him. His worries evaporated, replaced by feelings of confidence and peace.
In that instant he understood that Tim would be okay.
Later that morning Dave waited at the hospital for Tim and Rhonda to return from the MRI. When they got back to the room, Tim was groggy, with his eyes closed. Dave touched his arm. When Tim opened his eyes, Dave gave him a thumbs-up. Tim smiled for a moment, then went back to sleep.
Rhonda just looked weary.
“How are you doing?” Dave asked his wife.
She managed a worried smile. “I didn’t sleep last night.”
“It’s going to be okay. I’ve had assurance from God. Everything’s going to be all right.”
A nurse with short gray hair entered the room and picked up Tim’s chart. She frowned as she read. “I saw it. It was there last night,” she muttered, more to the chart than to them. “I was here last night when Tim was admitted.”
“What are you talking about?” Dave asked.
She looked up. “Has the doctor been in yet?”
“No.”
“Well, he’ll tell you what’s going on.” She left without another word.
I already know what’s going on, he thought. He suppressed a smile.
Soon the neurologist, a tall man with light brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, arrived. “Tim has had a stroke on his left side,” he said. “We need to find out what caused it.”
“What about the egg-sized tumor on his brain stem that the CT scan showed a few hours ago?” Dave asked.
“The MRI did not show a tumor,” the physician replied. “So we want to find out what caused the stroke.”
Dave was feeling better by the second. “What if the tumor that was there—that is no longer there—caused the stroke?”
Silence.
“Doctor, do you believe in miracles? Do you believe in God?”
Again, silence. Then he briefly shook his head. “You need to prepare for Tim to be in rehab for about six months to learn how to walk and talk all over again, because of the severity of the stroke. We’ll set up a plan for the rehab. And we’re going to do a battery of tests to find out what caused this stroke.”
Three days later, during an electrocardiogram, another doctor turned to Dave. “I want you to know that I believe in God,” she said. “I’ve looked at Tim’s records, and this is a miracle. You’re going to find resistance from the other doctors. They don’t believe. They’re trying to find something wrong.”
After rapid improvement and Tim’s sixth day there, the doctors gave up. They sent him home. At a checkup the following week, the neurologist admitted, “I can’t explain this. I can’t find anything wrong with Tim.”
The Nowaks resumed normal life. Several months later they moved to Newcastle, Wyoming, so Dave could pursue a new ministry opportunity. They had lived there about a month when Tim played a football game with his new friends. The next day he complained of pain behind his right ear.
To be safe, Dave drove him to a doctor who turned out to be a Christian. Dave handed him forty pages of records detailing their experience in Texas.
After an exam—and after reading through the medical evidence—the doctor found no sign of problems with Tim. The records of his tumor, he said, indicated nothing short of a miracle.
Though tests were unnecessary, he offered to do a CT scan to try out a new machine. Tim and Dave agreed.
A few days later the doctor called with results. “The scan is negative,” he reported. “Tim is fine. But I want you to know that the radiologist did not know of Tim’s past medical history. He said he found what looked like scar tissue on Tim’s brain stem. It was in the exact spot where the tumor was.”
The call simply confirmed what Dave already knew in his heart. The tumor had been there. God had taken it out. It was a miracle—though in a way, he figured, it was just God doing what he said he’d do.
Today Dave thinks often of Tim’s amazing healing. “Anytime I face a challenge or difficulty, it’s something I fall back on,” he says. “Nothing is too difficult for God.”
Tim, meanwhile, is a healthy seventeen-year-old—tall, still thin, still quiet, with a dream to play college baseball and an aptitude for numbers that appeared only after his hospital stay. He’s also thankful to God for the life he’s been given.
When people ask what the words on his favorite T-shirt are about, he’s always ready to answer: “God is first, and I am second.”