FAIR GAME:Remaining faithful through tough times

Monday is Christmas. It’s the time of year when Christians around the world celebrate the birth of Christ.

But the Christmas season also has another effect on people. It’s a time when the “not so good Christians” reevaluate their relationship with God. This calls on some of them to make their annual courtesy visit to church on Christmas Eve, to let God know that they haven’t forgotten about him, and hope, that he in turn has not forgotten about them.

Trust me, I know from experience.

However, this year will be a little different for me from Christmases past. You might remember about this time two years ago, I received a transplanted kidney from my brother. It was the greatest gift ever, simply because it offered me a chance at renewed health.

But that’s not why this particular Christmas is special. I have a younger sister Nancy, who has battled the same kidney disease. But trust me, her road has been a lot tougher than mine.

Nancy is two years younger than me. When I’m talking to others about her, I always say she is quite simply the nicest person I have ever met, and I mean it.

As a kid, my sister looked forward to Sunday school at the local Presbyterian Church in Pleasanton. It’s where her relationship with Christ began.

But for someone with such a passion for faith, life hasn’t necessarily been that kind to her in return.

She was the third of five kids, with two older brothers. Older brothers can be mean. I was.

Her first true challenge came when she spent one year of her life, including her 15th birthday, in a full body cast, following two major back surgeries to correct curvature of the spine.

During that year, her once large group of friends dwindled to just a few. They had better things to do at 15 than hang around someone in Nancy’s condition.

It was a tough lesson for any kid to have to learn at that age.

But Nancy endured with a smile on her face and a growing faith in her heart.

She followed me to San Diego State. While I was studying keg tapping and partying, Nancy was spending her time building a relationship with God. She not only read school books, she read his book. I remember skipping most that, and my grades tended to reflect it.

Time passed. Nancy finished college and went on to marry Bill Guenther. He was a good man. They bought a house in Gilroy, and decided to start a family.

For what seemed like forever, Nancy was always pregnant. It wasn’t your typical family, unless you call seven kids plus Bill’s daughter from his first marriage typical.

But a family they were.

And so they lived happily ever after, right?

Wrong!

Nancy’s fourth child, Johnny, just 20 months old, drowned in a swimming pool during a backyard get together at their friend’s house.

As you might imagine of any parent, Nancy was devastated.

At the time, I remember not only questioning my belief in God, but Nancy’s reason for believing. How could such a righteous God do something so horrible to someone with so much kindness and faith?

But Nancy didn’t see it that way. She knew God had another meaning in Johnny’s drowning. She just couldn’t find it or understand it at the time.

The 11 1/2 years following brought continued anguish to Nancy. You see, Johnny “lived,” following the drowning. Not as a normal kid mind you, but confined to a bed in a near-comatose state. He never recovered.

At his funeral, Nancy asked me to say the eulogy.

I remember questioning God in my preparation. But my sister’s kindness and faith rang through again. She asked me to focus on Johnny’s “good” life on earth and his comfort now in the arms of the Lord.

A few years later, when Nancy was seven months pregnant with her sixth child, tragedy struck again, this time in the form of a cerebral aneurysm.

Nancy was then caught in a battle to not only save her own life, but that of her unborn child.

Following a long, very delicate surgery, she survived.

I remember sitting outside of that hospital room and questioning how a God of such enormous power and understanding could again knock down one of his loyal disciples.

But Nancy reminded me that there was a deeper meaning in “God’s plan for her” and that she, again, just didn’t have the answer yet as to why.

In the years that followed, Nancy suffered a stroke in her eye. It was debilitating and scary.

Again, I shook my head and silently scolded God.

Last spring, with failing kidneys taking hold, Nancy was forced to begin kidney dialysis. Three days a week. Three long days a week. And remember, she still has three kids at home.

If that weren’t enough, just two months ago Nancy temporarily lost her vision because of a detached retina in one eye and a tear in the other. But surgery corrected both.

While my faith again wavered, Nancy’s continued to hold firm.

She used to ask me at the end of our telephone conversations to pray for her to get a healthy kidney, so that she could watch her children finish growing and meet the families they will almost all certainly have.

My two other younger sisters tried to be a match for Nancy but unfortunately weren’t. Neither was her husband, her cousin and even several other friends that raised their hands.

This past month, though, after years of prayer, years of loyalty and years of patience, God finally answered. Lo and behold, Nancy needed a kidney in the most desperate of ways and she found one — from where else but her church.

Jennie Toews, a wife and mother at the same church that Nancy has attended regularly in Gilroy, became her answer.

Jennie, with two kids in college and two more in high school, decided she wanted to be tested. She was a match!

I’ve always heard that God works in mysterious ways, but for me, even this was pretty impressive.

Finally, Nancy proved something to me after all these years. You don’t just kneel down in your time of need and say a prayer, and whammo, God suddenly answers. Nancy proved to me through her long, continuous, often challenging walk with her Lord and Savior, that he would in due time provide her with comfort and strength.

Well, he has.

On Thursday, at the University of California, San Francisco, Jennie will in essence be giving Nancy the gift of a new life.

I know from first-hand experience how unbelievable that is. Something tells me they won’t be alone in that room.

is the publisher. Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or send story ideas to [email protected].