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Greg Winans
May 1, 1965 to May 1, 2012.
This is a reflection of Greg’s life as he would have liked
to have told it, but instead is being told by his wife…
Many of you may have known Greg for his love of hunting, the
outdoors, his war on noxious weeds or his love of the Grateful Dead. What Greg discovered about himself in the
last two months is how he would have liked to have been remembered instead.
Greg wanted so much to write down his testimony to be able
to share it with people, but his time was limited and he never got the chance
so I am taking the liberty to share these last two months with you to reveal to
you what Greg wanted people to know.
Greg told me the first time he asked Jesus in his heart, he
was only about the age of our youngest son.
That would be about 9 years old.
He said he can remember being so happy that day, but he was never really
grounded in his faith so he fell away from the Lord.
He spent his teens, twenties and thirties the way a lot of
us do. Going after things of this world
that we think make us feel good. In
Greg’s case, some of these wordly things may have cost him his life in the end.
In his mid-thirties he came to Jesus again, but once again
he did not have the dedication to really get grounded in his faith and he fell
away again. Again, he fell into the trap
of loving things of this world and desiring to do things to please his self.
In November 2010, Greg was diagnosed with transitional cell
bladder cancer. Long story short, by
March 2011 he was sent to Portland to have his bladder removed and a neobladder
created from a section of his small intestine.
When the pathology report came back this time they had discovered he had
small cell cancer of the bladder. This
is a very rare form of cancer. Less than
1% of all bladder cancer is of this type.
Greg began chemo treatments in April, just one month after this major
surgery. He did four rounds of chemo which
ended in July last year. During that
time, Greg did major yard remodel in the summer and went on to entirely gut and
remodel our kitchen during the winter months.
During this time he also skied as frequently as possible. He kept saying that he was feeling better
than he had in months or maybe even years.
At this point it is also important to tell you that Greg had again
renewed his relationship with Jesus and was beginning to fall away from the
things of this world.
Since Greg was feeling so well, he had decided to take a new
job with the State of Oregon Department of Agriculture. He was very excited and sad about this all at
the same time. He had loved his job at
Tri-County very much and he had done a very good job at it. However, Greg felt it was important to move
on to a new job that would take away some of the things that had been causing
him stress over the past seven years. So
on February 27, Greg headed over to Salem to get paperwork done in order to
begin his new job. On February 29, he
finished up in Salem and we headed back towards Baker City. Then Greg’s life changed in a way we had
never expected. Greg had been driving
home that day. About half way home Greg
thought he was getting a migraine and pulled off of the freeway. By the time he got off the freeway, I had to
direct him where to pull over because he couldn’t see. We switched places in the car and Greg
immediately started having a seizure. Tests
showed that he had lesions on his brain that were swelling and this caused his
seizure. We were given the grim news
that he would not have long to live.
That didn’t stop Greg though. He knew that he had faith in the healing
power of Jesus Christ so he began his life changing journey. He spent the next two months running after Jesus
and immersing himself in Him as much as any human possibly could. No matter how many times he ended up in the
ER due to a seizure or how many times a doctor would tell him there was no
hope, Greg knew that he did have hope and that hope lied in Jesus.
Our lives changed so much over the last two months we are
but shells of our former selves. For as
much as I have changed myself, Greg transformed like nothing I have ever
seen. Greg began praying and reading the
bible every day. As most people who are
new to serving Jesus are, Greg felt he wasn’t all that great at praying or
confident God was hearing his prayers.
So he pressed in harder. He
prayed more and read the bible more until something just wasn’t the same about
Greg. His relationship with Jesus had
taken on a whole new level.
In the beginning of this journey Greg would pray for himself
each day for healing. Within a very
short amount of time he was praying for everyone he could think of, but rarely
for himself. Soon people started to
notice this change in Greg. He was told
on more than a few occasions that he was an inspiration. This is when he started telling people about
JOY. This is putting Jesus first, then
others, and then yourself. He would say
that this is what true JOY is. He was
right because he had JOY pouring out of him.
For all he was going through he was living an awesome life. Greg and I have always had a very good
marriage and loved each other dearly. I
would have never thought we could have loved each other more than the day we were
married, but in these last two months, our marriage became so much better and
stronger than it had ever been in the 12 years prior to this. All the while Greg remained confident that he
would receive his healing from Jesus.
Greg talked frequently with people about how great these
last two months were for us. He would
tell people that given his situation, these last two months should have been
unbearable. However, they were the best
two months of his entire life. He would
have traded all of his previous years for just these two months. He would say to me, “I can’t believe that
people don’t want to serve Jesus with all of their heart. It is an amazing feeling to put Jesus
first. I wish I had known him like this
when I was nine and lived for him my whole life.”
He would tell me that he was just a sponge, soaking up
scripture in the bible. He couldn’t read
it enough. He would say that he didn’t
want to straddle the fence. That if he
was going to serve God he wanted to do it with all of himself or not at
all. That he wanted to get so far away
from the fence that the fence was no longer in view. Then his prayer life transformed again. He began taking the scripture that says to
pray without ceasing to heart. He prayed
all of the time. He said that God
prompted him to pray for people a lot of the time. For those of you who knew him well he always
wore his hat, but in the past few weeks that hat was coming off of his head to
pray more than he was wearing it. And
all the while he believed in his healing from Jesus.
Greg and his family all prayed that if there was anything
that could be done by doctors to save him that God would lead us down that
path. Every path we ever got on never
went anywhere. Greg believed that he
would receive his healing and that God would be glorified in it. He believed that God was shutting those doors
because there was nothing that could help him.
He was ok with that even though some family and friends could never
understand why he would not fight harder and do more. Greg still believed in his healing from
Jesus.
The more Greg read the Bible and the more he prayed for
other people, the closer he grew to God.
Eventually we were cleaning up our past and following God’s direction on
a nearly daily basis. Greg began saying,
“I am on a mission from God,” and he was.
Greg would pray and ask God to reveal to him things he should do and
Greg would go do them. A lot of what God
asked Greg to do was to get rid of the things in his past that prevented him
from having a relationship with Jesus to begin with. So we cleaned house of a lot of things. Our fire pit burned a lot of stuff Greg had
carried with him for many years. This is
when Greg began to tell me that none of those things were what he wanted to be
remembered for. He was not proud of any
of it. He was proud of the life he was
living now and he wanted people to know how awesome it was. That it was the happiest he had ever been. He wanted people to know how to have true
JOY.
Greg one day told me that he 100% believed that he would
receive his healing from Jesus, but that he had come to realize that nowhere in
the Bible does it guarantee that the healing would be on this planet. He had come to realize that the long life the
Bible talks about could really just mean an eternity in heaven, and Greg was
totally happy with that. His only
concern was how his family would handle being left here without him.
Then Greg’s health took a turn for the worst. Last Sunday was the last day Greg was able
talk about anything with his family. He
had started getting bad migraines. On
Saturday night he had the worst one I had ever seen. He ended up falling down in the middle of the
night trying to make it to the bathroom.
Once he made it back to bed, he was never in pain again. Sunday he woke up alert and talking, then
about midday things began to change in Greg.
He was conscious and talking, but he was not really in this world.
As Greg was awake, eyes open, but not focused on anything in
the room, I asked him what he saw. “I
see fields of white,” he said. “Where
are you,” I asked. He responded, “I
don’t know where these galaxies are taking me, but it is beautiful.” I keep asking questions and he tells me that
he is also in white, that God has put plants there that are all white for them
to use and that there a other people
there with him. So now I’m curious, so I
ask, “do you see Jesus?” He replies, “I
have been with Jesus all day. He’s
amazing. He’s amazing. He’s so much better than you could have ever
dreamed.” Time passes and I ask him
again, “What do you see?” He responds,
“I’m looking at a light. It is like our
coffee pot that is not like it used to be.
Do you know why that is?” Now you
need to understand our coffee pot used to be stained horribly, but the new dishwasher
he bought me has scoured off the stains and it is now silver again. So I respond, “It’s because it is
clean.” Greg asks, “Do you know why that
is?” I say, “Yes, because it has been
washed.” Greg says, “I am getting
cleaner and cleaner just like that coffee pot.”
I continued to ask several times throughout the day if he was still with
Jesus and he responded with “yes” every single time I asked. At one point I asked him if he was close
enough to touch Jesus. He said he
was. So I told him he should just reach
out and touch the hem of his garment so he might be healed. There was no response. I ask, “What are you doing now?” and he
responds, “Jesus has us running around like rabbits.” This was the first time I realized that Greg
was already receiving his healing from Jesus.
He had not been able to run in over a year and it was a desire of his to
be able to run again. I had told my
family that if Greg was given a choice of going to heaven or coming back here
healed after what he described that I didn’t believe he would ever choose to
come back. The way he described
everything was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. Near the end of the day Sunday I ask again,
“what do you see, what are you doing?”
Greg replies, “Jesus is teaching us how to read people.” I had become excited thinking Greg would
return able to tell how he should pray for someone in need. Now, looking back, I think he was learning
how to communicate in heaven, but I should not lean on my own understanding. One of the last things Greg said to me before
he slipped completely out of consciousness was “The Lord is my Shepherd.” Greg remained in peace until his final breath
at 2:45 Tuesday afternoon.
I am telling you this story because Greg believed all along
that God would be glorified in his healing.
I believe God allowed Greg to tell me these things so that I could tell
them to you. Greg and I have been
through a lot over the past two months, but one thing we started to do pretty
well was to listen to God and obey what He was saying to us. I know God wanted me to share this with you
and he has guided my every word.
Rest in Peace my wonderful husband; you have gotten your
divine healing.
