EP 14 Overcoming Cancer and Pain with God - Tiffany Smiling

Welcome to iRefresh, where we empower ordinary women to do extraordinary things through the power of prayer and encouragement. And today I have a dear friend, Tiffany Spiling. I've had her with us at iRefresh gatherings before, and we have loved the opportunity we've had to have her come there. But I wanted to have her come and sit and have a conversation. Thank you so much for having me this morning. Oh, I'm so glad. It's been a joy. I like it because I've been able to get even more of my family engaged in getting to know a lot more about what you're doing in your life and how so many of us can be a part of the calling on your life. So I'm so grateful for that. But before we go there, we have to do our fun question and answers, okay? So we're going to do a few of them. So now, if... your type of a person, would you rather have your windows up or down during summer? I would have them up only because I have bad allergies. I know. So it's not worth the breeze. In the moment it's worth them down, but later you agree with it. I agree. You sound like me. I have them down for a moment. Alright, so who has been an inspiration to you and why? My dad. My dad and I were very close, and he has built a wonderful life for his family. He's always been there. He's been a spiritual leader in my house. For everything I've gone through in life, he's always been a rock, a solid man there. So I admire him so much, and he and I are so close. Probably my best friend. That's awesome. Great. Well, if you were to go to a movie or a restaurant alone, which one would it be? Or either, both. I don't know. I am actually very introverted. So like the alone factor doesn't ever make me uncomfortable. But I would probably choose the movie so everyone else isn't as uncomfortable seeing me by myself at the restaurant. There you go. Yeah, I always like to like, OK, have them come and sit with me. OK, would you rather read a book or watch a movie? I would rather, for like leisure, I'd rather watch a movie. But I'm a big on like self-growth, so I love to learn. So reading a book on the seasons I love to learn would be that. But just in general, just for fun, movie. Okay. All right, last one. Are you a morning person or a night owl? used to be a night owl, but now I'm a morning person. I try to get my schedule off early, so, on the morning. That's great. Okay. Now, one of the things I think is wonderful, too, about when Tiffany and I met up a while at a coffee shop near here, and was her sharing her story, and it's called, Your Dream, God's Plan. And we want to highlight some of the things that are in her book and then go beyond that. So you have to get the book first. But I wanted her to just begin to maybe highlight one of the most monumental things that I couldn't put this book down when I began to hear what God had done in your life a few years back. Can you just give us a highlight? Yes. For those that don't know my story, to sum it up briefly, I had the diagnosis of cancer when I was a little girl. and I had several brain surgeries. I talk more about it in the book and in depth what you know God led me through there. But there was definitely a moment in the book that I talk about as well where I actually was in the hospital. I woke up from my fourth brain surgery and I had suffered a stroke. And in that moment it was the most horrific moment in my life because I had been praying for six years at this point to be killed of cancer. believed I would wake up whole from cancer. And when I woke up, I was filled with cancer, but now I had a stroke. And so from that point, I had to learn, life changed. I had to learn to walk and talk and eat and everything all over again, because my left side was paralyzed. But why that's such a beautiful moment now is because it was such a horrific moment then, but seeing how God has used that now to change me internally. You know, there's so much pain that we experience in life that God is really working on us on the inside, and we only see the outside, or we don't see the progress, but there's a lot going on the inside. And I talk more about that in my story, but just seeing how God works through those moments to grow us spiritually internally. You know, I think that's true. A lot of us, I think, when we're in the middle of something in our lives, is we really find that, where are you, God? And yet, God's always present when we call him. He says that he hears us and he attends to our prayers. But I think, you know, that's probably been a strong placement of reminding yourself when you're even going through circumstances now. But that had to be such a mix of emotions, of knowing the cancer's gone, but now, you have to start a whole new normal for you. And so how did that play out? And how does it play out even today? Like, do you still have the effects of what happened then? Yes. So I think I've learned now that, you know, with life's battles and trials, we still easily forget how God brought us through the last battle and the last trial when the new one comes. The current one always looks the biggest. Yes. And so we can be so forgetful. So, you know, in that moment, I could forget that he just told me of cancer and the stroke happened. But it was actually setting me up to trust God on a deeper level for the next trial and next trial because more will come. in different ways, ways you've never mastered or experienced or hasn't brought you through yet. But I've learned that trusting God in every single moment, no matter the circumstance, And it's going to come in different ways. It requires to trust in him more and more. And I still see that today. My left side is still paralyzed. So you are paralyzed? Yes. Okay. But yet you carry yourself so well. I went through therapy. I learned to make it look normal so I can walk with a swing in my arm or I can make most of my left side function like it would look up here normal. But I can't feel it. You can't feel your left side? No, I don't have feeling in it. So now is it more your arm or mostly your left side? My arm is my most pivotal element of it, but the whole left side. My face, left side, still don't have movement. I have movement, but I still don't have feeling. Like, I can't feel myself touching this. If someone would tap me on the shoulder at a restaurant, a friend, my body might move from their tap, but if I don't, if it's light, I won't feel it. Wow. So that, I mean, how has that played into your life? Because it's something that's probably really repetitive and people don't necessarily know. So how do you maneuver that? Like, do you like, do I need to tell you my story or do you just learn to be gracious and just kind of let it ride? Yeah. I pick my battles too with that. I usually don't mention it too much. They'll notice I didn't turn around when they tapped me, and I might be like, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't feel you, or I won't bring it up unless I know them well. If I know them well, I'll remind them, oh, yes, I can't really feel. But if I'm a stranger or someone I don't know that well, I don't really talk about it as much as I could. But it is a great opportunity to share the story and what God's done in the right timing. When you think about too, when you're, the moments when you were first going through that battle and just the moment of, that's like you said, you really like the Lord talks about he's building precept upon precept and there's a foundation he's always creating in our lives. How do you feel like when you're like, cause you have an amazing, with all my heart foundation is incredible outlet of a, of where your heart has been gearing towards. But even before we go to that place, where, how is it that God's helped you to have the faith and trust in Him for your health? How has that played into your other parts of your life, what you're going through? I think experiencing that kind of difference at an early age. I always knew something about me was different. All the kids go to cheerleading practice, I was in the hospital. My life was just so different looking, but I experienced pain at an early age. And I learned that God uses our pain. And so when you can start seeing from the outside, I tried now, so I didn't do it then. And there's some things I had to work through later because I didn't do that then as a kid. But I've seen now to try and have on every circumstance I go through, try to step away from the situation and look at it like 300 feet above air at what God might be seeing in this. Sometimes he's walking us through Sometimes he's walking us through a painful situation so that later we can, you know, reach those people that are walking through that battle too. Or sometimes he's walking us through painful situations so he can teach us stronger character along the way. And so what I've had to learn is when I'm in those painful moments, just stop focusing on me. Stop dwelling on what's not going on in my life right now. That's a good perspective. I think, too, I know when I have those moments, everything just crowds around you and you feel the intensity of just life. It's consuming. Right. And I think you're totally right. Sometimes I just need to pull back and get God perspective. Because in the middle of it, I'm getting way more emotional than I should be. And just be able to pull yourself away and get a moment where the Lord can just kind of calm you down and then see it from his angle. I think that's good. You know one of the things that I, I had one of the original copies of The Priest. So this is the, it's a little bit thicker looking, but this is a opportunity for me just to really, I wanted to even highlight one of the quotes that I had marked in here. related to even the moment when she was going through it with her family is like reading your book I think it was late one night right before I went to bed and I got I kept reading and I'm like this is incredible like your mother's prayers I mean I know it was your family but I like when I saw that because my mother's prayers I know got me through a lot of different things early on in life and when I saw that I love that is the heartbeat of a mother the passion of a mother to pray through and to be present. And I thought, you know, even with our pain and stuff, and one of the quotes I saw here I wanted to highlight is, in the many years our family's life was a contradiction. We were financially secure, we were poised, we were joyful, we loved each other. From the outside it appeared that we had it all together. but every day we fought and prayed foot soldiers in a battle between life and death. My mom set the tone for our home by believing that. On the very best days and the very worst days, God was still God, and God deserved our praise, and that's what God got, our praise. I'm like, I'm so grateful when I hear that in the midst of that, that your family came together and chose praise. And I think that's another nugget of not only trusting God, but actually praising Him when you're in it. Mm-hmm. And my mom was huge in that for us. My mom was a prayer warrior. And we need this woman in our lives every day. But she was the one that would always initiate, praise him for the victory before it comes. You start praising him, it's coming, but you start praising him until it comes. And that's what we would do. We would sing on the way to school, we would sing. Pick up from the car, pool, we would sing. Scriptures all over our room. So the environment of praise she created in our house, which was an amazing growing up in. What a blessing too, because you also talked about your father and what the inspiration he is. What kind of things do you feel like between your mother was prayer and praise? creating that atmosphere. What was your father doing amongst all of that? Watching his daughter, feeling hopeless maybe, but yet, what was he like? My mom's an encourager, my dad's a fighter. And so my dad would fight, for the right doctors that operated on me. He, on the back, when we had great insurance, but when insurance came in and said that they couldn't have this doctor and he knew there was a better one in town that we needed to get to, I mean, he was fighting the back end things for us. He was fighting victories that... I never even knew battles I didn't even know were going on at the time. He was fighting behind the scenes. Like our Heavenly Father too is a great resemblance for me of what He's fighting for us that we don't even see. But you know, that practical but so important, the value of that, I think is not being in a cloud and just thinking God's going to rescue us from everything, but yet too is using a lot of fortitude to fight through. And you know, I think, you know, when you've been sharing things, if you think about how the scripture is, when it says that God's going to deliver us, You have to be in something to be delivered out of. Right. And knowing that even like with your father, him going behind and doing the battle for you. It reminds me so many times in the Old Testament. You know, like all the wars, sometimes God actually went before and did the fight and he just said, watch, watch me. And it sounds like that's what your father was doing, is going before the battle and getting everything ready positioned for you. Yes, and I didn't even know until years later all that he did behind the scenes and all the things he fought for, even my rehab, everything he fought for. And so sometimes we don't even know the battle that God's fighting for us in the moment, which is such a neat thing to see on the other side. Very true, very true. I want to go back to the one thing that you talked about. You said in pain. What can you say even that might encourage someone today is, You experience pain. I'm sure you've had, and you still experience not just physical things, but what would you want to tell our people that are listening about even what you've been learning and how to encourage them? Pain is something that I feel like we all walk through at some area in our life. And the enemy likes to come in and feed us lies in those moments. When we're down, we're discouraged. He likes to feed us lies. And just learning how we have to be, during pain, we have to be so bonded to Christ to make sure we don't get into bondage over the things the enemy is feeding us. So it's so important for me, and I go through pain, to not focus on me at the moment, but on focusing on what the Lord's teaching me and to just stay so bonded and close to Christ in those moments because He is the lover. He is the Father. He is the one that's going to be so close to you, and He's the one that's going to carry you out of it, and He has a victory on the other side. When you can see Him as loving Father, you know that the victory's already been won and that He's just walking you through the season hand in hand and letting you fight it with Him. So I think it's... So, okay, so when you're fighting, when you're focused on Him, does God even give you something tangible to help you solidify then when you're going through something? Or do you feel like you're doing it by yourself? There's a lot of times when I know I'm doing it by myself, I start feeling lonely. I start feeling isolated. And there's some times when I feel like, Lord, I can work so hard with my time with you or work so hard to get breakthrough in these different areas. When that's not, God's telling me, no, no, you just let me love you. You're not working toward the victory. I am the victory. You just sit here. You let me love you through the pain. And so I think sometimes we can get in our head that if we do this, if we did X, Y, and Z, this pain would go away. Where he's saying, this is a journey. This is a healing journey, and I'm going to be with you, and I'm going to redeem all of this. Wow. So besides the pain and that aloneness, that lonely moment, where have you found your comfort besides going into the Word or in worship and praise? How do you find, have you seen yourself on the other side of it? Or is it a season you just go through? For me, a lot of it's been visualizing the victory, seeing the victory and proclaiming the word. reading the word to know the word but then proclaiming it every single day until victory happens. Speaking it and living it, yeah. Yeah, I think you know that's one thing is that perseverance. I think you have to have that, you are very disciplined, very bright as far as in your business career too I think is watching your tenacity and to fight, not just for your physical but also for your, when you've been doing businesses and then your non-profit is You've done that when you walk with the Lord, is knowing the same thing you would do in your business room. You work hard and you do everything, that God's wanting us to do the same thing. To have that tenacity to not give up and to believe who God says you are. So I think that's really good. What are some things that you would like to really express to our guests or people that are listening, things that you think would be, like when you're in the midst of something, like what would you want to encourage them to do? It is so hard when you're in the middle of a battle because you see the battle in front of you. And I would just like to encourage everyone listening or everyone that's walking through a hard time right now to definitely find someone that can walk through it with you. Find someone that can pray with you. Find a mother figure. Find a mentor that can pray with you through it. And then also to trust the Lord. Most our whole life is all about trust. And any battle you have, it's all about trusting Him more and more and more. And so I would encourage them to stay in the Word, stay close to God, give your soul rest, have downtime. The Bible says, you leave me beside still waters to rest for my soul. I like the still waters idea. Yes, yes. And so just let your soul soak in the presence of God. And not get so caught up being busy and doing and attending all these different things to find the relief. But focus on God and stay near to Him because He will walk you through. Those are incredible things that we want to, and I just think Tiffany's got, she's gone through it, lived it, experienced it, and I think those are really good things for us to take to heart. You know, that God in the midst of all of our hard times, that He is present, His Word is true, and He really does want to speak life into us. And so I'm sure you have one of those kind of stories too, that you're maybe in the middle of it or you're on the other side of it. We would love to hear from you. So be sure to subscribe to our podcast and let us know what you've been going through or what you've overcome. And until that time, go change your world.