Pastor’s wife featured in Standard recovering at home after surgery_112403

Posted: 11/24/03

Pastor's wife featured in Standard
recovering at home after surgery

By George Henson

Staff Writer

CORSICANA–A Texas pastor and his wife are grateful to Texas Baptists who helped them see God's hand at work.

Mark and Becky Chadwick were in a different frame of mind not too long ago because she needed a surgery the family couldn't afford. Chadwick is a full-time pastor of a church that cannot afford the expense of health insurance, and the family of four could not afford to purchase insurance on their own.

A story in the Oct. 20 edition of the Baptist Standard told how Mrs. Chadwick faced the prospect of blood transfusions to counteract the anemia she was experiencing because of gynecological illness. The problem could be solved with a hysterectomy, but the pastor's family could not afford the $20,000 cost of the surgery.

Becky and Mark Chadwick have been amazed and humbled by the outpouring of support for her medical problems.

With help from Texas Baptists, Mrs. Chadwick had the hysterectomy, preventing the need for blood transfusions and alleviating the threat to her life.

In response to the Baptist Standard story, the Chadwicks received unsolicited help from a number of sources, including the hospital where the surgery was performed.

Chadwick said he is amazed at how God worked so quickly to solve a problem that once seemed insurmountable. His wife's health and his peace of mind, he said, are the result of so many people coming to the family's rescue–including people they knew and people they still haven't met.

Central Texas Baptist Area created a fund for the Chadwicks that had received $5,276 as of Nov. 20. Additional donations will go to pay back medical expenses associated with the surgery.

One donor showed up on the Chadwicks' doorstep within two days of the Standard's publication. Mrs. Chadwick answered the door to find a woman who wanted to speak with the pastor but did not want to give her name.

“She said: 'I don't want to tell you who I am. My husband doesn't even know I'm here, but here's my mad money,'” the pastor explained. “She left an envelope with $200 in it. I still don't know who she is. I've never seen her before, but she had somehow seen the story in the Baptist Standard and wanted to help.”

Last week, as the first of the hospital bills started arriving, the first two envelopes the Chadwicks opened were bills totaling $345. The third envelope contained a gift of $350.

Highland Baptist Church in Dallas, where Mrs. Chadwick works as a secretary, was just one of the many churches that sent gifts small and large to help with the costs of the surgery. The church sent money collected in its “blessing bucket.”

One donation came from a church in the West Texas community of Cross Plains.

“There's a man there I have not met, but I've talked on the telephone with him a couple of times,” the pastor said. “The last time, he told me he had nine people come to church that Sunday, and they collected $250. He can't know how much of a difference he's made.”

The blessing that almost floored Chadwick, however, was a call from the hospital. Chadwick had borrowed money to make a down payment so the hospital would schedule the surgery. He had agreed to pay the balance over time at a high interest rate.

However, when he began to take in donations to pay on the bill at the hospital, the account representative was so moved by all the people working to help the Chadwicks that she took it upon herself to call the hospital's chief financial officer.

She asked if the rest of the bill could be forgiven. The hospital executive agreed.

“If I hadn't been sitting down, I would have fallen down in a faint,” Chadwick said.

Mrs. Chadwick agreed: “I thought someone close to him must have died. He just kept getting paler and paler, and his eyes were bugging out of his head.”

The family also has received many cards and letters from well-wishers, some from out-of-state. “All the way around, the Lord has just been blessing us tremendously,” Chadwick said.

While better days are ahead, Mrs. Chadwick has not fully recovered from the surgery. The women in her church tell her she's already looking better, she reported. Many of those same women have prepared meals to keep the family well-fed until she's back on her feet.

Living through such a situation has produced “a mixture of humility and excitement,” Chadwick said, noting he never imagined that “so many people who didn't know us from Adam cared.”

“On the six o'clock and 10 o'clock news, about all you hear is the bad news. But there are a lot of very good people in the world,” he said. “People have just blessed us more than they will ever realize.”

“A pastor's wife is a gift to a pastor, and I can't do what I need to do without her. Every one of those people who gave, gave her back to me,” he said with a tear in his eye.

He wants to emphasize, however, that their situation is not unique: “Other pastors are out there going through the same thing of not having insurance. I'd be willing right now to give the first $100 to start a fund to help pastors like us who find themselves in the same kind of situations.”