# @hopewdm on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DPUjVlzD-_a
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/35244432-hopewdm-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/fb86edff10.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-10-02T20:59:12.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** HOPE (@HopeWDM) — https://gondola.cc/HopeWDM

## Caption

They call us PIGS (Pretty Interesting Guy Stuff), the Thursday morning men’s group I’ve been attending at Hope for nearly 19 years. It all started in September 2006 when my friend Rob invited me. I wasn’t sure I was in the right group, but I stayed for some reason. That reason soon became all too clear.
 
In December 2006, I sang my fifth Christmas Cantata with Hope’s PRAISE! Choir, and no one knew just how blessed I was to make it through that performance. I had been having headaches, and my physician ordered an MRI. Turns out I had a significant amount of fluid building up around my brain because of a small tumor. In 20 years of practice, the neurosurgeon had only seen three or four of these tumors.
 
I called my wife, Sharon, and went home to meet her, where she was already organizing our families to watch our young sons. I had surgery the next morning, and the benign tumor was successfully removed. I woke up bald, with staples and a drain tube—like a straw—coming out of my head. Meanwhile, my wife had reached out to my PIGS men’s group and others at Hope, and they were all praying for me.
 
Christmas morning came, and the doctor reported that the drainage had stopped. No further surgery was needed, though six weeks of recovery lay ahead. The next few weeks were very challenging. My family at Hope was amazing, though. I went to church that first Sunday after leaving the hospital, and I began to sing and got through two lines before tears made it too difficult to continue. My wife asked what was wrong. I replied, “I’m just so happy to be here.” That day at church, and over the next few weeks, people on Hope’s team found me and told me they had been lifting our family in prayer.
 
I praise God for my healing, but what I am most grateful for is more time—with my family, to sing in the choir, to impact young lives through the PowerLife (junior high) ministry, to be in community with my Thursday PIGS, and so much more! God took what appeared to be tragic and created an opportunity for me to experience and grow from so many things. I am deeply grateful for that gift of time—and the truth that the story God has planned for me never ends.
 
BJ F.
#HopeStories

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## Tags

hopestories

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