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Favorite marriage advice:

Barbara: "It's easy sometimes to take faith for granted and not remember God until there's a crisis. But it's prayer that sustains us."
Ted: "Think how long you were single before you got married. Don't try to change each other."

* * *

By the time John and Priscilla Chesnut walked the aisle in the little stone church in Elizabethtown, New York, they'd already been through a trial by fire. A few weeks before their wedding, John was diagnosed with bronchiectasis caused by a bout of double pneumonia. He had half of a lung removed. John was just 20, Priscilla only 17.

"After such a serious operation," Priscilla says, "we never took our life together for granted. We looked at each day as the most important day of our lives."

"With my disability," John agrees, "I've been reminded every day not to lose sight of the person I fell in love with. That person's still here. There's been no one else in my life."

It's been that way since before the wedding, when John, who was in the Army, would send Priscilla letters signed, "I love you like fury."

After they were married, John and Priscilla moved out west so the dry heat could help John's condition, but his pulmonary problems continued wherever they went. During one of the most serious episodes, John underwent 13 weeks of chemotherapy to treat Valley Fever, a fungal disease of the lungs. Priscilla remembers touching his chest and feeling the heat radiating from a large cyst through his skin. Since the chemotherapy didn't seem to be working effectively, physicians scheduled surgery to remove more of John's lung. Priscilla feared John might be too weak to survive.

The night before surgery Priscilla prayed, "God, I know John can't be healed without your help. If you heal him, I'll praise your name forever. It will be as if I'm on a rooftop shouting your goodness."

John and Priscilla decided to take a risk and trust God, so the next morning, they called off the surgery. The following week John's health improved enough for him to return to work. Three months later, a panel of specialists reviewed John's case and concluded that declining surgery had been the right decision. It was a miraculous turnaround.

"As I look back on our life together," Priscilla says, "I see where God met us in prayer. Whenever we come to a time when we don't see a solution, we pray."

They had to rely on prayer again three years ago when John was hospitalized for heart surgery—a quadruple bypass. During the operation, John's healthy lung partially collapsed. The physicians tried unsuccessfully to remove the trapped air pressing on the lung, but again God was faithful—John's body absorbed the air on its own.

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