Bolingers Lived A Testimony Of God's Promise
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By David [email protected]
She co-wrote “From the Cottage to the Clouds: How God Walked With us Through the Challenge of our Lives” with her spouse, Mike Bolinger, though it didn’t start out as a book at all but a blog.
She will have a book signing for “From the Cottage to the Clouds” Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at SACS & Co., Inc. 801 E. Canal St., Winona Lake.
Mike and Lynne met at Wheaton College in Illinois. After they married, they moved to Kokomo where she began her career as an English teacher and he began practicing law. They also have a home in Winona Lake.
He was diagnosed with metastatic gallbladder cancer in 2009, and passed away in 2013. Lynne retired from teaching that same year and became a full-time grandmother.
“When he first got sick, that became a topic, ‘Did you hear about Mike Bolinger?’ Because people will do that in a community. And I’m suddenly not at school, and so people were first discussing it, but well-meaning friends were calling the house. Calling the house with, ‘What can we do for you?’ and ‘How is Mike?’ And I was finding myself just stressing about it. I knew these were well-meaning people. Frankly, from our context, I knew these were people who wanted to pray for us. And a friend said to me, ‘Why don’t you post a blog? You can just post a blog and say here’s what’s going on,’” Lynne recalled in an interview Monday afternoon.
That was the genesis of the blog and eventual book. When the Bolingers found out from the doctors what was going to happen, “We had no idea this was going to spread out for 4-1/2 years,” she said.
After Mike lived longer than the year doctors had predicted – the cancer in his gall bladder was growing slower than that type of cancer usually does – their blog became a journal of 4-1/2 years of their lives.
“It wasn’t our intention, but that’s what it became,” she said. “We were not, we are not Billy Grahams, we’re not champions. We are people who are believers, we’ve been believers our whole lives and frankly have been living a very comfortable life. Children both grown, graduated, out of the house. Really kind of enjoying what we had. This was a trial that was brought to us.”
In their lives they had heard people say things like “God won’t give you more than you can handle,” “God is good,” etc., but they had never really had to test it.
“And in our case, we didn’t even have a choice. It just – that’s what we fell on, that’s what we fell into. And one of the beautiful things was, all those things we’d be hearing all of our lives, all of those things that we had faith in, we actually found to be true,” she said.
People who know them or read the book know that Mike passed away. “But we had 4-1/2 amazing years. I realize I wasn’t the one with the physical illness, but really, except for the last few years of his life, it was wonderful,” she said.
When Lynne printed the entire blog out, it was over 800 pages.
“One of the things ... As an attorney, my husband was an extremely intimidating person. And he kept most people at arm’s length. And frankly, when you hired him, you didn’t want him to be a warm, squishy person. You wanted him to go in there and kick. So people were distant from him because that’s what he preferred,” Lynne said. “When he found out he had a tumor in his gall bladder, before we even got the dire diagnosis, he said, ‘Wow, I’m not going to spend the rest of what’s left of my life practicing law. And he closed the office.”
He signed the deed to his office and its parking lot over to the rescue mission.
“Stepping away from that, he stepped away from that persona – the button-up suit, the ‘I’m intimidating’ kind of person. And all these people who knew him, kind of, found him to be this warm, funny, gentle, really fine man. And I got to stand witness to people really falling in love with him. That is a privilege of this,” Lynne said.
Before his death, Mike gave several recorded messages and testimonies – that are still on their blog.
“There’s so much in the world that is so negative, and I would supposed somebody out of the context would say, ‘Yeah, and he died.’ We are a testimony that God will do what he says he will do. He doesn’t say in the Bible, ‘By the way, you’re not going to have cancer, you’re not going to have problems.’ But, ‘I’m going to stand with you and take you through it.’ And we got to live that,” she said.
Mike was not someone who should have got gall bladder cancer, Lynne said she discovered in her early research after he was diagnosed with it. It’s usually women, certain racial groups not white, and older and fat – categories he didn’t fit in.
“Then they were hopeful that they had found it early. Gall bladder cancer, if you happen to find it early, you take the gall bladder out and you’re good. The problem is, there are no specific symptoms so the only way it’s usually found – I’m not an expert – is they find something else and then find something in your gall bladder,” she said.
Quickly it was realized that they hadn’t found the cancer early and the cancerous tissue was found a “significant distance” from the primary site.
“But I think if you interviewed his doctor ... there was no way they expected my husband to live 4-1/2 years,” Lynne stated.
“I won’t tell you that my husband having cancer made our marriage. Our marriage was really, really good. But, when you think you’re having your last conversation with someone, there’s a lot of day-to-day stuff that doesn’t matter. And we got to live like that for 4-1/2 years,” she said, calling it the “sweetest” time in their marriage.
Their book is focused on the two of them and their friends as their children preferred not to be prominent in the book.
“He was diagnosed in 2009. In 2010, it was like spitting in the eye of it. It was just delightful, life was wonderful,” Lynne recalled. “The disease started to have some effects on him but he kept going.”[[In-content Ad]]One way he kept going was becoming an adjunct professor at Ivy Tech Community College for five or six semesters.
“He was funny, they loved him and he got awarded adjunct of the year and all sorts of cool things. That was another thing that grew out of this,” Lynne said.
She said “From the Cottage to the Clouds” is intensely personal, but not just blog posts. Mike put things in it and “he was a wonderful writer, too,” she said.
In January or February 2014 – about six months after Mike died – Lynne started getting a nudge to turn their story into a book.
“It’s humbling to have people say to you that your life is an inspiration. It’s freaky, but I started getting this nudge that what we lived through was not what everybody else lives through and maybe I should share our story a little more widely. But I had no idea what that meant,” she said.
After printing out the 800 pages of the blog, she saw that it told a story. Last summer she started piecing that story together, and it “kind of fell into a book,” she said.
Westbow Press published her book in June. It can be ordered online at Amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com
The Bolingers’ blog can be found online at http://bolingerscottage.blogspot.com/
She co-wrote “From the Cottage to the Clouds: How God Walked With us Through the Challenge of our Lives” with her spouse, Mike Bolinger, though it didn’t start out as a book at all but a blog.
She will have a book signing for “From the Cottage to the Clouds” Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at SACS & Co., Inc. 801 E. Canal St., Winona Lake.
Mike and Lynne met at Wheaton College in Illinois. After they married, they moved to Kokomo where she began her career as an English teacher and he began practicing law. They also have a home in Winona Lake.
He was diagnosed with metastatic gallbladder cancer in 2009, and passed away in 2013. Lynne retired from teaching that same year and became a full-time grandmother.
“When he first got sick, that became a topic, ‘Did you hear about Mike Bolinger?’ Because people will do that in a community. And I’m suddenly not at school, and so people were first discussing it, but well-meaning friends were calling the house. Calling the house with, ‘What can we do for you?’ and ‘How is Mike?’ And I was finding myself just stressing about it. I knew these were well-meaning people. Frankly, from our context, I knew these were people who wanted to pray for us. And a friend said to me, ‘Why don’t you post a blog? You can just post a blog and say here’s what’s going on,’” Lynne recalled in an interview Monday afternoon.
That was the genesis of the blog and eventual book. When the Bolingers found out from the doctors what was going to happen, “We had no idea this was going to spread out for 4-1/2 years,” she said.
After Mike lived longer than the year doctors had predicted – the cancer in his gall bladder was growing slower than that type of cancer usually does – their blog became a journal of 4-1/2 years of their lives.
“It wasn’t our intention, but that’s what it became,” she said. “We were not, we are not Billy Grahams, we’re not champions. We are people who are believers, we’ve been believers our whole lives and frankly have been living a very comfortable life. Children both grown, graduated, out of the house. Really kind of enjoying what we had. This was a trial that was brought to us.”
In their lives they had heard people say things like “God won’t give you more than you can handle,” “God is good,” etc., but they had never really had to test it.
“And in our case, we didn’t even have a choice. It just – that’s what we fell on, that’s what we fell into. And one of the beautiful things was, all those things we’d be hearing all of our lives, all of those things that we had faith in, we actually found to be true,” she said.
People who know them or read the book know that Mike passed away. “But we had 4-1/2 amazing years. I realize I wasn’t the one with the physical illness, but really, except for the last few years of his life, it was wonderful,” she said.
When Lynne printed the entire blog out, it was over 800 pages.
“One of the things ... As an attorney, my husband was an extremely intimidating person. And he kept most people at arm’s length. And frankly, when you hired him, you didn’t want him to be a warm, squishy person. You wanted him to go in there and kick. So people were distant from him because that’s what he preferred,” Lynne said. “When he found out he had a tumor in his gall bladder, before we even got the dire diagnosis, he said, ‘Wow, I’m not going to spend the rest of what’s left of my life practicing law. And he closed the office.”
He signed the deed to his office and its parking lot over to the rescue mission.
“Stepping away from that, he stepped away from that persona – the button-up suit, the ‘I’m intimidating’ kind of person. And all these people who knew him, kind of, found him to be this warm, funny, gentle, really fine man. And I got to stand witness to people really falling in love with him. That is a privilege of this,” Lynne said.
Before his death, Mike gave several recorded messages and testimonies – that are still on their blog.
“There’s so much in the world that is so negative, and I would supposed somebody out of the context would say, ‘Yeah, and he died.’ We are a testimony that God will do what he says he will do. He doesn’t say in the Bible, ‘By the way, you’re not going to have cancer, you’re not going to have problems.’ But, ‘I’m going to stand with you and take you through it.’ And we got to live that,” she said.
Mike was not someone who should have got gall bladder cancer, Lynne said she discovered in her early research after he was diagnosed with it. It’s usually women, certain racial groups not white, and older and fat – categories he didn’t fit in.
“Then they were hopeful that they had found it early. Gall bladder cancer, if you happen to find it early, you take the gall bladder out and you’re good. The problem is, there are no specific symptoms so the only way it’s usually found – I’m not an expert – is they find something else and then find something in your gall bladder,” she said.
Quickly it was realized that they hadn’t found the cancer early and the cancerous tissue was found a “significant distance” from the primary site.
“But I think if you interviewed his doctor ... there was no way they expected my husband to live 4-1/2 years,” Lynne stated.
“I won’t tell you that my husband having cancer made our marriage. Our marriage was really, really good. But, when you think you’re having your last conversation with someone, there’s a lot of day-to-day stuff that doesn’t matter. And we got to live like that for 4-1/2 years,” she said, calling it the “sweetest” time in their marriage.
Their book is focused on the two of them and their friends as their children preferred not to be prominent in the book.
“He was diagnosed in 2009. In 2010, it was like spitting in the eye of it. It was just delightful, life was wonderful,” Lynne recalled. “The disease started to have some effects on him but he kept going.”[[In-content Ad]]One way he kept going was becoming an adjunct professor at Ivy Tech Community College for five or six semesters.
“He was funny, they loved him and he got awarded adjunct of the year and all sorts of cool things. That was another thing that grew out of this,” Lynne said.
She said “From the Cottage to the Clouds” is intensely personal, but not just blog posts. Mike put things in it and “he was a wonderful writer, too,” she said.
In January or February 2014 – about six months after Mike died – Lynne started getting a nudge to turn their story into a book.
“It’s humbling to have people say to you that your life is an inspiration. It’s freaky, but I started getting this nudge that what we lived through was not what everybody else lives through and maybe I should share our story a little more widely. But I had no idea what that meant,” she said.
After printing out the 800 pages of the blog, she saw that it told a story. Last summer she started piecing that story together, and it “kind of fell into a book,” she said.
Westbow Press published her book in June. It can be ordered online at Amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com
The Bolingers’ blog can be found online at http://bolingerscottage.blogspot.com/
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