EP 05: Purpose in the Pain – The Canfield Finale

"There’s not a moment I’m not aware I have Pompe." Kelly Canfield joins Austin Gardner one last time to share the raw reality of living with a terminal, progressive disease. From the "stack of books" feeling on her chest to the mental weight Robert carries as a husband and father, this episode is a masterclass in finding purpose when life doesn't look like you planned.

If you are a patient dealing with cancer, a rare disease, or chronic pain—or if you are the one holding the hand of someone who is—this episode was recorded specifically for you.

Key Takeaways:

• How to not let a diagnosis define your entire identity.
• The beauty of "un-transactional" love in marriage.
• Why Robert says "God turns horrific into glorious."
• How the Canfields are reaching the world through Taking the Light Ministries.

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Transcript

Setting The Stage And Purpose

Austin Gardner 0:29

Well, I am excited to be back with you today. I'm here with Robert and Kelly for our last session this time around. We'll probably try to get them back. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope it's been a help to you. I really believe the Holy Spirit would bring this to you to get you help, the help you need in your personal life. So I really kind of want to sum things up. I want to go back to maybe Kelly, what you experience. I want people to understand more about the discomforts. Because let's be honest, you know, I have stage four cancer and nobody believes it. And you don't look like you've got anything either. Now, you know, I happen to know it because I've known you all along, and I can tell even the way you walk. I watch you always, always have. When you're walking, I can tell if you're hurting. But I don't think people understand. So would would you just be a little bit honest with us?

Kelli Canfield 1:31

Okay. Um well I I mean, there's not there's not a moment that I don't know that I have Pompeii. I mean, even right down to breathing. Um if there's if it's overcast, if it's rainy, it's harder to breathe. Um my luck, my lung function to what I say if your husband puts the heat on in the car or he doesn't put the air conditioner on? Yeah.

Austin Gardner 1:54

I totally understand. You know, I get because of my Addison's disease, I can get the weirdest sensations over nothing.

Kelli Canfield 2:01

Mm-hmm. Yes, we uh it'll be in the middle of winter, and I'm like, we have to have that AC button on. The humidity makes it harder to breathe. So um there's always I'm never not aware. Um even in every movement, it's uh I mean sometimes it feels like a stack of books on my chest when I'm trying to breathe. Obviously, I don't I don't there it's impossible for me to run. I don't have the strength to keep to keep myself up. Um so uh I always joke, if you ever see me running, you should probably run too. Um the walking, uh I mean I can I do uh I do well at masking uh my walk for the most part if it's uh a flat surface and smooth surface and I'm not walking very far. Uh so I do try to I try to just move from small spaces to small spaces.

Masking Mobility Limits And Sleep

Austin Gardner 3:03

Um not that I try to cover it up, I just I I wants nobody wants to stick out be the oddball in the room.

Kelli Canfield 3:13

So between the breathe breathing and moving, there's not I mean, every every waking moment I and well, yeah, every whenever I'm awake, rolling over in bed is harder, sleeping elevated is harder. There's I mean, I would say most every aspect of my life is is is a little more difficult than you know that because you live normally before all this hit you. For I mean for the most part, looking back I can see, I mean, obviously this was the disease I was born with. I didn't start really seeing symptoms until 15 years ago, but even looking back at there were there were questions. I mean, I I always ran slower than everyone else. I never got picked for teams because I wasn't very athletic. Um there were always there were little things.

Austin Gardner 3:57

I didn't have the excuse of having uh pompei. I never got picked for the teams.

Kelli Canfield 4:03

Um but yeah, there I I would say that Pompeii just compounds the difficulty of daily life.

Austin Gardner 4:09

What else do you deal with?

Kelli Canfield 4:12

Um I mean I guess like mint the mental like suffering from the suffering, you know, like Okay.

Austin Gardner 4:20

I'm gonna I'm gonna ask a question. But when you were when you were years ago, Charlotte was taught how to wash clothes.

Kelli Canfield 4:30

Yes, we we trained them early.

Austin Gardner 4:32

Okay, uh kind of explain that.

Teaching Young Kids For Resilience

Kelli Canfield 4:35

Well, we were I was washing clothes and Robert's like, you need to start training the girls. And I said, Charlotte is just three. Three Charlotte doesn't need to be learning. He said, he said, there may come a time when you're when you're not able to teach them, so we need to start teaching them now.

Austin Gardner 4:50

So we had the What's an exciting way to talk to your wife, you know?

Kelli Canfield 4:55

It's helpful. It is helpful. Um we had a top loader washer, so Charlotte would lay on her belly on top of my. I had a little step stool, she'd lay on her belly on top of the dryer and reach down in and hand me the clothes out of the out of the washer. That's how we we made it fun. And then, like, I mean, they're teenage girls now, and I never do their laundry, they do it on their own. I started teaching them how to cook when they were three. Charlotte could make her own eggs when she was three.

Austin Gardner 5:22

I was gonna say I remember them fixing breakfast at a very young age.

Kelli Canfield 5:26

Yeah. We tried to teach them early because again, we we didn't know how much we didn't know how long I would have mobility. And the Lord's been really good. He's given us way more mobility than we originally expected, I think.

Austin Gardner 5:40

Uh before we let Robert jump in here and talk, you know, uh I I just am amazed at you and what you've done. But also when you go to these um I want you to tell them what happens. But this is surely goodness and mercy does follow us. You go in and uh you walk further than you're supposed to walk. Tell the people what they do to you every so often, and then what's your binary results?

Six-Minute Walk Tests And Progress

Kelli Canfield 6:05

Um well, I was in a study for those particular things, and I'd go in every um quarter. Yeah, every quarter, and have a bunch of physical tests, breathing tests, and uh the main one of the one of the main things that I used as a marker for myself, um, they have to do a six-minute walk test. And that's meant to be hard for anyone, whether no matter how healthy they are, because you walk as fast as you can without running for six minutes straight, and then they measure the distance. And um, the Lord was really good, especially during this study. Um, it gave me lots of strength, and um all the way through the study, every time I would gain just a little bit, a few more meters here and there. So um with the first six-minute walk test that I ever did, I did about a thousand feet um total in the six minutes, which really isn't very far for six minutes for a healthy person. Um but my six-minute walk tests now range in the 1400 to 1500 feet.

Austin Gardner 7:11

I would say uh maybe a normal person uh uh six, twelve-minute mile, they probably could do two thousand feet, and you were only getting a thousand. But then what happened as you went back?

Kelli Canfield 7:27

I kept I've I kept increasing, so I'm right now in the 1400 to 1500 range.

Austin Gardner 7:32

Okay.

Kelli Canfield 7:33

Some of that depends on if it's rainy outside or harder to breathe.

Weather, Breathing, And Test Variability

Austin Gardner 7:37

Robert, uh, how has it been with all this testing and raising the girls and the different things you've done?

Caregiver Mental Toll And Hospitals

Enzyme Therapy And Dosage Reality

Robert Canfield 7:45

No, there's been challenges. I mean, it's it's a it's a disease and that that's brought a lot of complications. Um but there's always a there's always something you can count joy in. There's always something that you can you can rejoice in the Lord, like you said last one, last podcast. And so for me, it doesn't affect me physically so somewhat, but like it doesn't, it affects my mind a lot. And so um it's hard to see your kids. I mean, I just I never liked hospitals. I had a grandma that was in an ICU in a unit one year, I think she was in there for like 56 times or something like that. I forget what the number it was. So we go there and see it. I just hated, I hated going into hospitals, just hated it. Just like something about me, I just don't like it. And so when I go in there with my kids and my wife, it affects me a little bit more mentally. I get down sometimes, and so but then I've gotta I gotta get out of it, you know what I mean? But it it does affect me mentally more than it, but I know it affects her more, and so but I watch her and she doesn't stop, and so it always encourages me. I mean, she's one of the hardest working per people I know, most competent. And um man, there's times when I just watch her and it'll be sometimes after she gets a that enzyme replacement therapy, her infusion, and she'll just be like lagging, and she just needs to go and lay down and getting the infusion doesn't soup you up real quick.

Kelli Canfield 9:20

And it's well, it's not meant to. It's meant to like if I if I notice being really energized afterward and then really lagging before, then the dosage is not right. Um that happened to me once with the they had me on a s on a certain dosage amount, and I told them that that was happening, and I thought it was okay. And they said, no, that's not. So they changed the dosage. So I'm not in theory, I'm not supposed to feel any really souped up or really or a lot of energy. I'm supposed to just be normal. But I do get tired afterward.

Austin Gardner 9:57

What is the enzyme doing for you?

What The Enzyme Actually Does

Kelli Canfield 9:59

That molecule, that that thing that your body makes to that that acts as the gasoline and that powers your body, the glycogen, that enzyme clears out like I I don't make enough to to clear my extra glycogen out of my cells. And so this enzyme So what will that do for you? Washes all that out.

Robert Canfield 10:19

That make you live longer? It helps the cells not to die quicker, which means her muscles don't so it is gonna keep her it's supposed to help slow down the progression.

Encouragement For Patients And Caregivers

Kelli Canfield 10:29

Yes. It's not it's not a cure and it's not it doesn't stop the progression, but it's it's meant to slow the progression of the disease.

Kelly’s Three Anchors Of Hope

Austin Gardner 10:37

Great. Well, Robert, uh, you know, this is our last day, and so I'm gonna come to both of you in just a second. Uh this is to help you get thinking. I want you to say in just a minute, give you a second to think. I want you to tell the patient of whatever disease, there might be some Pompeii people gonna listen to this. I want you to encourage them. I want you to tell them about Jesus and help them, and I want you to anybody, I don't care, I don't care what they're doing with. There are people dealing with cancer, there's ladies with breast cancer right now, there's uh there's people with kidney cancer, there's people, whatever, they need to hear from you because the Lord's giving you something. And Robert, you're a caregiver, a spouse, and there's things that you can share because you know, I was talking with uh one of the best friends I've ever had in my life, and he and his wife have now been married 52 years also, and and uh his wife is in rough shape. She's been in the hospital like 50 days this past year, maybe 60. And he told me, he and my wife were talking because we've been friends since we were 18. And uh he told, he said it's harder on you in lots of ways. It's harder on Betty, it's harder on Steve because Melanie's the one that's dying. I shouldn't have said dying, maybe. Maybe she's not dying, but it's hard. And so I want to ask you in a second. So, Kelly, I've tried to give you just a little bit of time. Uh would you give us four or five things to help us?

Kelli Canfield 12:17

I would say first and foremost, all my hope is in Jesus.

Austin Gardner 12:22

If you don't know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, we challenge you to trust him. You need to know this. The good news isn't some religious to-do list, it is simply receiving a gift. The gospel or good news is that God loves you unconditionally right now, no rules. He loves you and he died for you, and he took your sin and he was buried and he rose again, and all you're gonna do is accept a free gift of God. Realize that God loves you. So she says it's the Lord. That's all there is. Nobody's saying anything about church, nobody said anything about getting baptized, nobody's saying about speaking in tongues. It's not about that. It's about knowing God loves you. Go ahead.

Robert On Patience, Endurance, Hope

Love In Action And Nontransactional Care

Kelli Canfield 13:08

That's it. I mean, that would be first and foremost. I I don't know, I don't know how I could handle or deal with a terminal illness, um, especially one that's gonna lie like a whole entire lifetime. I don't know how that I could deal with it without knowing Christ first as my savior and knowing that um that there is if I didn't have Jesus and I didn't have my trust in Jesus, uh then it would be so hard for me to know and to understand what the point of all this is for. Um and so I think first and foremost, if I can encourage anyone, if you don't know the Lord, please trust him. Come to know him, come to know a relationship with him, and and you'll have you'll you'll you'll have purpose even in suffering. Um I don't see how I don't see how anyone can find purpose in suffering outside of trusting in him. Um don't live your life uh after that. Don't live your life just being in being consumed by by what you're dealing with. Yes, I just got through saying that there's not a moment that I'm not aware that I have pom that I have Pompeii. But I really try not to let it be all of my, all of who I am. There's so much more to me than not being able to climb stairs or or not being able to do this or do that. I mean, those are limitations and they are discouraging at times, but um there's there's so much more to life than that, and there's so much more to me as a person than that. So I would I would challenge someone who's dealing with sickness and who's dealing with something long-term or terminal, even that it's it doesn't have to define who you are. Um there's ways, there's so much that you can do apart from that, um, in spite of that, um and even because of it as well. I think that those probably would be the two biggest things. Um I guess the last thing would just be like just live, live every day. Like just keep just keep moving, keep putting one foot in front of the other. Be grateful. Be work to build the relationships that God has given you. Uh He He gives you, as believers, He gives us people to be a help and encouragement and a blessing and a strength in our in our times of needs and for us to be the same for them. And a disease doesn't prevent us from being able to do that. So I guess I can't that be about it.

Austin Gardner 16:11

My brother uh kind of a smiley quit me sometimes. We were talking about it because I wasn't I was having a bad day. He said, Look, you gotta live till you die, so just live.

Thanks, Ministry Work, And Support

One-Level Home And Practical Help

Closing Gratitude And Call To Love

Robert Canfield 16:21

All right, Robert. I want to say something to hers, like that whole thing which you just ended on. I mean, I I watch her, she serves everybody. I mean, she really does. And she she looks at opportunities to not only get the gospel out, she does that, but she also looks for to help other people. And I know that sometimes people go through suffering and they go through illness, and then all focus goes in on self. And I would be aware of that. I I would I would be leery of that. I would often I would say, watch that. And wherever you are, whether you're at home, if if you can, write a letter to somebody and try to encourage them. If you're in the if you're in the hospital bed and you're suffering, try to encourage the nurse. Just because we go through difficult times, doesn't mean we can't love it. That's good. And I see her do that, and she does that to the to her own detriment, to the time she just goes home and just plops. She just lays down, she doesn't have any more energy. So I would like to stay that. But for the for the people out there that that have uh someone they love and they're suffering, I would say the first thing is like what was already stated for me. I already know that the God of heaven suffered more than I could ever imagine. He who knew no sin became my sin, and he became the sins of the world, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. And so your life without putting faith and trust in Jesus Christ, none of this else will make sense. And so I would say, I would want and I would seek out that relationship with the Lord, and then it only comes by grace through faith. The second thing is that as you watch somebody through suffering, um be patient, be patient, and um I know that's sometimes that's hard, but it's not easy. Um God allowed this suffering to go into your life because he has a purpose, he's gonna use it for something great. I mean, that's what he did with Jesus on the cross. He turned it into something glorious, which we always we we we recognize every week on Sunday. We recognize it in the Easter, you know, meaning he rose again, he took something horrific and he turned it into something glorious. But before or after there's suffering, there has to be some patience, and patience turns into endurance. And so when you get there, after you have that relationship with God, be patient. Count everything that you can, joy, count on all joy when you th when you follow through, when you go into diverse temptation, because you're knowing this, right? That this suffering, that's this this trial, it's producing something in you that you couldn't do it yourself. And um so if I could tell you to do something, have a good attitude, be patient, endure, and then hope. Never let anything take away your hope. And make sure it's in this life and in the one to come too. Because there is hope right now. And there is hope. There's there are good things that we can hope for. And I don't think it'd be bad for my wife and I to hope that one day that maybe God might miraculously heal her. That would be kind of cool. But if he doesn't, he's gonna give her a new body anyways, right? So I'm gonna hope in that too. I'm gonna hope right now, and I just know that God's not done with us, and so as you're the caregiver, a relationship with the Lord, patience and endurance, and then that joy, and then I mean you get an opportunity to really show and demonstrate real love. I feel like that's like most people don't don't everything that we do is transactional based. But when you deal with somebody sometimes in suffering, you don't the transactions only always work back and forth, if that makes sense. And so you get an opportunity to display the love that God's given you because he shed it abroad in your heart, and you get the love on a deeper level, and you get to be blessed. Where other people, you know what I mean, they don't get to do that. And so that's what I would say.

Austin Gardner 20:38

So well, I just want to thank y'all for being with me. Robert, you're a tremendous husband and a tremendous man of God, tremendous friend, and I have the utmost of respect for you. I thank you for how you love Kelly. I thank you for how you've been that husband to her and a dad to those three wonderful girls who I happen to love very much. Kelly, you gotta be one of the greatest ladies I've ever known. I love you, I admire you, I respect you, I'm so proud of you. And uh I know that God has given you extra grace because he's allowed you to take horrible and turn it into something good. I just want y'all both to know I really do love you. Love you, and I'm so thankful. And then I want to say people listening might want to support you and might want to know more about your ministry. So would you tell them where they could find you?

Robert Canfield 21:31

Yeah, we have uh a website called Taking the Light Ministry, and we have a donation page.

Austin Gardner 21:36

Okay, and so it is a taking the light ministry.

Robert Canfield 21:38

Uh taking the light.com. I'm sorry, taking the light.

Austin Gardner 21:40

Taking T-A-K-I-N-G-T-A-G-L-I-G-H-C.com.

Robert Canfield 21:46

Yes, sir. And uh we have a donation page on there if you want to donate through there. Um Yeah, we're the Lord's allowing us to do some incredible stuff through some great friends of mine. And we're we're helping out a missionary there in Burkina Faso, West Africa, and we're seeing people uh reached with the gospel that don't normally have the gospel. Um we're seeing churches encouraged and helped and build up there in Burkina, and we're also working there in Peru, South America, with with your son David Gardner, and God's just blessing in a great way right there. And that ministry that God's allowed David to oversee, and he's using him, it's just awesome. And we're just thankful to be a part, and we're seeing I feel like uh we're on the cusp of something great, uh, even going forth, even seeing more stuff. Done. So we praise the Lord for what he's doing. And so, yeah, thank you for the plug.

Austin Gardner 22:31

Well, I think one of the exciting things right now is you all are building a house. Yes, sir. And uh the Lord is allowing them to be uh building a house and it'll all be on one level for Kelly, and uh that's a big deal, and I'm really happy for. Hey, if you want to help with that, uh you can give a special offer to help with that so they can so they can afford to do this because uh uh they bought a piece of property that's already leveled out and they're already getting ready to build, and I'm excited.

Robert Canfield 22:59

Thank you.

Austin Gardner 23:00

Well, I want to thank y'all. Thank you for being with me and thank you for uh thank you for taking the time to share your heart. I play, I pray God will use you to help many people. And I want to thank all of you that are listening. Thank you for loving other people. You know, that's the two great commandments love God and love others. And uh so much of Christianity has forgotten that. It's become factional and fighting and fussing, and that's not who we are. We are people loved by God, so we love other we love God and we love others. So if you want to help Robert and Kelly, that'd be great. We'd thank the Lord for that. Share this with other people. Thank you for listening. We'll be back with other stories this coming year. God bless you.