One Phone Call Changed It All

Hi there, I'm Dr. John White, WebMD's Chief Medical Officer and host of the Spotlight On series from our Health Discovered podcast.

In this special episode brought to you by UCB, you'll hear why the color of your skin might impact how you're diagnosed and treated for psoriasis. That letter wasn't about killing myself, but more so like a spiritual death, like killing the different parts of me that would not allow myself to truly live an authentic life because of psoriasis. And so it was so many people touched by the blog that they had sent it to the National Psoriasis Foundation. So a couple of the employees there at the time had messaged me and they were like, oh my gosh, we love your letter. We want you to come to a volunteer conference. And so that very next year, I was at my first National Psoriasis Foundation conference.

Listen to Health Discovered on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. of that phone call, not just any phone call, but a phone call from a doctor with news that will change your life. I'm with a man of God who just blew us all away.

I had to pull out my handy dandy recorder. I'm Stu Everson. This is Truth Talk. I've known Norm Potter for years. This guy loves Jesus. He's played a lot of different roles in the business community. He's taught science school. I've probably been in one of those classes or two that he's taught.

He's put up with me growing up and all, but Norm, you got that call. Your whole life was turned upside down. How many years ago was it?

It was August 6, 2021. It was at 1 40 in the afternoon. I was sitting on my bed in our bedroom. My wife was next to me and my oncologist called to say that I was stage four metastatic cancer.

I had a tumor in my colon and I had three tumors in my liver. And immediately I just went black. At that point, my mind shut down. I didn't know what to do. I sat down and just cried.

So you are, what was going on in your life at that time? Take us a little bit back. There's a lot of pre-roll there. We want to talk about, there's been a whole lot that has happened in some miracles.

They're going to blow our listeners away. And I'm so grateful for you, for your courage to come on a national radio show, but going back, who is Norm Potter? How did you find the Lord kind of about growing up the different roles in industry and ministry and business? Well, I discovered the Lord. The Lord actually found me when I was 24 years old, living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was very depressed about my life.

I didn't really see where I was going. I was even toying with the idea of suicide, to be honest, which shocks me to this day that I would even contemplate that. And that night I just went to bed and I prayed for the first time ever.

I'd been raised in the church, but it was really just, you went to the church. And that night I prayed and I said, God, if you're real, for me to believe that I've got to experience you. And that began the most amazing dream experience I've ever had in my life, where Christ identified himself with me on a personal on a personal basis, where I knew absolutely that there's a God and there's Christ and the love is amazing.

And he loved me in that moment. And all of a sudden my heart changed. And I came out of that very, very tough moment of saying, I see something different and now I've got to go pursue this. So that began the journey that I went through. I spoke with the pastor of the Presbyterian church I was going to, and I explained this dream and the dream seemed to throw a lot of people off because it was a little bit of an interesting approach.

And a lot of people I talked to didn't know how to respond to the dream because it had various things that happened throughout this. And I actually ended up joining a charismatic church in Pittsburgh because people in the church explained to me what they thought all of this meant and it just made sense. I subsequently left the church over just issues of belief and theology and that type of thing and just began a journey of trying to understand what Christ in my life meant. I stumbled a lot. I fell through the cracks a tremendous number of times as I was growing in this. But I moved forward and in North Carolina I came to a great job and this is where I met my wife.

My wife is a very godly woman who grew up in a very godly family and she's been instrumental in my life of helping me through this point. And we came to Winston and Winston has been our home for 33 years. I was a wealth management banker, ended up going to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center as their chief development officer. About 10 years ago we bought a home health and home care business that my wife worked in, my son works in it and that's where we are today at this point. So we run this business and now with the journey that I'm on I'm a bit far from it but it continues to bless us in many ways because we have a very solid staff of believers. And that's Norm Potter's voice you just heard him.

But from my perspective I look at a guy who's successful in business you're the guy I want to grow up to be like. You know I'm a younger guy coming up in Calvary I see you you're raising a godly family. But then all of a sudden this devastating phone call and then fast forward I'm on Facebook and I go on there and all of a sudden like you've got no hair and you're talking about Jesus but you're talking about like what's what's happening to Norm what's going on here? And then I'm up there taking dad up to get some treatments himself and there you are on the cancer ward smiling and sharing Christ with everybody. Norm what has God done since that phone call? Tell us a little bit about that journey. Well the first the first couple of weeks quite honestly were very dark for me. I didn't know how to initially respond to this like a lot of cancer patients that get this diagnosis they're thinking about their family am I going to get to see my any grandkids or am I going to get to see my children get married are my wife and I able to do things we plan to do in retirement and you start you fall into this pit of regret and then I started really digging into the word and just praying diligently every day and the Lord just spoke to me and said you need to understand you're going to be fine whether your life ends soon or whether I give you a full lengthy life and I really felt that and in that moment I just knew that I was going to be fine through this process and that I wanted to prepare my family because it might be that maybe it is a short-term arrangement maybe it is a long-term arrangement but as believers we can trust the Lord in these situations and that's what happened and so that fundamentally changed me it began this re-engineering in my life what do I do with this how do I use cancer don't waste it for God's glory that began opening an amazing set of doors as I started praying about when I'm up in the cancer center I prayed that my treatments wouldn't affect me that I would go in with a sense of joy that I would be there for everybody around me that I would be there for the nurses I would be there for the patients and that was a fundamental shift for me to the point that the nurses unofficially call me a chaplain and when I'm up there for treatment if they've got a patient that's really suffering they'll ask me to go sit down and I've got several cancer patients and families now that I've come alongside and helping them get through this and this is where my passion is at this point and you look at where where I am is I was told that I was going to live two years or less with my diagnosis my last scan in January I had no disease in my body and so I'm at a good place and I think God has answered prayer I've had literally thousands of prayer partners around the world people I don't even know they got onto prayer chains for me and I started doing a little video just to keep friends and family updated that ended up turning into something much bigger than I ever thought I did one about two months ago posted it over on LinkedIn and hit 20,000 people and then I started getting messages from people the scripture that you brought up in this how have you been able to handle what you're dealing with right now and be joyful with this and that's my mission at this point to help people understand you can have joy in the darkest days of your life period did you have any idea when you got that phone call that you would be impacting for Christ so many people I had no earthly idea where this was going I mean I'm even at the point of considering seminary in the first part of next year once I get through my rehabilitation just to strengthen me in scripture and theology so that I do a better job and it has just completely changed my life and on a daily basis I always ask God show me somebody to help and yesterday three people came into my life that needed to hear the word of God this morning a 90 year old gentleman I was able to sit with him God needs people to be able to go out boldly and reach people we need as believers not to allow anybody to step to the door at the end of their life and not believe Christ because hell is real and it's horrible wow that's the voice of Norm Potter aka Chaplain Norm Potter is called by the nurses in the cancer treatment ward and I see him up there next time I catch you up there I'm gonna pull my handy dandy device out I'm gonna try to have it with me and interview you up there and we're gonna keep heaping on the prayers for you may we do that and also for your family other folks in your family struggling some issues you share with us at lunch and but tell us your words right now just in the last few seconds to someone that's gotten that phone call that's battling with their life I would tell anybody that gets this that you fall back on the Lord you lean into the scripture you lean into the word he is going to get you through this he's going to get you through the darkest days there's been days that I wanted to give up because I felt bad and I just didn't see an end of the treatments and I just told my wife I said I don't want to do any more chemo I'm just ready to go home and God prevailed and continued showing me the way that I was going and that's what I try to tell folks that I meet now that are just wavering at the moment of this diagnosis of how you can get through this learn more fun I guess your Facebook pages send them a friend request on Facebook and Norm Potter what a blessing and a man who loves Jesus a man who's got a missionary argument on missions trips you've been discipling the younger bucks like me for years and now you're even touching more people and thank you for hanging out with us today and for sharing your story thank you Stu I look forward to moving forward with this this is the Truth Network