Joy With A Side Of Cancer

Prior to cancer I’d felt broken before, but not nearly as broken as cancer left me. 

It may have been the news that I had stage four cancer as a mom of two little girls and as a wife to a sweet husband I desperately wanted to grow old with. 

It may have been that one month into my cancer fight my marriage was struggling and we couldn’t afford time or money for counseling. In fact, because we moved across the country for treatment, we hardly knew anyone who could recommend a counselor. 

It may have been my immediate dismissal as a stay at home mom and prompt rehiring as a cancer patient. A patient who hardly had enough energy to feed herself but shoved food into her mouth, despite how sick it made her, in hopes of eventually resuming the role of ‘mom.’

It may have been the sudden loss of my cancer bestie and what that did to my confidence and the amount of guilt I’d already been processing.

It may have been the first (or second) time we were denied any financial support by our health coverage. Fighting for your life can be confusing when you’ve incurred $200,000 of debt in medical bills for your family who has already sacrificed so much. 

It may have been the chest catheter I donned for months that stuck out of my ribs, making it hard to sleep, shower or even hug my babies. 

It may have been a combination of these events that left me feeling more broken than I ever have before. But amidst the pain, I made a decision. A decision I wasn’t completely confident making at the time, but one that changed everything. A decision to trust the God that had been faithful to me up until this point. A decision to hold onto the hope he offered. A decision to believe him when he says, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.” And it’s the best decision I’ve ever made.

I’ve learned on this journey there is room in my relationship with him for complicated feelings. He is the God who can handle our feelings and questions. He knows that because we can’t always see the big picture of our broken lives on earth, we may have big feelings about what’s happening. I’ve learned to let myself feel what I’m feeling. To deny my feelings would rob myself (& others) of the gift of being human. But, I don’t allow my feelings to be the only voice. I've learned to fill my feeling-filled heart with truth that offers hope and insight. To allow my feelings to dictate my situation would rob me of healing, perspective and comfort. 

It’s been over a year since I was diagnosed and the longer I suffer the more I recognize how necessary it was for suffering of this severity to take place in order for me to gain a much needed perspective. What I thought was going to be the worst season of my life has become the most fruitful and joyful season of my life and I’ve learned that just on the other side of suffering is joy & blessing. Because of my suffering I am a stronger, more compassionate and resilient person than I was before and if we’re being honest, it’s hard to believe God is evil when this is the result of my suffering. 

When I was first diagnosed it felt as if God were an abusive boyfriend saying “I love you,” but within the same breath slapping me across the face. But God has proved to be so kind and faithful; the only true hope and peace to be found; If I’m being honest, my tendency when I’m suffering is to binge watch Netflix or (over) eat potato chips. My tendency is not to pick up the Bible or talk to God. But, what I’ve found is that I only find true comfort through gaining a deeper understanding of His goodness through prayer and his word. 

As more opportunities to suffer have landed on my doorstep (despite the ‘no loitering’ sign) I started doing something that gave me the perspective shift I needed; I started declaring anytime of suffering a holy time; a sweet time to learn more about who God is and how much he loves me. Declaring any time of pain a sacred time, no matter how dark the season or how the prognosis looks; a precious, holy time of utterly raw reliance on God.

There’s something sweet about having no other option but to cling to the Savior of the world. Life looks different when I recognize that holy, sacred things are happening to me and around me and through people in my life because of the suffering I’m facing.

P.S. This is a revised & shortened version of “On Loving God in Suffering.” For a more detailed, juicy blog on what this journey of trusting God while suffering has looked like, head over there.