Why I Would Not Undo My Cancer
Wandering into the all too familiar Legacy hospital emergency room, this time not for an emergency but for a scheduled MRI, a flood of emotions hit.
The memories, the loss, the tears and feelings of brokenness were overwhelming. I spent hundreds of hours in this hospital, some of it in a wheelchair thinking I was going to die, right then and there. This is the same hospital I was diagnosed in, spending weeks at a time recovering from surgeries.
My loss journey started almost 5 years ago now, and I’m starting to feel old. It surprised me when I walked in on this particular day when the feelings of brokenness hit, I had to start thanking God to combat bitterness.
Thank you, God, for breaking my pride.
Thank you for letting me go through suffering.
Thank you for being the man of sorrows acquainted with grief.
Thank you that it’s better to be in the house of mourning.
Thank you, Lord, for knowing what I need to keep me humble and before you.
I’m almost too close in it, to feel like I’m gaining victory over discontentment, my eagerness for blessing, to be out of this cancer journey. It feels like a hazy beast I’m battling but can’t quite see. It’s such a moment-to-moment war in my mind of what I’m choosing to think about. Whether I’m choosing to be malleable clay in the hands of the potter or trying to tell him ‘No no, I’m positively sure that I’m perfected, hardened clay, ready for finishing touches on this vessel, maybe some fresh paint, to feel beautiful and whole again!’
Sometimes, getting some perspective and a higher-elevated view can bring some much-needed grounding in my current circumstances.
Why I would not undo my cancer diagnosis
I’m just past the one-year anniversary since my last round of chemo! I have had recurrence of cancer in my liver within the last year, but this has been the first time we’ve treated it with solely radiation rather than weekly chemo. As my medical history has grown quite extensive over the last 5 years, as a way of keeping the timeline straight I journaled all the major events, chemo, surgeries and their dates. 51 rounds of chemo, 3 surgeries, Covid twice, radiation, ruptured ear drums, and emergency port removal have all kind of blurred together.
What has kept these seasons of heartache and trials from feeling crushing and worthless, is the clear message of hope that God has brought into my and Jamison’s life through every twist and turn. There has always been a theme, a reason, and a purpose for every struggle that God has brought us through this far. I want to share the timeline with you and some of the most prominent clear messages God has taught us.
1. Sovereignty
With the initial diagnosis and season of treatment, I saw God’s perfect hand all over the details. From the graciousness of timing to the season of unity and peace that Jamison and I felt in our marriage. I had just finished nursing Waverly a few months before emergency surgery, I felt beyond thankful that God allowed me that time with my baby. Surgery and the diagnosis a few days later overlapped with our church’s Vacation Bible School (VBS) and our kids were able to stay with my parents and go to VBS as a fun distraction for them. I knew that this trial had passed through our loving Savior’s hand and could look back on the year of rest and building up God had given us. So much so, there was no mistaking this was God’s plan.
There was also a decision we had to make in this. In the worst of it, during the pain episodes, or being sick in bed and not able to love on my kids the way I wanted, we had to choose to see God’s sovereignty in that too. It was something that God was showing us so clearly in some ways, while also challenging us to learn to see it in the murky grey of suffering. In both cases, Sovereignty was the word we came away with from that season.
2. Provision
With the shock of the return of my cancer just a year and half after being in remission, we wanted to try something different. We had heard really great things about Hyperthermia treatment for cancer and knew that if my cancer tried to make a second comeback, this was a tool in our arsenal we wanted to utilize! The only problem was that the closest clinic that did hyperthermia was in Santa Monica, California. This created a mountain of logistical challenges that seemed so insurmountable, we almost dismissed the idea at first.
What was unbelievable was that within a month of the news of the reoccurrence, God not only paved the way for us to move there to start treatment right away, but He did it in the most extravagant way ever!
1. Good friends rented us a fully furnished luxury apartment 30 minutes from the clinic in Santa Monica,
2. Jamison’s cousin owned a preschool 7 minutes from the *free apartment, that she practically demanded we send our kids to attend- for free.
3. This school also just happened to use the exact same *Christian school curriculum that we had ALREADY purchased for our kids.
4. Not only was there a school for Reegan and Braddock to attend, but there was also a preschool for Waverly to go to just 5 minutes from the apartment.
5. Jamison’s company made an exception for him at work and approved him to telework full time while we were away for three months.
6. One of our good friends offered to drive their car down and fly home so we could have a second car with good gas milage to commute to the clinic AND be able to get kids to and from school without our gas guzzling suburban.
One of my sisters shared with me while we were in California that she felt like the first season of cancer was all about how the church came around us and supported us, but that this season was so clearly God stepping in and providing of himself. This rang true in a really beautiful way. Even though we were removed from our wonderful church community for these months, we felt sustained and provided for by our loving God.
3. Goodness
This year on Season three of the Rachel Dye Cancer Drama Saga-
The call of this season was to focus on the goodness of God, and how that focus must completely stand outside of circumstances. This was the hardest season yet. I felt this deep longing to be done with this trial, and found myself looking at the circumstances and asking, “how could THIS still be true, good and right?!” This is a dark place to be, and one I didn’t desire to tread, even as my feet kept slipping off the path over and over again.
This was also a place where we were being challenged to see the goodness of God as something not always tied to this temporal life. How can God be good when loved ones die? Or when people suffer? Or when evil prevails? These are existential questions that hit a deeper nerve when you are the object of the question. How can God be good when I still have cancer? When I still don’t get to have babies? When I feel like I’m neglecting my kids to do this stupid, awful (life-saving) treatment? These questions are just as complicated as the ones before, but now they are deeply engrained in my heart towards my Savior.
This season was hard. Really hard. But something deepened in my relationship with God through this season as well. I learned, when life did not seem filled with God’s goodness, to lift my eyes to the horizon. To look to eternity, and there I found God’s goodness in abundance. I saw God as my savior and my refuge, my friend and my protector, waiting for the day that he can embrace me and say “well done, good and faithful servant”. This became our new mantra to each other in that season “God, help us to lift our eyes from the troubles around us and look to eternity to see your goodness on display.”
Nahum 1:7 The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him
4. Trust in Silence
It could just be that whatever season you’re currently in always tends to seem worse than previous seasons, not because they actually are, but simply because it’s the most tangible and emotionally raw for us. For whatever reason, this season seems harder to me than the last three. Feeling a deep nearness to God and spiritual connection to him through prayer and the Bible, as God has closely walked this road with us has been a blessing far beyond words and has given a rich sense of trust and purpose in this trial.
When the cancer returned last fall however, I didn’t feel the same sort of nearness. In the months following I have cried, begged, prayed, and pleaded for the feeling of unity with Him to return, and it hasn’t. This has caused much self-reflection and examination to understand if this disconnect is on my end or God choosing silence. Although God is never truly silent because I have his Word, but that doesn’t change the fact that God sometimes FEELS distant.
David felt this way too, and often wrote about it. Psalm 13 has become an encouraging and challenging passage for me in this season. It starts this way:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
These are words that resonate so deeply in my soul that I almost forget they are not my own. I have cried out in the darkness “why am I going through this while you feel distant?” I have fought with thoughts like “how long will this cancer triumph in my body and continue it’s fight to overtake me?”
But this is not where Psalm 13 ends:
3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
David did not lose heart in asking God to answer his prayers, which has been instructive for me in so many ways. And what did David do while waiting for this answer? Here’s the end of the Psalm:
5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
David reminded himself of the goodness of God. In the midst of this season of silence, David trusted God because of 3 things: God’s steadfast live, his salvation, and the memory of how God has dealt bountifully with him. I have been challenged to do the same in this season of silence. Though I do not feel as though I am sailing with the wind of God’s closeness in my sails, I will row on, working to do the next right thing as I wait for the breeze.