Faith Lessons Through Cancer
Waiting for the Diagnosis
It had been months. Within those months was increasing knee pain, hobbling about on crutches, an x-ray that detected a mass, an MRI that clarified the size of the mass and identified a fracture, a biopsy that was inconclusive, another biopsy that confirmed malignancy, a PET scan that confirmed the malignancy was localized and not widespread, a surgery where a portion of my femur was resected and replaced with steel and new knee components, and a full pathology performed on the resected bone.
I, finally, had an answer: osteosarcoma. It’s most commonly found in teens and young adults. I was 42.
I would be lying if I said the waiting wasn’t difficult. It was over two months until we really knew what to call what was wrong with my body. Some procedures revealed more anxiety than others. Those months stretched out laboriously. Life kept plugging along. My four kids were ending their school year. The summer slow-down that I longed for was just beginning. I was on crutches for the pain, to avoid putting weight on my already weak and fractured femur. All my responsibilities were more physically difficult to navigate. I didn’t make any new plans for the second half of the summer because there were too many unknowns. Would I be recovering from surgery? Would I be beginning chemo? Would I be able to drive?
Answers = More Questions & Turmoil
It is was a privilege to have good health care at one of the leading teaching hospitals in the nation where I received a reliable diagnosis. I wanted to be thankful. I cried, overwhelmed, when I heard the words “bone cancer.” I wondered “How am I going to handle that?”, “How are we going to tell the kids?” and “Lord, please don’t let this pull them away from you.” It was good to have answers. It was also true that this big answer carried with it many more questions. I wept over and over as I shared these concerns with my husband. This was the state of my mind: a ping pong match between the pros and cons of my situation.
Our home was filled with sobbing and questions for weeks. We lived daily life like everyone else. Our days were also strewn with extra cuddles, back rubs and melancholy. I tried to answer what questions I could. There were many I couldn’t answer. Some answers alluded me because, I’m not an oncologist. Other answers were hard to come by because I needed to wrestle with them before God first. I often responded, numbly, with an “I’m not sure yet, but we’ll figure it out.” This answer was honest but felt lame.
One day, in exasperation and then defeat, I responded to all the questioning with, “Sometimes, Momma just doesn’t know, guys. I’m a human with limits…not…not a superhero!” As the words choppily spurt out of my mouth, I immediately remembered studying the incommunicable attributes of God (these are the ways we can’t be like Him) and that He was limitless. I continued in a more patient tone of voice, hoping to turn the conversation around, “…but do you know who is not limited? In fact, He is limitless?”
Head: What I Needed to Remember
All four kids paused and simultaneously exclaimed, “God!” Their response reverberated off the walls of my heart. Yes. God, Christina. He is not limited. You have always been limited, not just now. Remember.
I took a deep breath and explained to them that in the middle of this hard time we were going to go to the God of no limits together. I assured them that they could always come to Daddy and me but there would be a lot of times when the best thing we could do is spend time with God. We were going to continue to talk to Him when we didn’t understand, when we were sad or happy. We were going to keep worshipping Him and learning from Him. He was our biggest and best resource in all conditions.
Heart: Change Made Possible by God’s Prompting
When the kids were tucked in bed, I thought through my day, as usual, and that conversation. I considered my own inner turmoil about my cancer. I felt weak, helpless, and particularly needy. I asked all the why questions, again. This cancer was going to be tough physically, but the spiritual component was going to be just as strenuous. The words I had read from Jennifer Dukes Lee on Instagram came to mind “Sometimes surrendering to God will require you to do the hardest work you’ve ever done in your life: take in another foster child, fight for your marriage, kick cancer where the sun don’t shine, or refuse to capitulate to the persistent drubbing from Satan.” The last two items on her list sunk in. That was me. Reflecting on that quote, I later wrote about how we often view surrender to God. Surrender was not reluctantly giving in. It was not giving up on God and His ways in all my circumstances. His ways looked a lot like being honest about who I am and who He is. Later, I wrote about Luke 10:27, “Loving God with all my heart, soul and strength is taking on a new meaning to me. This is going to take a warrior mentality in my heart, mind, and body. I must fight hard to love Him well.” This surrender was going to be a daily battle.
Immediately, I closed my eyes, and I did the only thing I knew to do. I prayed. At first, it was a simple prayer, “Your will be done.” If God thought cancer was the best circumstance to make me like Jesus. So be it. I wanted to surrender to His ways even when I didn’t understand, and certainly, when I didn’t like it. I was quiet as the tears flowed. Then in my normal kind of conversational way, I chatted with God and let Him know I needed a few things from Him. I asked Him to make me run to Him because I knew I would be tempted to wander away when things got harder. I also pleaded with Him to help me to have a fighting spirit because I knew I would want to give up. At the end, I asked Him to use my circumstances for His glory. At this point, I was exhausted, but very much at peace and slept soundly.
The Spiritual Cure for Self-Dependence
God had used my inability to answer my children’s questions to remind me of my limitedness and His limitlessness. Like the Psalmist, I knew that God Himself is enough. He would be “my portion” and “the strength” of my inner person (73:26). This pushed me to cling to God and encourage my kids to do the same. My time with God in prayer caused me to surrender all that my cancer is and will be to Him and to fight with His enabling strength. Within those circumstances God had given me a way to move forward. How would I handle cancer? I would run to Him and keep remembering who He is. I would keep a battle mindset. I would surrender to Him my limitedness. This was important because I was only beginning to see just how physically limited, I would be.
While my doctors had given me a physical diagnosis of osteosarcoma, my spiritual diagnosis was prideful self-reliance that thought I could handle this on my own. Facing cancer was going to take deep dependence on God. That deep dependence wouldn’t be possible unless I was straightforward about what I was or was not capable of both physically and spiritually. Remembering who God is was the best place I could start. It was a foundational lens for how I should look at all aspects of myself. I was limited. God was limitless. He could be depended on when my body would fail me.
*Resources used for reference: www.blueletterbible.org (Including, Strong’s, Vine’s Expository Dictionary, Thayer’s Greek Lexicon).