What does it say about God when cancer comes back?

What does it say about God?

This question was posted on a breast cancer Web site and it stopped me in my tracks. This dear, young woman had testified in church of God’s healing her of leukemia, but worried what people will think of God if her remission ends. Here is my response to one part of her post, “Being a Christian is a lot harder than not being one.”

Dear Jane

The world says it is a crutch, while many believers would say, “Wait a minute! Jesus said His burden is light!” Whatever Jesus means by “light” it does not mean painless or effortless. One of the reasons being a Christian is harder is that we know that God is love, and so we struggle to reconcile that fact with the temptation to feel unloved when we suffer. The world does not know that God is love, and so uses human suffering as proof that God doesn’t exist. Believers know that God is sovereign, yet disease is everywhere, and so we blame Satan, ourselves, or God. It must be someone’s fault, right? Otherwise how can we make sense of it? And round and round we go …  Trying to make sense of it makes my head feel like exploding.

Here is what I know—I had breast cancer eighteen years ago and testified in church of my healing.

Thirteen years later I got a new cancer in the same breast, and testified in church of my healing. Both times the cancer exposed emotional wounds that required treatment. During the second bout I wailed at God, “Did I really need to have cancer TWICE to ‘get in touch with’ these feelings???” I didn’t wait for God’s answer then, but now that I see the amazing emotional healing that emerged from the second journey through cancer, I say, “Yes, I had to have cancer twice.”
What it says about God is that He always has something bigger in mind, and that He always has something up His sleeve. 

Faith and Breast Cancer

     When I had breast cancer my confidence in God did not give me immunity from the  normal emotions most people suffer, it gave me freedom to feel them without censure.  I truly panicked at times, I truly dreaded the possibility of dying, and the certainty of gross medical procedures.  I even feared that my fear would help the cancer grow faster, but I could not stop fearing by will power.  I let myself be God's fully human daughter, and let Him hold and caress me while I felt bad. 

     My devotional practices took on an urgency as I faced life or death decisions that only I could make.  My loose habit of reading a chapter a day in the Old and New Testament, and the daily reading in Chambers, was my lifeline to God.  I doubled my efforts by reading each entry morning and evening, not because I hoped to enjoin God to show mercy.  I knew He would have mercy because He wants to.  I read things twice because I had little time to make terrible choices.  Every day He showed Himself to me clearly and personally, but two instances will best illustrate my point. 

     First, He told me to be gentle with myself.  There is nothing gentle about cancer, but there were gentler options among many bad ones.  That word for me still guides my decisions,  even if I need to rise up and conquer something, I don't choose martyrdom just to prove my strength.

     Second, in the normal course of my devotions, while I prayed specifically about dying young, I came to Gen.15:15 where the Lord  told Abram, "But you will die in peace, at a ripe old age."(LB)  I accepted that as an answer to a specific prayer, which helped me make a decision about surgery.  I also remember that promise when I hear myself worrying about being in a plane crash. 

     I want to live a really human life, fully pleasing to Him. I want to be more dependent on God next year than I am now.  I want to laugh even more.  Amen.

My Third Blog And The Meaning Of Life.

The reason I have created this, my third blog, is that I am a deeply spiritual person, a seminary graduate who is not ashamed to fly the flag of Christ, and who enjoys thinking and writing about the mysterious human soul..  However, I do recognize that many people are offended by religious, especially Christian, discourse, so out of respect for my readers in the breast cancer and mental health worlds, I intentionally refrain from spouting off in those arenas.

Cancer does not discriminate, nor does mental illness; they are very democratic in that way. They don't care about gender, religion, race, or sexual orientation.  Knowing this, the dumbest thing for me would be to risk alienating the very ones I want to help, just for a moment of self-indulgent navel star gazing.

So here is where I will spout off about the whys and wherefores and the meaning of life, because I believe that it is in wrestling with such questions that we can find Soul Survival.