From Scared to Trusting to Angry to Thankful

Sometimes, living a life of faith is a rollercoaster of emotions. When I was eight, my grandmother was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer. I was scared that I was going to lose the grandparents I was closest to and I prayed every night with my mom that Grandma would get better. But she didn’t. Stage IV cancer doesn’t just go away.

My grandma took a lot of comfort in the story of Hezekiah. In 2 Kings chapter 20, Hezekiah, king of Judah, became deathly ill. The prophet Isaiah literally told him that he was going to die. But when Hezekiah prayed for healing, God gave him fifteen more years to live. My grandma told God she would be content with ten years. He kept her alive for nearly eight.

Throughout my childhood, my grandma’s cancer became a consistency. Our prayers for Grandma to “feel better” were answered if she could live her life normally. As in, she could go to church and events. As in, she wasn’t actively in pain. When I remember my grandmother, I remember her with her wig. I remember her with the skin-colored sleeve she wore on her arm after the cancer invaded her lymph nodes. This was our normal. And my grandma, woman of faith that she was, constantly used her disease as a witnessing opportunity. At chemotherapy, at doctor’s offices, in the grocery line. She told everyone she had cancer and she told everyone that the power of prayer was keeping her alive.

So, to my child brain, her cancer almost became logical. God had given my grandma cancer so that she could tell people about Him. It wasn’t going to kill her. It was like the thorn in St. Paul’s side— a hardship with a higher purpose. I could accept that.

But then I found out they were running out of treatment options. There weren’t even any more experimental trials to join. Grandma’s pain was increasing. I vividly remember the first time I heard my mom tell someone that my grandma was dying. I was shocked. It had been years since I’d truly considered the idea that the cancer would kill my grandma.

That was probably when I became the angriest with God I’ve ever been.

Scratch that. The angriest with God I’ve ever been was when that same summer— as I was realizing my grandma wouldn’t see me get my driver’s license or graduate high school or go to college or get married— my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, too.

I looked up at the sky with such fear and heartbreak and anger. I could understand that my grandma had suffered so that others could know Jesus. That made sense. I could not find any sense in the idea of God taking away the two most important women in my life when I was only fifteen.

Thankfully, my mom’s cancer was found when it was in the earliest stages detectable. I can look back now and see that despite my mom having a genetic mutation that gave her a deadly form of breast cancer, God used a routine mammogram to save her life. I can see His hand in it all now. But in the moment, He felt lightyears away. He felt cruel.

Part of what made all of this worse was that I had spent the last eight years of my life only exposed to Stage IV cancer. It took months for my brain to understand that Stage I was different. That my mom hadn’t been handed a death sentence.

If your brain works anything like mine, it can be hard to immediately understand a change in the pattern. When something scares us in a way we’ve been scared before, it’s easy to assume the same chain of events is about to happen. But my mom didn’t lose her hair. She didn’t need chemotherapy or radiation treatments. After a year of surgeries, my mom was cancer-free and steps had been taken to drastically reduce the possibility of that cancer coming back. 

Now, as an adult, I can look back and see that I was given eight years with my grandmother that most kids in my situation don’t get. I can look back and remember everything my grandma did in those eight years not just to witness to others, but to also deepen my own faith. I can look back and see how she prepared my mom for her own cancer battle. I can even see that God didn’t let my mom’s own battle start before she was finished helping my grandma fight hers. I can even see that my mom’s battle prepares me to know that I should be genetically tested for the same mutation. I can see now that God was with us the whole time.

But in the moment, I was blinded. And while I’m not saying that’s a great thing, I do think God knows this happens to us. And it’s okay. Because God has prepared for the situation in ways we can’t. He stands by and waits for our vision to clear. He keeps holding onto us, reminding us that He’s there.

Sometimes, living a life of faith is a rollercoaster of emotions. But beneath and above and behind and around those emotions, God’s grace and mercy and love and patience and steadfastness stay constant. Enduring. Unchanging. 

Praise be to God for that.

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One Response

  1. Dear Allison,

    Thank you for writing this. I certainly identified with your roller-coaster of feelings! And I’ve concluded that this is how God grows my mustard-seed size faith stronger as each challenge is met with Him at my side on my own journey. God is not surprised by our responses, even those of rage and anger. What a blessing to bare ourselves wide-open to Him and have the blessed assurance that He continues to love us unconditionally!

    Love you,
    Aunt Elaine

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