[Original Post Date: September 4, 2021]

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I wasn’t angry with God when I was 27 years old and diagnosed with breast cancer. Was I confused? Yes. Scared for the future? Undoubtedly. But somehow not angry. I reasoned with myself (somewhat illogically) that if I had never prayed and asked God to protect me from cancer before the diagnosis, then I couldn’t be angry with Him for allowing it to happen.

Equal parts shocked and determined, I left the appointment knowing the first step of treatment. The cancer had already grown in a web-type pattern spanning 4 inches by 5 inches rather than as a singular tumor. With my age and pathology reports as additional factors, the recommendation was a mastectomy as soon as it could be scheduled two months later.

I spent those two months in a fervor to control my narrative. I couldn’t control the diagnosis or the surgery ahead but I could make sure that people heard the news from me and that they knew to be praying. Through social media, work, church, and a bucket list trip to New Zealand, I asked close to 2,000 people to pray for one thing and one thing only during those two months: that the cancer would not spread to my lymph nodes.

So much of the focus of my doctors was preparing me for surgery and the physical, mental, and emotional recovery of that, but I had learned that if the surgery showed cancer in my lymph nodes it would likely mean more treatment and a higher chance of recurrence later in life.

On the morning of my surgery, I made this post to social media:

“Today is surgery day. The past two months since diagnosis have held some of my greatest highs and greatest lows. There has been abundant thankfulness and sparkling joy but there has also been unending questions and crippling fear.

Today is the day I finally face some of those fears. This post would have no end if I tried to communicate all the many ways I’ve experienced the Lord meet me leading up to this mastectomy. So I’ll just sum it up by saying He is my rock, my foundation, my good shepherd, and the one who fought for my heart.

Today I do something new. Which I don’t want to do. But I also get to experience His peace and strength in the face of my anxiety and weakness in a new way. And that doesn’t sound so bad.

Today I find out if the cancer has spread to my lymph nodes. Please be praying it has not. And in a few days I find out if I am having chemo. Please be praying for the doctors who will be deciding.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

As I was waiting for the anesthesia to kick in, I was reciting Psalm 23 to myself. The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures…

And then I woke up.
And as the bright lights were seeping through my drowsy eyelids and I was numb from neck to hips, I heard a voice say, “It did spread to your lymph node.” My surgeon left to go get my family and I was left realizing reality was in opposition to my desire.

Anger and tears consumed me in an instant. Waves of emotion, partially due to the anesthesia and partially due to months of hope unrealized, crashed into me. And in those waves, I became swallowed by the whale. The next three days were dark inside that whale. I felt like I had been placed in solitary confinement. How could I have asked for protection and not been given it? How could that have been what was right and good? I was being met with some of the most raw emotion I had ever felt towards the Lord and it wasn’t going away by itself.

It was on the third day that my mom came over to help me eat breakfast and take care of my surgical drains that I decided to come face to face with that raw emotion - face to face with my Lord. I asked my mom to leave me alone for awhile and I laid in bed, mad and in pain - both physical and emotional. I told God that I felt let down and that I didn’t even want to talk to Him. But I told Him, with tears silently trickling down my face, that I couldn’t imagine not talking to Him, so something had to change.

And then a picture popped into my head. It was a picture of Jesus in the garden speaking words of submission that echo throughout all of history.

Not my will,
but Yours be done.

He revealed to me, in a moment of deep personal disappointment, that He too had been told no. He asked for the cup of his death and suffering to be passed from Him and He was told no. So I began to cling to those those seven words as one of the only sensical things in a chaotic world full of prayers that aren’t answered how I think they should be, a body that isn’t healthy the way I want it to be, and a future that can’t be counted on the way I always thought it could be.

Not my will,
but Yours be done.

I felt such a burden lift and such a light shine when I thought of Him there in the garden. It doesn’t necessarily make sense that because He asked for a hard situation to be removed from Him and was told no, that I should have felt better about my own hard situation not being removed - and yet that was the exact result. I no longer felt like I was in solitary confinement because He was there too.

I love that Jesus asked for the cup to be removed from Him. Deep in my spirit I actually love the fact that it is recorded for eyes to see and hearts to recognize. He asked! And was told no! And ultimately that “no” worked for the greatest good.

I have not felt so freed by scripture since I was a child and first realized my debts were permanently paid if I chose to believe and follow a beautiful man. It’s freeing because while He was God incarnate and knew the events to soon follow, He was also fully man with instincts and emotions. He didn’t want to experience pain and sorrow, so He asked not to - what freedom! And yet, He displays the greatest act of trust and submission. With my received “no”, I was in good company as I closed my eyes to execute my trust fall into the arms of the Father.

My “no” resulted in 18 weeks of chemo, 5 weeks of radiation, 9 more months of infusions, and ongoing side effects. And yet, in some way I do not yet see, this cup of suffering has also brought a sifting that reveals what I never could have on my own. An outcome surely not foreseen by the enemy - just as the enemy could have never foreseen that the cancer in my lymph node would bring me closer to my King.

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