When God Turns the Tables
Until she got breast cancer, and everything changed.
“I pulled out of everything I was involved in for that year. I had to. I didn’t ring bells anymore. I wasn’t involved in the [military] wives group. Couldn’t attend Wednesday morning Bible study. I just had to pull out and concentrate on my health and not all the things that I used to do,” she says.
Instead, Linda learned to receive help, which was an unfamiliar feeling. “I like to take the meals; I like to take you to the doctor. And I had to let people do that for me, which was a little hard.”
But she can’t say enough about the love and help of her friends from church and the military community during her surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments. “I had a terrific support group of people bringing meals, calling, [sending] cards, taking me to doctor’s appointments. I was blessed by all of those friends who were here for me. Because I was not alone.”
From the beginning, Linda never felt alone. God was with her.
“When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was never really afraid,” she says. “I had a peace, that there was a purpose why I had this, and that some good would come out of it. I didn’t know what God had planned. You never know who you’re going to reach through illness. I just felt a calm.”
At one point during her cancer treatment, Linda was admitted to the hospital with a collapsed lung. No one knew why—it was not a standard reaction to chemo and she had had no injury to explain it. Still, there she was.
As she was treated for the lung, she again felt at peace. “It is scary, but there was a peace in me that I had the strength to endure it. Not that bad things weren’t going to happen, but that I could get through whatever this cancer was going to bring. I was going to be OK with it.”
Just a month later, Linda was rushed to the hospital once again—this time, with a life-threatening reaction to a new chemo medicine. At first, doctors thought she had pneumonia, but the longer she was in the hospital, the worse the sickness got. She spent 9 days in intensive care with dangerously high fevers, among other symptoms.
“It was a scary time, because feeling so sick, I came to grips with—if this was my time, I was ready. And I wasn’t scared. Everybody dies.”
Even then, Linda saw God at work. “What God placed for me there at the very lowest time—and I could see it then and as I look back, I see it more—He placed many angels in my life while I was in the ICU. He gave me Christian nurses on the night shift, who came in and took care of me.”
Nights were the worst times for Linda, who was either burning up or shivering from fever, and had trouble breathing. On one of her lowest nights, Linda prayed, “I cannot do this. God, it is in your hands.” As she prayed, Linda says, “I felt lifted from all the prayers. Later, I found out that so many people were praying for me, that I didn’t even know their names.” For the first time in telling her story, Linda eyes fill with tears. “Friends from different churches, different states, had reached out to their prayer groups, and lifted me in prayer. I didn’t even know.”
Linda’s health improved, and she eventually was released from the hospital. At her next oncology appointment, the doctor told her that the pneumonia medication she was given at the hospital wouldn’t cure the reaction to chemo that had been the real cause of her sickness. Different medications were needed for that reaction.
She recalls, “I said, ‘Well, I didn’t use any of that stuff. They didn’t give me that. How did I get better?’ The oncologist said, ‘I don’t know, it was just a miracle that you did.’”
The oncologist’s words were more evidence, Linda says, that God is looking out for her. “[He’s] using me—I don’t know how—but giving me the strength to get through it. I could do nothing. I couldn’t help myself. I was helpless—and God just had me there in the palm of His hand.”
Looking back now, Linda reflects on how having cancer touched both her and others. “You never know who you’ve reached through it.” Since then, she’s had friends with family members diagnosed with cancer, and because of her experience, she can empathize with them.
In addition, she’s seen changes in her extended family. “There’s kind of a rift in my family—my parents are divorced—but when I went back last summer, there was healing in the family that hadn’t taken place in 30 years. Whether it was just me being sick, I don’t know. If it was, it was worth it.”
When Linda talks about her experience, she often uses the words, “I don’t know, but...” She doesn’t know for sure what God’s purpose in her illness was, but she knows He was with her during her darkest and sickest times. She doesn’t know if the opportunities she’s had to share God’s faithfulness with neighbors, friends, and acquaintances will bear fruit—but she knows that without cancer, she may never have shared her faith with them at all.
“I was able to share my faith with people openly about what had happened to me—doctors, nurses, neighbors. Anybody who was asking, I shared. And normally, I probably wouldn’t have been so bold to do that.”
It’s been a year since Linda finished treatment, and she feels good. As she and her husband prepare to move from Virginia to Texas to be closer to their children, Linda know that her journey of faith is not yet over.
“I’m still learning what my faith walk needs to be. There was a purpose going through it. You don’t always see it at the time. God reveals His plan when He’s ready to reveal it,” she says.
“The trials always make you stronger. Unless you go through a trial, you’re not going to grow as much. It’s going to help you
grow.”
Jennifer Gross- Journey of Faith blog contributor shares Linda's story.
