Hope in the Year of Cancer and Covid
A Blog on Sorrow by Katie Hawkins
August 11 should have been the happiest of all my days in this strange year of cancer and Covid. I took my last round of chemotherapy drugs on Monday night, August 10. I fully expected to be elated all day Tuesday and maybe even celebrate with a glass of wine and a nice dinner that night with my husband who has taken such good care of me. But there was no wine and only reheated leftovers for dinner. The elation I expected didn’t come. Scripture says, “Weeping may stay for the night but rejoicing comes in the morning.” Tuesday did bring the morning, but I was in mourning.
The problem was that on August 9 I had gone to a funeral for a dear friend, Mike who lost his battle with cancer. As I hugged his precious widow, she asked how I was doing with my cancer, and I thoughtlessly enthused that I’d be done with chemo on Tuesday this week. My stomach immediately clenched with pain when I realized what an inappropriate comment that had been. How dare I celebrate my own healing when my brother was denied his? I brooded over this and added to it thoughts of so many others in my new ‘cancer club.’ Not only is Mike dead, but my neighbor Gayle, who welcomed me so graciously when we moved to this new neighborhood is dead, too. She came over so many times last year to encourage me as I went through chemo by telling me of her own experience with breast cancer and how she beat it. And then she stopped coming because she didn’t feel well. Then she never came again because her cancer returned, and then she died. There’s Shellee who was diagnosed with the very same aggressive cancer as mine who, a year ahead of me in treatment and was doing well, until she wasn’t. The heavy chemo drugs had messed with her brain somehow. And Tracey, now on chemo for the rest of her life as her type of cancer is not curable. And Moe who is on round three of the chemotherapy aptly nick-named, the “Red Devil.” I can’t escape the deep empathy I feel for her as I know the hell she descends into. So much woe. And not just from cancer. I’m also dealing with relational problems that are much harder to endure than physical yucky-ness.
I had set aside Tuesday morning for an extended time of silence and solitude in order to seek the Lord more fully for my own heaviness of spirit and to intercede for my friends and family. God showed me clearly that I needed to feel the grief. I needed to stop self-medicating with my preferred distractions of reading endless novels, playing card games online, planning and eating good food and keeping as busy as possible. He called me to just rest in Him and let the grief come. He made it clear that running from sorrow just prolongs it. I needed to face it squarely while trusting that God is with me and absolutely powerful enough to hold my broken heart in His hands and bring healing—not just for me but also for those I ached over. I sat in it all morning, and it wasn’t pleasant. But the revelation that it brought was deep and profound.
Through a Bible study I’m doing with an online group—not in a mysterious, unexplainable way, God took me to Ecclesiastes 3:
I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
And the application was this: Of course I call to mind the troubles and tribulations that I and the people I love are going through, but if I constantly rehearse those and stop rehearsing what I know to be true about God, I will continually be downcast. A teaching someone sent me encouraged the mind picture of myself hanging onto all these ropes that were attached to people and problems and programs I was involved with. These ropes tug and pull. Now let go of them all. Hand them over to God who is actually sovereign and powerful and can handle the tug and pull. Wait on Him to deliver. He delivers some to death. Who am I to say that death is losing the battle when maybe those who have died have actually crossed a beautiful finish line with victory? Who am I to say the suffering we experience isn’t designed to show the light of Jesus in a unique way into a dark world? Who am I to say the relational problems I’m dealing with aren’t producing a deeper character in me that smooth sailing never could?
The revelation? God’s love and compassion never fail, for me and for those I love. He is our portion and our hope and our salvation from the woes of this world. I can run to Him with my sorrow and grief instead of running away from it. Weeping is good and cleansing and necessary. Tuesday, August 11 was a day for that in my life. It is now Wednesday and the morning has come and has brought renewed hope which has put the skip back in my step and the promised rejoicing is here.
PS. As I called to mind and rehearsed all the ways you have prayed for me and cheered me on during this cancer journey, I must tell you again that you are a great source of joy in my life, She Speaks Story community. I cannot thank you enough, dear friends.