“It’s never God’s will that you’re sick. Jesus healed everyone. Just claim that healing.”

Several times both through my original cancer journey and this latest drama, I’ve heard this. And well before my own health troubles, I’ve heard it too. Have you? Or perhaps this is what you believe?

I think it’s something we need to talk about. Because I know how I react to it emotionally, and I also know how dear friends and family have reacted to it. Personally, I always find myself thinking, “I understand your belief, and I know you’re saying this out of love and faith. I, too, believe Christ is our Healer, that He can heal anyone. But saying that He will choose to heal me if I just have faith enough is not helpful.” I’ve never said this to an individual before, because the last thing I want to do is lash out when someone’s trying to speak hope to me. But it has lingered in my mind this time.

So let’s ask the question. Does God ever will our ills?

Many people say, “Of course not! God wills only good for us!” And that is absolutely the truth…but I don’t think it’s the full picture. I don’t believe that God wants disease or illness for us, I don’t believe He sends them to us…but I do believe they are an inescapable consequence of our fallen world and that, because God in His omniscience knew this world would fall, He’s made a way not just to deliver miraculous healing in some cases, but to use our ills for His glory in ALL cases…if we let Him. 

First of all, we have examples like Job, where God did indeed will and explicitly allow Satan to bring hardship including disease onto His faithful servant. Now, God did not send the disease. But God did allow the disease. And though, yes, Job was eventually delivered from it and went on to new health and wealth and joy, we can also be certain that he still died eventually. And that would be after he spoke to God directly.

In the New Testament, we know that Paul had some undisclosed issue (most scholars I’ve read assume it was a physical ailment, though of course we can’t know for sure) that he prayed three times to be delivered from. And what did God say?

My strength is made perfect in your weakness.

We also see in the Epistles that new Christians were very confused as to why some of them were dying. Didn’t Christ’s wounds heal them? Weren’t they supposed to live forever? But they weren’t. They died like everyone else. What did that mean? Was their faith false?

Of course not, and Paul explains it all to them, making it clear that eternal life is for now given to the soul, and that the resurrection of our bodies, our flesh, will come later.

And we also need to look at the two thousand years of Church history. We know that every Christian to come before us has died. And we know that they didn’t all die from violence or martyrdom. That many–most–died of some disease or another.

So taking all of this into account, I would have to say that, questions of will aside, we all do get sick, and the majority of us die of some sickness or another. Is this God’s will? Or is it all Satan?

Questions like this feel not only tricky but dangerous. Because obviously God’s perfect will was for man not to sin, and hence not to die–EVER. Which would include no sickness. But mankind did sin and DOES sin, and so we introduced death into the world. And given that God created this world, created man, created free will, knowing all along what would happen, I think we need to accept that there is nuance to the will of God. That while He would love for us all to be perfect as Christ is perfect, imperfection is part of His working will. That includes our sin, our brokenness, and also our diseases.

Which brings us back to today. Do I believe God afflicts us with disease? No. Do I believe that God can and does still give miraculous healings? Absolutely. But I also believe that those people who receive them will go on to die, likely of some different disease, at a later time. We will all die. For many of us, we’ll be sick first. This is reality, and given that there are no 2,000-year-old people still walking around, our faith must take that into account.

For many, many Christians, living with ongoing suffering, with chronic illness, is reality too. And this is not a lack of faith. But I’ve spoken with so many suffering friends who have been told that if they just believed more, they’d be healed. And I grieve with those friends over the guilt this puts on them–a shame they do not deserve.

Because you know what? God uses our pain for His glory. When we are weak–sick, injured, dying, suffering, exhausted–He’s still at work. He is strong, and His strength can shine through us. When we are weak, we are quite often better at sharing the heart of Christ than when we are well. When we are weak, our hearts are more vulnerable to the pain of those around us.

Christ chose to suffer, after all. He could have called down the angels. He could have miraculously healed His own wounds. He could have walked through the midst of the people who came for Him, as He had done before. But He didn’t. He chose instead to be subjected to the most painful suffering humanity had been able to devise. It wasn’t disease, obviously, but it was intense agony. He suffered it for us.

I cringe every time someone says I (or someone else) just needs to claim healing because Christ healed all the sick, and if we have faith, we can claim it too…because this argument effectively says the opposite too: that if you’re sick, if you die of disease, you must not have faith enough for healing. This is dangerous, friends. This is judging people for being what humans have been since the Garden: MORTAL. This is unrealistic and hurtful to those who are already suffering. I have met quite a few people who left a church and nearly left the church because they have a chronic illness and were told they could just be healed if they believed.

Friends, there is healing beyond the physical, and that is what Christ wants for us most of all. You remember the story of the paralyzed young man who was lowered through the roof by his friends, right? Do you remember Jesus’s immediate reaction? He says, “Your sins are forgiven.” The faith of this man and his friends did not immediately garner a physical healing–Christ knew his REAL need, and that was salvation of his soul. That was what He offered first, from His heart. It was the snarky thoughts of the onlookers that spurred Him to give a visible sign, a visible healing.

I know that young man rejoiced to leap from his mat. But what do you think really gave him the most joy–use of his legs for another decade or two, or an eternity in Heaven with his Lord? 

Every week in Mass, there’s a part where the priest holds up the host and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God. Behold, He who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb.”

And the congregation answers with another Scripture, but with a single world that reflects on our own situation, every day, rather than the centurion’s. We say, “Lord, I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof. But only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.” The Scripture, of course, says servant. But we say this as a recognition that we do not come to Jesus every day, every week, to ask that a servant and friend be delivered of a fever. We come to Him every day, every week, to be delivered from the sins that plague us. It’s our souls that He heals every time we ask–fully, completely, eternally. It’s our souls that most urgently need to be cleansed from disease. 

The test of our faith is not whether or not we get sick, suffer, or die. The test of our faith is how we get sick, suffer, and die. By which I mean, how do we handle it? Do we make the best or the worst of it? Do we affix our eyes to Christ on the cross as we’re suffering, asking Him to take our pain and join it to His world-changing sacrifice, or do we complain about everything and cling to despair instead of hope?

Because yes, the world is watching. And while a miraculous healing might win hearts…so does God-lent strength amidst our trials. God can be glorified through our healing, but He can also be glorified through our suffering.

In this world, we will get sick. And whether or not our Lord chooses to heal us, our part is to cling to Him through it. Our testimony is not whether or not we are healed this side of Heaven–our testimony is whether or not we’re pointing to Heaven through it.

A friend recently reminded me of a passage from the little freebie I make available to newsletter subscribers, The Heart of His Brother. This is just a chapter that’s part of the Secrets of the Isles series, about the older brother of the Tremayne siblings who we never meet in the books because he’s already passed away, but whose memory and legacy is a very real part of Oliver and Beth’s story and even has a profound effect on Bram, hero of book three, who is a visitor to the Isles. Morgan was always plagued by disease and always knew he would die young. But he chose to live life in a way that made every moment count. My friend quoted this passage to me, and I think Morgan’s reflections here sum up my own beliefs rather well (and this was written years ago, well before any of my own health struggles):

“This infirmity, whatever it is,” he’d said to Beth, “is not from God. But He will use it. He will redeem it. He made me to be as strong as Oliver, and though my body betrayed that, He will perfect me in some other way, if I let him. For everything I cannot do, there’s something I can, that I’ve only discovered because of my limitations. And if I fail to do that, if I wallow in the ‘not’ instead—well, that’s my own fault, isn’t it? The Lord made me to praise Him. If I can’t do it with a leap, then I’ll do it with a shout.”

We should never stop praying for and believing in miracles. I absolutely, one hundred percent, believe that God can and still does deliver those miraculous healings. How can I not?

He’s already given me the most miraculous healing of all. He’s already forgiven my sins, taking my dying soul and restoring it to perfect life in Him. My body? He can heal that too. But if He doesn’t, then I will trust. I will trust that He can work more glory through pain and disease than He could through miraculous physical healing. I will trust that there’s still something I need to learn about Him that I can only learn here. I will trust that a healing received in Heaven is no less real, no less miraculous, no less beautiful than one given on earth. And I’ll know that I will see that there because He’s already granted that MORE important healing.

Pray for healing, friends. Always. But also remember that healing is never perfected this side of heaven. Lazarus went on to die a second time–bodily. But that is no cause for despair. Remember the words that Jesus told Martha outside that tomb:

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,  and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25, ESV. Emphasis my own.)

Do we believe this? Do we believe that, though these earthly bodies fail for now, in the way that matters most, WE SHALL LIVE? That day, Jesus raised Lazarus bodily from the grave. In another day, He’ll raise us bodily from the grave. It doesn’t matter if we were already sick and died. It doesn’t matter if we stink or have decomposed entirely, if our bones have been burned to ashes even.

When the Word that created the very universe says, “Come forth!” that’s exactly what we’ll do.

Because the only death that matters is death of the soul–and if we believe in Him, that’s the death we will never taste. The only healing that ultimately matters is healing of the soul–and if we believe in Him, that’s the healing that we can know. Every day. Every hour. Every minute.

So to my friends with chronic illness; to my friends with terminal disease; to my friends who suffer every day in a body that has betrayed that perfect vision, know this. You are already healed. And healing of the soul…that takes far more faith than healing of the body. That is the work that only God Himself can do. Physicians can stitch these limbs back together, perform surgery, do such amazing things to prolong physical life.

But the Great Physician is the only one who can give that most miraculous healing of all–the healing that makes us ready for eternity.

I don’t know if my cancer will ever spread, if it’ll come back again someday, if I’ll die of disease eventually or something else entirely, if it’ll happen in a year or a decade or a century. But I do know this.

I am already healed. 

I’m writing this over Thanksgiving weekend. Since Xoe is home, that means I’m back at my desk in the kitchen, where it’s chillier than I’d like in the winter…but where I have a fabulous view out the window. The winter birds are now hopping around–always there, in reality, but so much more visible this time of year when others have migrated away and the trees are bare.

I see the blue jay, big and bold, flitting from one branch of the tree to the other. I see the cardinal, hopping from the roof of our old Jeep to a bush. Flashes of color in a world gone brown, frosted with white. I’m not, generally speaking, a fan of winter. But there’s such beauty in it–in glimpses, if not in a riot.

Chances are good that you’ve already seen my update on social media or in my newsletter, if you’re following my journey in real time. But I know some might have missed it and others only follow my blog, and still others are likely to find it later, when they come here searching for things as they put their foot to their own journey…so I’m writing it here too.

It was cancer. The tumor they cut out of my brain a few weeks ago–it was cancer and, not surprisingly, the same cancer I had before. HER2+ breast cancer, metastasized to the brain.

Now, this obviously isn’t the news we were praying for. But it was the news I was braced for. When the surgeon said that’s what it looked like to him, I kinda sighed and mentally said to myself, “Okay. He could still be wrong, but…okay. We’ll go from here.”

There must have been some confusion as to who would call me with this news, because no one did, in the 2.5 weeks between when the tissue went off to be tested and when I came back for more appointments and consultations. I know my family were chomping at the bit, but honestly…I was okay not having that news hanging over me when I went to Colorado to hang out with my Patrons & Peers girls and see the ballet production of Christmas at Sugar Plum Manor. (I’ll be telling you ALL about this soon!) We got back on Monday, November 24, and on Tuesday, November 25, we headed back up the road to Morgantown, for a CT scan, a Gamma Knife consultation, and a follow-up with my neurosurgeon.

When we sat down with the physician assistant in advance of the doctor coming in and she said, “So you know the pathology now” and we said, “Um, no, actually,” she looked genuinely shocked and taken aback. And quickly gave the news everyone had been dreading. “It was cancer, consistent with the HER2+ breast cancer you had last year.”

On the surface, this is bad news. Obviously we’d have preferred it be something benign. But amidst that bad, amidst that brown of winter, there are plenty of glimpses of color.

It was one tiny, isolated spot, now removed. Usually when they see metastasis in the brain, it’s a lot of spots, everywhere. Usually, it’s come through the lymph nodes and is elsewhere in the body. Usually, they Gamma Knife them away, yes, but also start talking about palliative care.

This isn’t the usual case.

Thanks to that routine MRI, we found it super early, and it was isolated. It’s not in the lymph nodes (which means it had to have traveled to the brain last year, when it was in the lymph nodes, and just wasn’t fully wiped out by chemo in 2024. It must have been one or a couple cancer cells that multiplied after treatment stopped). It’s, now, nowhere. 

The PA referred to it as oligometastasis, which means a very limited spread of the disease. It also means it’s treated very aggressively, with the goal of eradication. (This is not true of widespread metastatic disease, where the goal is prolonging life and keeping it in check but not elimination.) This is GOOD NEWS. As my oncologist put it on Wednesday, “There is so much to be thankful for here. Right now, we have no evidence of cancer in your body. That means it’s tricky, in a way–because we’re going to be trying to measure a disease that isn’t there. But that’s good!”

Right now, the plan is as follows. On December 11, I’ll go in for Gamma Knife radiation. This is a super-targeted dose of gamma radiation pinpointed to the spot where the tumor had been. The goal here is to take care of any tiny little cancer cells that didn’t come out with the tumor itself during surgery. The only side effects of this kind of treatment are some tiredness that day from the twilight sedation they use to keep me still, and maybe a headache from the frame they use for the same purpose. No biggie. I’ll be back up and operational next day, and it’s an in-and-out sort of thing, like other radiation treatments. Despite the word “knife” in there, there are no knives involved. 😉 That’s just used to indicate how precise it is. A radiation scalpel.

The following Wednesday, December 17, I’ll head back to the cancer center to start my blocker treatments. These are similar to what I had after surgery last year, aimed at specifically blocking the HER2-protein that feeds this cancer. They refer to it simply as in-Her2. (Way shorter than its technical name, LOL.) There are possible side effects, ranging from nausea/diarrhea to hair thinning to a rare lung disease, but I’m hopeful that since I responded so well to that previous treatment (with NO side effects at all), that it will be similar for me with these.

If this were widespread metastatic disease, these treatments would be forever. But when my oncologist came in last Wednesday, he said with a big smile on his face, “Oh, no! Not in your case, not necessarily. We’ll do it for a year or two and reevaluate. You might be able to stop. We don’t want to treat you forever for a disease you don’t still have.”

This is where the tricky part comes in–how do you measure what’s not there? And I am praying for that kind of tricky, LOL! That it won’t come back.

From a storytelling perspective, this makes perfect sense. That God made a way for us to catch it early, so that we could take care of it. So that I could have many more years with my family. So that I could have many years to write many more stories. So that I can have the opportunity to grow old with those I love.

Will my life be that story? I obviously don’t know. But I feel like that’s the way things will go. (I am keenly aware that feelings do not dictate reality, LOL, but that’s the bone-deep peace I have right now, anyway.) I will do what I can, medically speaking, to destroy and block this cancer. And I will walk forward, confident that there’s still a lot of life yet to live. I will sign book contracts. I will write others’ stories. I will savor each moment with my kids, my husband, my parents, my grandparents, my sister, my friends.

And I will thank God for that pituitary tumor that necessitated the MRI.

Which is funny, right? When I got the news about that tumor in 2022, I was dumbfounded. Terrified. Even knowing it was benign, I also knew how it was affecting me, and it knocked me for a loop. It felt…so…big. Everything felt so uncertain. I hated that tiny little microadinoma, hated what it had done to me, hated all the questions it made me ask.

Now? Now, I think about that tiny little growth on my pituitary gland and realize it may have saved my life. This tumor they just removed was asymptomatic–too small for me to see any effect from. They don’t do routine brain MRIs to check for cancer spread, not unless you have symptoms to call attention to something. The fact that I even had a brain MRI…the fact that I had it at that precise time, when the tumor was just big enough to be picked up, not big enough to cause symptoms…some would call that good luck, good fortune, an amazing coincidence. I call that the timing of a loving Father God.

Even so, I can grant that this has changed me…and I dare to hope and pray it’s changed me for the better. I’ve certainly noticed that tears are closer to the surface. Usually, I’m a cry-twice-a-year kind of girl. Now I’m swiping at my eyes every few days. And you know what? That’s okay. Because it means it’s easier to weep with those who are weeping. Easier to mourn with the mourning. Easier to appreciate each gift of a day.

On Thanksgiving last week, we went to my sister’s, along with everyone else in the extended family (or so it seemed, LOL). Her house was bursting at the seems. Some years, my dad asks everyone to say something they’re thankful for. This year, he joked that if he did that, we’d be standing there until it was time for dessert. But I had my gratitude there, in my heart and in my hands. And he said, “But while I have the floor, I’m going to say something.”

And he looked over at me, this man I’m so like. And his eyes were glassy, and mine went glassy too. I can’t see my dad cry and not cry with him, it’s just impossible. I’m weepy now just remembering it. I knew, obviously, he’d be saying something about the trials of the last six weeks and how God was getting us through them. I just didn’t know what, in particular, he would say. Know what he did?

“I’m so thankful for my daughter’s rock-solid faith. I’m so thankful that, all these things she’s gone through, and she not only hasn’t faltered for a moment, but she’s there inspiring so many other people.”

Cue me wiping at my eyes.

Next week, I’m going to be musing about these things we suffer and whether they’re God’s will. About my emotional reaction when people say this disease (any disease) isn’t from God, and that we need to claim healing. I don’t want to steal all I’ve already written for that one. 😉 But I will say this, here.

Cancer has given me a view of life I didn’t have before. Cancer has shown me how precious it is. Cancer has opened me up to depths I hadn’t known before. Cancer has drawn me not only closer to God but closer to you.

I guess technically, I’m officially in Stage 4 Cancer…without any cancer left in my body. It’s a funny thing. And in the back of my mind these last six weeks, I’ve wondered what I might write about this new perspective, maybe for a book someday. It wouldn’t just be about inspiration to get through your own sufferings.

It would be about the view of life from where I’m now standing. The View from the Stage, this Stage 4 I prayed so fervently to avoid. I’m not sure yet of the subtitle. Something about living boldly? That’s not quite right. Embracing life? That’s closer. Regardless, something about the lessons we learn from a place of suffering, whether it’s from chronic or terminal or acute illness.

I didn’t want to stand here–no one ever does. But so many of us end up on this stage, looking out over our lives, looking out at the crowds around us–some still healthy, some suffering too. We end up looking forward to what could be our end. Sometimes it’s closer than we thought, sometimes it’s still decades away. But we catch that glimpse of it. And it changes us.

It can make people frightened. It can make them bitter. It can make them tired, oh so tired. Sometimes we see the long path ahead and dread those long, aching steps.

Sometimes we see it, and instead decide to treasure each step we get to travel. Because the winter is always going to be brown and cold–that’s its definition. 

It doesn’t mean we have to focus on the color that’s missing. We can still focus on the color that’s there, flitting from branch to branch. Those flashes of red and blue as the birds dance about, unhindered by the cold. We can still cling to the beauty, treasuring it even more when it’s glimpses instead of a riot.

This isn’t my end. The road ahead of me is still stretching out for years, I believe that. But I’m also not going to relinquish the view I’ve found here on the stage. I’m going to treasure every moment of beauty. I’m going to listen for every birdsong. I’m going to let the tears come, and I’m going to smile through them.

And I’m going to remain, always, so, so thankful. Because I’m not standing here alone. I’m surrounded by those I love. I’m joined by others on their own journeys through suffering and trial and challenge. And most of all, I know that this stage isn’t an unmoored, floating thing. It’s in the Father’s hand. And that’s exactly where I want to be.