Joy Is Contagious… Cancer Isn’t

I wasn’t going to get cancer. After all, it didn’t run in my family, I ate fairly healthy and worked out occasionally, you know, when swimsuit season approached. I even had antioxidant-rich green tea in the back of my cupboard…somewhere…in case I got a wild hair to replace my morning cup of cream-laden coffee with it. I didn’t plan to hear the “C” word for a long time, if ever. Then again, I didn’t plan on gaining the college freshman 15, or allowing my children to watch TV or eat birthday cake before they reached double digits. Life has a way of unfolding in unexpected ways.

It was the middle of July, 2016, when I decided to do a breast self-examination while in the shower. For your knowledge, I checked myself with the same regularity as I attended the gym — when the mood struck. This day I chose to do it and I struck gold, if you can equate finding a cancerous nodule in my left breast to unearthing a hunk of precious metal. Of course, I didn’t yet know it was cancer with the certainty found only in the medical community following exams, scans, and biopsies. But, I had a sneaking suspicion.

You would think that my next course of action would have been to make a mammogram appointment, right? Wrong. You see, I planned to attend an upcoming weekend retreat centered on Christ’s mercy and I didn’t want anything to interfere with that, so I pushed the need for further evaluation of this pesky lump I had found out of my mind. I’m not sure that attending the retreat was more important than seeing a doctor, but a message that I’d receive from the Great Physician while there would change my darkening outlook on life and prepare me to face cancer with more peace, less fear, and a dash of humor. I needed this message and I believe it’s for you, too.

The hotel room door closed behind me as I left for the first morning of the retreat when I heard what resembled a whisper into my heart, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” I stopped because the words caught me off guard. Then I heard it ever so softly again, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Hmmm. “That’s odd,” I thought. I really didn’t know what to make of hearing within my spirit this particular Bible verse, so I dismissed the words as readily as I had dismissed the marble-sized knot embedded in my breast tissue.

Subtle messages centering on the need for joy in our walk with Christ kept surfacing that weekend, to the point that I wondered if they were somehow connected to the familiar verse I had “heard” while leaving my hotel room. Strange. I traveled slightly more than 100 miles intending to learn about our Lord’s mercy, but instead it was out of His infinite mercy that He lovingly scrapped my plans, replacing them with His own. Of course, if the Lord wanted me to fully understand what He was doing, He was gonna need to be a tad more direct. (I amusingly assume Jesus appreciates a good challenge when vying for our attention. That’s when He gets to show off His creativity best.)

The final day of the retreat while sitting on my bed before checkout I felt the urge to read my Bible. Not knowing what to read that morning, I flipped it open and it fell to the first chapter of Nehemiah. It was impressed upon me to start reading, so I did. I read through chapter 1, then chapter 2, then chapters 3 and 4….

It wasn’t clear to me what I was getting out of it, if anything, but I instinctively knew I shouldn’t stop. I was prompted to read further. It was like that feeling you have when you’re driving, unsure if you’re headed in the right direction but you think, “You’re probably almost there. Go just one more block.” Finally, I reached my “destination.” My eyes landed on Nehemiah chapter

8, verse 10, where I found in Scripture as if for the very first time, “…the joy of the Lord is your strength.” I had no idea that’s where that verse was located. I began to weep.

As the tears fell, scales from my eyes fell with them. The Lord was revealing to me that my joy was gone. Gently forced to take a closer look, I realized it had probably vanished years ago. Oddly, I never noticed. Busy days of rearing children, church activities, tending to the home, and working in radio kept my mind and body steadily moving forward through each day while the joy I once possessed and radiated imperceptibly evaporated into thin air. Thankfully, Jesus had plans for me to recapture what was lost just in time for my breast cancer diagnosis. It’s what would sustain me. He’s good like that.