Life with cancer – from patience to trust and hope

Life with cancer - from patience to trust and hope. I knew it was going to happen. The only question was when. After prostate removal, the biopsy showed my cancer was more aggressive than previous biopsies indicated. It also showed more cancer than what was expected. Finally, it also showed what's known as cancer cells on both margins. That means there were cancer cells on both ends of what was removed. With all that, the chances of total removal were pretty much zero. And so, it was a question of waiting for what was nearly inevitable. The inevitable happened.

Life with cancer - from patience to trust and hope is article #6 in the series: Do not waste your cancer. Click button to view titles for entire series

After the surgery, PSA numbers dropped quickly. It wasn't long before it was 0.008. That's undetectable where I'm going. Not that there's no cancer. But if there is any, they can't see it.

In that waiting period, it's a combination of patience and hope. Patience, waiting to see if the number goes up or not. And hope that it won't.

Does God heal everyone today?

As a Christian, of course, there was prayer. We read about all the healing in the Bible. Several years ago I wrote The Problem of “Does God still heal”? (or Not). It's an older format and kind of needs to be redone, but the message is still there, regardless of how it looks.

You may remember, in the Bible Jesus healed everyone. There's a really good book, titled And He healed them all, by Jeffrey McClain Jones. There are several books with similar titles. This one's a novel and it's quite good.

In any case, one of the problems with some Christians is that they expect God to heal everyone. And if you weren't healed, it was because you didn't have enough faith. There's really no basis for that belief. And yet, the idea persists in some churches.

If we take one verse from one passage and ignore everything else, we can possibly conclude that a lack of faith yields a lack of healing. However, if you've read very much from me, you know, pulling one verse from any passage is rarely, if ever, a good thing to do. Context matters! And so do the language and the culture of the time.

I was going to include a segment on the alleged link between the lack of faith and the lack of healing. But it got too long. So, I took it out of here and put this one on hold while I wrote that one. It's available at Is strong Christian faith needed before God will heal us? I highly recommend it, especially if you've heard, or especially been told, that God won't heal you unless you've got enough faith. Why? Because the conclusion drawn from a statement like that is, if God doesn't heal you, it's your fault! And that's just plain not true. The totality of passages in the Bible on this subject just doesn't support that line of thinking!

Going through something like cancer is hard enough. We don't need to be told we're to blame for it, or for it not being healed. We Christians are told by Jesus to be loving. How is it loving to tell someone, you're sick, and it's your fault you're still sick?

Anyone who hears that, or believes it, should also read what happened when the Jews in Nazareth rejected Jesus. Pay special attention to verse 23, underlined below.

Jesus Rejected at Nazareth

Lk 4:14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
Lk 4:16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. 17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
Lk 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
Lk 4:19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Lk 4:20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, 21 and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Lk 4:22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.
Lk 4:23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ ”
Lk 4:24 “I tell you the truth,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
Lk 4:28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Life with cancer - from patience to trust and hope

With that said, and in our minds, let's proceed. The title is Life with cancer - from patience to trust and hope. If taken literally, it gives the impression that before the test result came back positive again, I was just patiently waiting, with no trust and no hope required. Furthermore, it might give the impression that after the new test result, that patience isn't needed anymore. Of course, that's not true at all.

It's a matter of emphasis. Any time we're on active surveillance, we must trust God and remind ourselves of the Hope we have in Him. That's an essential part of Christian life at any point in time. However, it becomes ever more essential as stress levels rise. And few things bring on stress like the "C" word - cancer.

But, while we're waiting to see if it's going to get better or worse, or return in this case, lots of patience is needed. At least it was for me. I have trouble with depression, even on some good days. Stress goes up. Much patience is needed.

Moving from patience to trust and hope

But somehow, knowing that the cancer is back is different. I'm not waiting to see if it returns. It's back. It's here. And now my focus must change.

There's still a bit of waiting. But it's a different kind of wait. Now, I keep getting tested to see when, not if, the concentration level is high enough that a location for the cancer cells can be detected. Then treatment begins. And I'm pretty sure my focus will change again. But this is now. And I guess I need to focus on that. Spending time worrying about what may or may not happen later is stressful and depressing. And didn't Jesus tell us that?

Moving from stress and depression to what truly matters

What mattered to Matthew about not worrying

Do Not Worry - Matthew

6:25-33 pp — Lk 12:22-31