Carried Through Cancer: Five Stories of FaithNäide

Ronell’s Story

Ronell was angry at God. Recovering from a bilateral mastectomy and breast reconstruction surgery after being diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma at forty-four, she broke out in a rash that quickly spread throughout her whole body. A red, burning, itchy rash.

She ended up in the ER, where she learned she was experiencing a drug eruption. The combination of all the extra substances in her body caused an intense physical reaction, and there was nothing she could do but wait it out as the drugs made their way out of her system.

Sitting exhausted and in pain on the exam table, she cried out to God, “I said I would do cancer, but I didn’t say I would do this.”

Cancer was hard enough on its own, but this was more than she bargained for. She went back home to one of the most miserable weeks of her life. Showering was so painful it made her cry. But showers weren’t the worst part. The nights were the worst.

One night, as her family slept, she lay wide awake. Sad and mad and exhausted but unable to sleep, she managed to maneuver a folding chair into the bathroom.

“When I was sitting on that chair in the bathroom, I was overcome with fear, and I was mad. I just felt really alone and like I was being spiritually attacked.”

If Satan couldn’t get her with a cancer diagnosis, she thought he was going to try to break her with this. The only thing she knew to do in that moment was to pick up her Bible and read.

The Psalms had been a comfort to her since her diagnosis, so that’s where she began. She honed in on chapters four, five, and six, reading them over and over and over.

Psalm 6:6 struck home. “I am weary from my groaning; with my tears I dampen my bed and drench my couch every night.”

In her case, it was a folding chair in the bathroom, not a couch or a bed, but something lifted in those moments of lamenting with the Psalmist. It was a spiritual experience, but it felt like a physical weight was lifted.

“I learned a lot that night in the bathroom.”

“I was able to finally say, ‘Why this God?’ and be okay saying it. To be okay letting it all out.”

The pain and itching didn’t disappear in that moment. But a feeling of relief came over her. She understood that God didn’t cause this thing, but he was with her in it and walking her through it.

It took several more days to heal, and she still remembers it as one of the most awful experiences of her life, but being able to lay her anger and sadness and questions at Jesus’s feet and trust that he was with her gave her what she needed to persevere.

Prayer: Dear Father, Thank you that I can lament to you. Help me to lay my anguish at your feet, knowing you are big enough and loving enough to take it and to comfort me with your presence, even when you don’t take the pain away. Amen.

Reflection: Have you had an experience when something unexpected during cancer brought you to the brink? Are you in a place like that now? David wrote many Psalms of lament when he was in a dark place. Choose one to read several times today as you consider God’s role in the hard circumstances of your life.