I Was Diagnosed With Breast Cancer

Every new day is the first day of the rest of your life. Most of those days consist of mundane routine events like going to school or work, eating dinner, driving your car, taking the bus, watching television or scrolling on social media. There are other days, however, that are notable. The happy notable or the sad notable. Like the day you accomplish a long sought after goal, find love, your team wins the big game or you hit the lottery; or the day that you lose a job, you fall short in some important way, receive an unwelcome diagnosis or lose a loved one. This is the dance of life – highs, plateaus, lows – rinse and repeat in unpredictable order.

Recently, I have experienced an unpredictable, unwelcome not so happy notable in the form of a breast cancer diagnosis. I don’t know, but as a woman, I think the fear of getting breast cancer is always in the back of your mind. It was in mine. Well, now I have it. “The thing that I greatly feared, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me”. It was surreal to see the image of the mass on the mammogram. Something that was not there the last time I had a mammogram was there this time. Out of nowhere. And this thing has already changed my life in profound and irreversible ways.

When you first get a diagnosis of cancer the first thing that your mind does is take you to the end of the road – death, regardless of your prognosis. Then, you slowly moonwalk back to your present reality. I cried. I was upset. I am not happy that I was diagnosed with cancer. I don’t want it. But I have it. I had to reason with myself regarding my faith. I don’t believe that God gives us bad things in our lives for any reason. But I do believe that God can use everything that happens to us for His glory. In the past few years I have lost my Mother and my Husband. I know that things don’t always turn out the way we want them to even when we pray. But we can come out on the other side of things, in may ways better than we were before.

What has been surprising to me is how many women in my immediate circle of friends and colleagues have had breast cancer. I am old enough to remember a time when people did not mention the word cancer. I must have been between 5 and 7 years old when a close friend of my mother was diagnosed with and passed away from cancer. Back then, they didn’t say the word out loud. I suppose if they had, as a child, I would not have been allowed to be near those conversations. When I was a teenager, my sister had a friend that was diagnosed and passed away from cancer. That is when I remember cancer being discussed without whispers. Now, at 56 years old, it seems like ‘everybody’ has or has had cancer. Remarkably, their presence in my life is one source of hope and promise. Cancer is no longer a death sentence.

In the space of little over a month, I had a routine mammogram, I had a return mammogram with breast ultrasound, I had a breast biopsy, I received a cancer diagnosis and I had a right breast mastectomy with a sentinel node biopsy. It has been a whirlwind. Yet, in the midst this medical challenge, I have experienced the love of God through the hands and feet of those in my village who have shown love in amazing proportions as they have rallied to support my daughter and me. I have certainly been blessed with the gift of men. My family, my friends, my colleagues both past and present and my pastor and church family have stood in the gap for me. I even had a praying surgeon!

I will have a lot more to say about this experience. It is just the beginning. What I am most pleased about is that in the midst of this particular storm I have been able to find rest in my faith in God. I am grateful that I was led to begin the work of spiritual muscle building before this diagnosis. It was preparation for a storm that I did not see coming. This is the dance of faith – from mourning to dancing and then back again. I am human enough to know that this is the path of life, yet I am spiritual enough to know that my hope is built in God. I will not be silent. I will praise God in the midst of my mourning and dancing.