God’s Strength during Breast Cancer
You shall not die, but live! God’s strength in illness
On December 23, 2002, I laid in a hospital bed in the Breast Surgical Unit of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, after a complete right breast mastectomy with axillary node dissection. My chest bone ached from where the surgeon had dug down into it, trying to scrape breast tissue off the bone, as she knew the initial excision of the tumors returned no clear margins. In fact, she said in a matter-of-fact voice, “Your entire breast tissue is full of cancer cells. And all nine lymph nodes removed were positive for cancer, two of them containing several tumors indicating possible metastatic breast cancer.”
I froze in a state of shock, tears suddenly gushing from my eyes, down my cheeks, staining her pink Jimmy Choo pumps with quicksilver splotches. I had prayed fervently! The pastors and the Church had prayed that the cancer would not be there, that the Lord would remove every single cancer cell. That the root of the cancer’s curse would be ripped up and thrown into the deepest parts of Tartarus. That no weapon formed against me would prosper. That I would be healed and made whole. That any sins I had committed, which may have opened the door for this evil invasion of my body, would be lifted. That any curses laid against me would be broken. And if I had bowed down to idols as the tumor-stricken Egyptians had in the book of Exodus, then this was the fruit. And I should repent. Utterly repent.
Where was Jesus now? What had I done, that He now forsook me? Old wounds of abuse as a child suddenly screamed out the shame I had often felt in my flesh as I was beaten. Surely, I should hate my own flesh! After all, it seemed everyone else did! It was my flesh that caused me to fail. Why was I not gloriously healed, and the curse removed? Why was I not spared? If I was a good Christian, shouldn’t I be? But I knew I was not a good Christian and never could be one! The chief elder had scrutinized my face, when he asked me with an angry tone, if I had committed the sins of the Egyptians by bowing down to idols. Again, my face flushed with red hot shame, for surely, I had, loving my husband and children and art more than God. I had not realized it was idolatry until that moment. Now, I was being punished. Or so I thought.
Suddenly, Dr. Gottlieb (German surname meaning “a heart that loves God”) smiles down at me and gently says, “All is not lost. This is where chemotherapy and radiation come in.”
I close my eyes, continuing to cry, and start once again to pray. Later I called my closest Christian friend to tell her the news. She says, “Maybe this is your time to die, Denise. Maybe you should lay your husband and children on the altar and release them to the Lord. You need to prepare for what the Lord’s will is. After all it is not our will, but His will that we must submit to. No matter what you desire, it may be best for you to die. You do trust the Lord, don’t you?”
Immediately, I hung up the phone and unwrapped myself from the swathe of sheets and blankets. I struggled to sit up and get down from the bed in the cold evening air. It was nearly 10 p.m. The twinkling lights decorating homes scattered across the hills around the hospital lit up the dark window. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. My children were alone with their father at home, so far away from me. The white linoleum floor was hard and cold, but I knelt at the edge of the bed, precariously hanging on to the rails.
“Lord, thy will be done in my life! Please forgive all my sins! Forgive my idolatry! You know the family I came from, the abuses there, and how desperately I want to have a good family for my children. Please help me, Lord! Please let me live! But if this is my time to die, please Lord, take care of my children and my husband! Watch over them! I give them back to You and trust You to take care of them. I have loved them so much! It is so hard for me to let go of them, but thy will be done, Lord. I trust You!”
I struggled to get up from my knees, thankful that no nurse came in to see my plight. I laid back down in the bed, with a renewed sense of peace, and curled up with my back to the dark window where the unknown future lay. The room was dimly lit. Suddenly, I felt a Presence full of light and peace in the room. I could not see anyone, but I knew the Lord Jesus was there, His hand on my head, my heart. “Denise, look up, “I shall not die, but live,” He said. “Lord,” I thought in answer, “Don’t you mean, ‘You shall not die, but live’?”
I had never heard of this verse before, so I looked in my Bible’s Concordance under “die,” where I could not find the phrase. Then I searched for the phrase under “live” at the back of my Bible, and located the phrase, which led me to Psalm 118:17, “I shall not die, but live to declare the works of the Lord.” I read.
His words were illuminated on the page, burned, emblazoned into my heart. I looked around and could not visually see Him, but in my heart, I knew He was there, a light in this darkness, bringing an overwhelming sense of calm, peace, and love. He was sealing His Word into my heart. I was on my deathbed, so to speak, and He came, knowing the turmoil of my heart, and bringing peace and comfort as no one else had. I laid back down in the bed, feeling a great and fresh peace, as if I were laying in the palm of His hand, knowing that I was laying in the center of His heart!
And He sat down on the throne of my heart, having won it with a simple declaration of HIs love for me. So many times, after that night when He came near to me, He once again reminded me of the verse. During chemo, I walked near my brother-in-law’s house in Kentucky and saw a huge, tottering wooden barn, decrepit, standing out in an uncut pasture, ready to collapse. I sat down on the curb, unable to cry, unable to gather strength to return to the house, thinking, feeling how near to collapse was my own frame. Then, when I finally returned to his house, I picked up the book I was reading, “Prisoners of Hope.” At the top of the next page was Psalm 118:17! “I shall not die, but live to declare the works of the Lord,” I read again.
Another time occurred when I made the daily pilgrimage for 26 doses of radiation. In the Central Maryland Center for Radiation Therapy, I lay alone in a dark room, under an intense bright light, as if under interrogation. Blue light beams lay across my naked chest tattooed with “X’s”, like a prisoner marked for execution. The hung metal arm of the MagneTron Radiation Unit swung slowly into position over me, emitting a deep metallic rumbling sound. I held a card in my pocket that a friend had sent me. She had not known that Psalm 118:17 was the verse He spoke to me. “I shall not die, but live to declare the works of the Lord,” I read once again.
I pray for all you who face possible death, from cancer, or other afflictions, that you will know that He loves you! He will carry you all the way home, into His Kingdom, where He has a house prepared for you! Let Him do this for you – for this is His joy, that You accept HIs friendship and love!
All of us are prisoners in this life, facing the eventual execution of our bodies! And He has provided a way of escape for you! This was not His original plan! He came and died on the cross, so that the sins of the world can be forgiven. He came to redeem you back to Himself! He is real! He will speak to you! He alone knows all about you! He loves you, as no one else on earth can! Trust Him and be freed! Jesus loves YOU!
Denise