Celebrating Ten Years Cancer Free

August 27, 2025

In 2013, my wife, Debbie, went for her normal scheduled mammogram. She was told that there was a small area that they wanted to keep an eye on, but she did not have to return for six months. In 2014, she returned, and they found a spot that needed further investigation. After a biopsy, the doctor told her that it “looked like, smelled like, and bled like” breast cancer. A few days later, sitting in her office, we heard the word that so many fear.

When told she had breast cancer, both my wife and I were immediately filled with fear, worry, dread, and a host of worst-case scenarios. We were instructed on the surgery, the lumpectomy that would remove the cancerous tissue, along with the treatment to follow. Her treatment would consist of six rounds of chemotherapy and thirty-three rounds of radiation. It was overwhelming to consider all she would be going through in the next year to fight this disease.

My wife had read Elizabeth Elliott, a Christian missionary to the Auca people in Ecuador, the same tribe who killed her husband, Jim Elliott, in 1956. After her husband’s death, she was asked by a reporter what she was going to do. She replied, “I’m going to do the next thing,” remembering the words she had read in a poem by Mrs. George A. Paull:

Many a questioning, many a fear,

many a doubt hath its quieting here.

Moment by moment, let down from heaven,

time, opportunity, guidance are given.

Fear not tomorrow, child of the King,

trust that with Jesus, do the next thing.

Remembering Elizabeth Elliott’s response to the reporters after such a life-changing tragedy, my wife began her journey to be cancer-free. Each day she woke, and with God’s help, she would simply do the next thing.

There were many times she wanted to give up. Side effects from chemotherapy treatments are cumulative; they build up over time, making each treatment and its aftereffects more difficult. Debbie questioned going on, but through prayer, the support of family and friends, and the encouragement of the healthcare workers and other cancer survivors, she would walk back into the hospital. Time and time again, she would have the IV placed in her through her surgically implanted port to deliver the concoction that we hoped would cure her.

The countless treatments, losing her hair, and fighting to get out of bed so the kids would find her sitting up in the living room recliner when they came home from school were battles my wife faced every day. She kept saying to herself, “Just do the next thing,” and sometimes told herself what she would jokingly tell our children when they were complaining, “Suck it up, Cupcake.”

There is no doubt that it was my wife’s faith that allowed her to go through her cancer treatments and come out to the other end free of the disease. It was her faith in God that allowed her to persevere in the face of an unknown future through days of pain, exhaustion, and endless trips to the hospital. It is her faith in God that has allowed her to persevere over the last nine years, taking Tamoxifen, followed by Letrozole, each with their own side-effects. Her perseverance was evident to all who saw how she faced, with faith, her diagnosis and the countless treatments that followed. Her perseverance and faith have been evident in the years following as she has tackled the fear and worry around the cancer returning, along with the unwanted repercussions of the medications she has taken daily.

I praise God that, as I was writing this chapter, my wife celebrated ten years since her last radiation treatment and any sign of cancer.

It was God, His heavenly Father, who gave Jesus the strength to go on.

Three times we see the voice of God come to Jesus. God speaks at Jesus’s baptism when He first sets out on the work God has given Him to do (Mark 1:11). When Jesus takes Peter, John, and James up on the mountain to pray and He is transfigured before them, “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning” (Luke 9:29). It is here that God speaks to Jesus once more, preparing and encouraging Him to “resolutely set out for Jerusalem” and the cross (Luke 9:51). Lastly, God speaks to Jesus after His triumphant entry into Jerusalem, as the cross looms over him. Jesus tells His disciples, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23).

Not only does Jesus receive strength from His Heavenly Father throughout His ministry, but Jesus is able to persevere all the way to the cross because He knows that He will be victorious. Jesus understands that God has already given Him the victory, just as the Israelites were given the Promised Land. The Promised Land was theirs; they already had the victory, but they still had to cross the Jordan and fight and grab hold of that victory, trusting God on the journey.

As with Jesus, God will give us strength and God has already given us the victory. William Barclay writes:

What God did for Jesus, he does for us all. When he sends us out upon a road, he does not send us without directions and without guidance. When he gives us a task, he does not leave us to do it in the lonely weakness of our own strength. God is not silent, and again and again, when the strain of life is too much for us, and the effort of his way is beyond our human resources, if we listen, we will hear him speak, and we will go on with his strength surging through our frame. Our trouble is not that God does not speak, but that we do not listen.

John reiterates this truth, “. . . for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4).

Paul repeats this truth, stating, “But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ,” and “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (1 Cor. 15:57; Rom. 8:37).

Victory will not always come easy. Jesus says, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). The enemy will attack, but God will help you to overcome the enemy. God will convict you of sin, challenging and helping you to step out and face that which you’d rather avoid within yourself. God will take you through the seasons in your life filled with illness, grief, and tragedy, reminding you that you are not alone. If you stay focused on the One who has overcome the world, you will hear the psalmist’s words amid each challenge, “With God [you] will gain the victory, and He will trample down [your] enemies” (Ps. 108:13).

We must never forget, as Paul writes:

Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:35, 37-39)

You and I must find our strength by holding fast to the truth that we already have the victory through Jesus Christ, that nothing can “separate us from the love of God,” and that whatever we face in the years left we will not be alone.