50 Days of Hope: Daily Inspiration for Your Journey through Cancer

by Lynn Eib

Have you ever been driving down the road when all of a sudden you hit a patch of black ice? If you live in a climate that experiences true winter, you know exactly what I mean. You’re cruising along on bare pavement one minute and sliding down the road the next. You’re on black ice—a covering of ice so thin that the dark pavement still shows through. If you apply the brakes, they do nothing to stop your vehicle. Instead, you just keep sliding, maybe even sideways, until you find something bigger than you to stop your slide! When I was diagnosed with colon cancer, I felt as if I had hit a huge patch of black ice. I had been going merrily along in life—happily married to my pastor-husband and enjoying our three young daughters. I loved my career as a newspaper reporter and even found time to exercise regularly at the local Y.

I consider myself an organized, well-prepared person . . . but I never saw the black ice of cancer ahead of me. It took me so much by surprise that I couldn’t even think how to react. I tapped the brakes and nothing happened. I still had cancer. I pressed a little harder on the brakes and found out the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes. I slammed on the brakes only to learn that the odds I would survive were less than the odds I wouldn’t. I was sliding sideways, out of control, and it was the scariest time of my life. Thankfully, I didn’t crash, but I did find something bigger than me to stop my slide. Actually, Someone. I slid right into the big, open arms of an all-knowing God, who assured me that He had seen the black ice coming. I prayed He would just make the black ice disappear so I could be carefree once again, but He didn’t. So I continued riding on the thin layer of black ice through surgery and six months of weekly chemotherapy, which included having to endure a drug to which I was allergic.

As I was finishing treatment, I made the “mistake” of asking my oncologist, Dr. Marc Hirsh, what happens if the chemo doesn’t work. “If the cancer does comes back, it probably will come back within two years, and you will die very quickly,” Marc told me as he explained I had one and only one shot at being cured because no effective treatment for recurrent colon cancer existed at that time. So the black ice of cancer turned into a nasty shadow hanging over my head. I tried various methods to get rid of cancer’s shadow. I closed my eyes tightly: I don’t see any shadow. But it was hard to go through a normal day with my eyes closed. I got very busy. The shadow won’t be able to catch up with me. But shadows are much faster than I realized. I thought positively. That’s not a shadow. It’s a big, happy, black balloon! But it sure was dark u...

believe it isn’t so. Perhaps you’re scared because you can’t steer the way you want to go. Maybe you’re waiting for the crash and are half afraid to open your eyes. Perhaps you feel the oppression of cancer’s shadow wherever you go. I don’t care how big the cancer is, how small the cure odds are, how little time a doctor says you or your loved one has, I have a message for you in these next few weeks: God is bigger than cancer, His light is brighter than cancer’s shadow, and there is always hope in Him. Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put m...

If this hasn’t happened to you yet, I’m pretty sure it will. Someone finds out you or your loved one has cancer and begins to tell you a story about a relative or friend of theirs who had a similar cancer. I’m sure it’s an attempt to identify with what you’re going through, but unfortunately, as the story unfolds, it’s not what you really want to hear. People used to come up and tell me gruesome stories about their neighbor who had the same kind of cancer I did and just “wasted away” or their grandmother who was “racked with pain.” I hated hearing these stories, but at first I tried to be polite and listen.

Finally, I decided I could take it no longer, and when people started a cancer story, I would interrupt them, smile, and say, “Does this story have a happy ending? Because if it doesn’t, I don’t want to hear it.” That reply really stopped people in their tracks, and I didn’t have to listen to any more hopeless cancer stories. You may want to adopt my approach as well. Many patients tell me they have and that, surprisingly, it worked quite well, even though some folks’ mouths dropped open at the shock of being asked to stop talking midsentence! Eventually, you may be fine to listen to any and all stories, but at first I think it’s best to stick with the happy endings.

The truth is that some people get cured of cancer on this earth and some don’t. I join you in hoping and praying for your cure, but I want to remind you that no matter what does or doesn’t happen to your health or your loved one’s,

I hate that term. It somehow implies cancer is the victor. It wins; we lose. While we can do little to choose whether we get cancer, I believe we can do a lot to choose whether we are its victims. I don’t just mean whether we live or die. I mean how cancer affects us in the

deepest parts of who we are. I urge you today, whether you are the cancer patient or the caregiver, not to choose to become a victim of cancer. Do not let this disease seem more powerful than it is. Do not let it fill your mind, steal your peace, invade your soul, or destroy your hope. It has no power to do those things unless you allow it to. As you take this unwanted journey with cancer, I believe you are going to discover two things: You are a lot stronger than you think, and God is a lot greater than you think. If you had told me prior to June 1990 that I was going to be diagnosed with cancer and have to endure major surgery and six months of weekly chemo, I would have said, “There’...

at that time, I would have said, “I can’t do it.” If you told me I would have to live with the knowledge that if my cancer came back, there was no second chance at a cure and I would die very quickly, I would have told you, “There’s no way I can live like that.” But that’s because I didn’t have a true appreciation for how great God really is. Oh, I’d believed in Him and even served Him faithfully for many years, but until I suffered personally, I’d never experienced how powerful He really is. Now I’ve seen firsthand the amazing strength of the human spirit and the incomparable greatness ...

We have a saying in our oncology office: when one person in a family has cancer, it’s as if the whole family has cancer. This cancer diagnosis will permeate your home and affect everyone who lives there and those closest to you, wherever they live. And if you have children in your home, the ripple effect may be especially pronounced.

remember feeling really guilty that my diagnosis was making everyone so sad. I could hardly stand the pained look on my mother’s face as she watched me, her firstborn, having to deal with such a precarious prognosis. And my poor husband . . . I felt terrible for him. He already had watched his first wife die a slow, debilitating death from Lou Gehrig’s disease when she was just twenty-three. My diagnosis was his worst nightmare revisited. Every time we got bad news and every time he had to take care of something for me, I said,

“I’m sorry.” It upset me terribly that what was happening to me filled him with worry and piled on extra work because I was too ill to take care of the house and the girls the way I normally did. So I kept apologizing. I apologized so much that he firmly told me one day, “You keep saying you’r...

honestly feel that many days it was harder for my husband to be the one without cancer than it was for me to be the one with cancer. At least I could feel I was doing something to fight the cancer as I watched chemo drip into my veins or popped chemo pills into my mouth. My husband, like many caregivers, of...

As I meet with newly diagnosed patients in my office each week, I often can sense that the patient is handling the diagnosis better t...

reaction to his colon cancer diagnosis at age thirty-five was very different from his. “She was scared and upset; I was calm and reserved because I had no idea of the impending doom,” Mike recalls. “The night of the diagnosis we argued because she didn’t understand why I wasn’t more upset and I didn’t understand why she was so upset. It was a really difficult time for both of us.” Mike’s experience is not at all unusual. We tend to marry our “opposites,” and when it comes time to deal with a cancer diagnosis, we often have opposite ways of handling the situation. Often one partner “feels” more and the other “thinks” more. My friend Ken, diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2002, says he and his wife had similar initial responses, but then “she took a different

approach to the shocking news.” “I wanted to curl up in a ball and pretend it was a huge mistake,” Ken recalls. “She wanted to know everything she could about the disease and the treatments available, so she went on the Internet, made phone calls, and did research.”

It has been my observation after meeting literally thousands of newly diagnosed cancer patients that people tend to cope with cancer the same way they cope with life, and there’s not a lot other family members can do to change that. And while there certainly are healthy and unhealthy ways of coping, there isn’t just one right way to cope with a cancer diagnosis. Just because someone in your family sees things differently doesn’t mean necessarily that one of you is wrong and one is right.

Thank God today for the people He has placed in your life to help you with your cancer journey. It’s important that even though each of you has a different personality and coping style, you come together as

one in your cancer journey. Remember, your f...

cancer . . . not ea...

words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

If you had asked me after my diagnosis whether I was angry about my situation, I would have responded that I was not. After all, it’s not really proper for a minister’s wife to get angry, is it? Well, let me share a couple of the things I thought and felt those first few days after my diagnosis, and you tell me what you think my state of mind might have been. When I was in the hospital after my cancer surgery, a friend came into my room and told me God was going to teach me great things through this trial. I wanted to take the IV out of my arm, stab it in hers, and tell her, “You get in the bed and learn great things from God, because I don’t want to learn this way.” Of course, I didn’t actually say that to her. Instead I just smiled and hoped she would leave very soon. A couple of days later I was waiting for the

caught early and cured or whether it was advanced and I would need chemotherapy and perhaps radiation. Lying in that bed, I had lots of time to talk with God. “You are making a really big mistake here,” I fumed. “There’s absolutely nothing You can ever do to make up for this because it is too awful. And don’t think You are going to pull me through this somehow and I’m going to go and minister to cancer patients, because I won’t do it!” Perhaps a wee bit of anger there? When I look back on those early days after my diagnosis, I am incredulous at some of the things I thought and felt. But I was in such a state of shock and disbelief myself that I really was struggling to cope. At one point, I was so distraught that I told my husband, “I guess God really doesn’t love me.” I don’t remember saying it and find it hard to believe I was actually that despondent, but I know my husband isn’t making things up. So as I look back on those dark days after my diagnosis, I realize I experienced a bevy of emotions: shock, disbelief, denial, disappointment,

frustration, sadness, worry, and, yes, anger. I didn’t have anyone at the time whom I felt comfortable “burdening” with my anger, so I just kept taking it to God. The Bible says He can read our minds (Psalm 139:1-4), so I figured I might as well just say all the awful things I was thinking and feeling because He knew them anyway. Maybe you’re not as angry as I was; perhaps you’re only a little ticked. Then again, maybe “rage” better describes what you’re feeling today. Where can you go to dump it? I suggest you run where all of us with great suffering need to run: to the only One whose shoulders are broad enough, whose arms are strong enough, and whose love is deep enough. “It’s all right—questions, pain, a...

I am exhausted from crying for help; my throat is parched. My eyes are swollen with weeping, waiting for my God to help me. PSALM 69:3 My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far away when I groan for help? Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer. Every night you hear my voice, but I find no relief. PSALM 22:1-2

And then after you’ve hurled your questions heavenward, don’t forget to go to God’s Word to find His response. A good place to start might be the promise He gave to Jeremiah, who was filled with so much grief he has been called “the weeping prophet”: I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.

will build you up again, and you . . . will be rebuilt. JEREMIAH 31:3-4, NIV I believe God is the best place to turn to with your suffering. He’ll either give you the answers y...