Hope for Hard Seasons

In 2018, our youngest son was a year old and I knew I needed to be a responsible grown up and see a doctor annually for bloodwork and that kind of thing. They always ask you to fill out a family history, and ours is filled with quite a few breast (and other) cancer diagnoses. Because of that, my doctor suggested I do some genetic testing to see if there was anything I should be concerned about. Now, my sister had done this a few years prior and everything came back fine, so I assumed I would be in the clear, too.

Turns out I wasn’t.

In February, my labs came back with the result that I had the BRCA2 genetic mutation. The “breast cancer gene”. What that boils down to is that I had an 85% lifetime risk of getting breast cancer, a 30-40% chance of ovarian cancer, and an elevated risk for both melanoma and pancreatic cancer.

While this wasn’t a “you have cancer” diagnosis, it still felt devastating. Because it felt like the odds that I’d hear those words one day were very high.

The months that followed were marked my countless appointments with doctors - OBGYN, geneticists, breast specialists, oncologists, plastic surgeons. Breast cancer was obviously the biggest risk factor we were dealing with, so that felt like the urgent thing to address. The choices laid out for you with a BRCA mutation are to just stay on top of monitoring things - rotating between MRIs and mammograms every 6 months indefinitely, or to have a preventive mastectomy - remove all your breast tissue so that risk is almost completely gone.

After a lot of prayer and research, that’s the option I chose. I looked at my 3 boys and my husband and knew I wanted to do whatever I could, as much as it was up to me, to be there for them.

So in July of that year, I had a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. 4 months later was a second phase of reconstructive surgery. 3 years after that was another surgery to remove my fallopian tubes to help prevent ovarian cancer. In between and still today I see some kind of doctor regularly for bloodwork, scans, or exams to monitor any changes.

If you’re someone with any type of health issues, you know how draining all these appointments can be. The waiting, the unknown, the fear, and stress. It’s a lot. It has shaken up my world and my life that I would have considered easy up until that point. My health was something I was not concerned about. My biggest health grievance up until then was allergies! And while that does invoke some prayers that I won’t pee on myself when I sneeze after three pregnancies, it’s not quite the same.

It threw me in to a season of worry and what ifs and anxiety that I had never had to deal with before. And honestly I didn’t really know how to deal with it well. But I guess you never really do until you’re forced to.

I knew God was good. I knew He was in control. I knew He loved me. But a lot of those things I knew on paper and not necessarily deep down through experience. Not until those were the only things I could cling to. Because up until that point I’d say my peace was pretty circumstantial. Things were good, so I was good. But suddenly things were really, really not good. And so I did not feel ok. I was entering a season of pain and fear and grief - grieving the loss of actual parts of my body - something I would never have otherwise chosen to do, and what felt like the loss of my health, which was something I felt pretty secure in. It’s scary when something you feel like is in your control — you eat healthy, exercise, use all the non-toxic things — is not. I cannot write my own genetic code.

Intertwined in this season of feeling like I’d lost my security in this area of my health, I also experienced the loss of a friendship. I know I was probably a lot to deal with in this time - it is hard to walk with someone who is struggling, we all know this. But when a friendship that was so dear to me started unraveling, I was crushed. It’s something I didn’t see coming. Even though my circumstances with my health and all of that was shaky, I knew if nothing else I was a good person and a good friend.

Until I was told that I wasn’t.

I think this pulled the rug out from under my feet even more than a genetic mutation diagnosis. I’ve since come to realize how much my identity was tied up in the things that I did and how I was perceived by others. Being told and made to feel like I was a bad friend wrecked me. I spiraled in to a dark place. Things already felt so shaky with all that I’d walked through the year prior, and the weight of this loss was so heavy and consuming.

I questioned everything about myself. I sought security and reassurance and validation from others. I was stuck in the mindset of fighting for some sense of control over the situation. I went around and around with myself feeling ok then feeling like a complete failure. I constantly had to grapple with the fear that maybe I really was an awful person. That I was a fraud. That maybe everyone in my life was just putting up with me versus genuinely loving me. Whereas my health stuff could really settle out in between doctor’s visits, this was a day to day battle. I had a hard time untangling the truth from lies. There were things I know I didn’t handle well, things I genuinely did wrong, ways I could have been a better friend, but I couldn’t tell what was what.

I started living in so much fear - fear of losing that friend, fear of losing more friends, fear of what others would think of me based on what someone else was saying. It was ugly, y’all. Fear stacked on fear stacked on fear.

Fear of cancer. Fear of failure. Fear of letting anyone else in. Fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. Fear of being unloved. Fear of losing my reputation that I now see had become an idol in my life. Operating from fear never turns out well.

As I look at it now, a few years and a little more perspective later…yes, I still see the hurt and the pain, but I also see the Lord’s kindness as he dismantled so many things in my life. It felt far from kind in the moment. It still is such a painful thing to look back on and talk about. The truth of those circumstances still remains even though the impact of them usually feels less overwhelming now than it did then. Time does that.

But here’s what I know deep down now that I don’t know if I would have been able to fully voice then:

Our hope, peace, joy, our very identity cannot be tied to our circumstances.

I wasn’t aware that mine was because my circumstances had generally been pretty good. But when they fell apart, I felt like I did, too.

So what do we do when things fall apart? When circumstances go from good to bad? What do we tie our hope to in those moments when things feel hopeless?

The ultimate church answer - Jesus.

It’s funny, but it’s also just the truth.

But if our hope is going to be set on Him, to be anchored to Him like Hebrews 6 says, we have to know who He is and what He says.

Circumstances change like the wind, but the Lord is always steady. He never changes.

We know this when we read His word, when we recall His faithfulness, when we make a choice to believe even the things we may not fully understand.

Because if you only trust what you understand or when you understand, your faith and hope is in your own understanding, not in God.

Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to trust the Lord and not to lean on our own understanding. He says in Philippians 4:7 that He gives peace beyond our understanding.

Bottom line: faith and hope do not require our full understanding.

Having faith in Him is both a gift and a choice.

How do we do this in the moment? In the midst of the hard season we are in, in the middle of the pain or fear?

2 Corinthians 10:5 tells us to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. That’s one of those verses that’s quoted often but maybe not fully understood until you’re in a place of having so many out of control thoughts. It’s like you have to step back when you see them swirling and catch one at a time and hold it up to the Lord and ask “is this true?…. Is this true? How about this one?” And we trust in His faithfulness to reveal the truth to us in His time. He is faithful to give us wisdom. James 1:5 says He gives wisdom generously to all who ask Him. It is an active choice and participation with the Holy Spirit to do this.

Paul writes in Colossians 3:2 that we are to set our minds on the things that are above, not on things that are on earth. But sometimes the things of the earth are LOUD, y’all. They fight for our attention! Having a mind set on truth — on Jesus — brings perspective and meaning to our circumstances. It quiets the noise and settles our spirit when we stop and remember what’s true.

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is in Habakkuk. I know you’ve probably never heard someone say those words before. It’s 3 short chapters towards the end of the Old Testament that are easy to miss, but listen to these words, because it gives such a beautiful image of what it looks like to do this. This is chapter 3 verses 17-19:

“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vine, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; He makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.”

When everything feels like it’s falling apart, when you’ve put the work in to try ensure things are good and going to give you the results you want, but then there’s no blossoms, no fruit, no produce, no food, the flocks and herds are cut off…we can still choose to rejoice because of who God is.

We can trust in His process even when it doesn’t make sense to us. We don’t and most likely will never see the full picture, but God does.

We can trust in His character and in His track record.

We can trust Him with whatever our circumstances are and with the outcome of all things.

We can trust Him to be our strength.

Romans 8:28 says He works all things together for the good of those who love Him. He allows things and uses all things for His purposes. Nothing comes my way that doesn’t first come through His hands.

He is in control, but He’s not controlling. He doesn’t force our response. It’s up to me on how I respond.

Because “God allowed this” can either be a tough pill to swallow or a comfort to our spirit in our struggles.

It’s hard to accept when we don’t know Him. It’s hard to accept when we are unsure about the core of who we are as well.

I don’t know about you, but it is so easy to wrap up my identity in how things are going, in how I’m doing or performing. Because that’s how the world works, right? The world says what we do and what we like determines who we are.

I lived my life that way for so long without even realizing that’s not how it was supposed to be.

In early days of my marriage, anytime my husband was upset about something or just didn’t agree with me on something (crazy, right?), my natural conclusion was that I must be a terrible wife.

Or having to go through a mastectomy - removing parts of my body that are naturally tied to my womanhood, having “plastic surgery” - does that make me less of a woman? Does it make me vain that I am doing this?

Because a former friend pointed out all the reasons I was a bad friend, declared me “toxic”, does that mean I am?

Or as a mom when one of my kids acts a fool in public…we have all probably had that grocery store moment right? Or we have at least witnessed it. When my kids act so contrary to what I have taught them, make decisions that baffle me, or walk through struggles I can’t fix, I feel like I have failed.

Sometimes I lose it and yell and say something harsh in the moment, or I just shut down because it feels like too much. And my thought in the midst of that is that I’m failing. I’m not a good mom, not the right mom for this.

You see how letting our identity ride the waves of our emotions and the words of others is an exhausting and defeating way to live? We will constantly be trying to figure out who we are if that’s the system we operate under.

But that’s not how God operates.

He doesn’t look at you and see a list of failures and a list of accomplishments. He doesn’t determine your worth, your value, or your identity by your season of life, your behavior, what someone else says about you, or even what you say about you, because sometimes we are meaner to ourselves than anyone else ever would be.

Our hope, regardless of what we are going through, in good times and in hard times is that as believers, Christ is in us.

Colossians 1:26-27 says that God has revealed a great mystery to His to saints (that’s you). And that mystery is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

It’s a passage I cling to time and time again. Because it’s not just “Christ and me,” although that would be a comfort. It’s “Christ in me.”

And that phrase “the hope of glory” - that means “a confident expectation of praise, honor, and splendor.” But in this verse it’s not referring to God’s glory. It refers to the glory God shares with us. A commentary I read puts it this way:

“Our jealous God, who won’t allow anyone or anything to compete with His glory, freely shares His glory with us in Christ. This is the glory Jesus meant (in John 17:22) when He prayed, ‘And the glory which you gave to me I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one.’”

We don’t live this life on our own. We aren’t thrown to the wolves and left to figure it all out. He has united Himself with us here and now.

That is why we can choose rejoicing. That is why we can consider all things joy. It’s why we can be thankful in all things even though we don’t feel thankful for all things. Because it’s not about the circumstances, it’s about His eternal life present inside of us right now. Elisabeth Elliot says it like this: “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.”

It’s easy to believe things like “it’s never going to get better” or “you’re a failure” when you don’t understand who you are, when you don’t grasp who God has made you. So let me take a minute to remind you of what the Bible says about you.

You are a child of God.

You are a unique expression of Christ.

You are not simply a person who gets forgiveness and who gets to go to heaven one day. You are already completely forgiven.

You are a person who has become someone you were not before.

You have had the deepest part of yourself completely replaced.

Your old self died with Christ and then you were raised with Him as a completely new creation.

In the deepest part of you, in your identity, you have become a saint, holy and righteous.

In your identity, because who you are is not determined by what you do, you are not a sinner, but a saint (who sins sometimes).

You have been placed into Christ, reborn into His family.

You are deeply loved by God.

He delights in you.

You are not condemned by Him, you are fully pleasing to Him.

You are complete in Christ, at rest in Him.

He actually lives inside you and He manifests His life to the world through you.

This is not just a positional reality in God’s mind. It’s actually true.

Being a Christian, having Christ as your life, is not just about getting to heaven one day. It’s not that you’ll one day become a new someone. Because of Him, you already have become someone new.

You were crucified with Him,

buried with Him,

raised to life with Him,

made new,

He is in you,

your life is hidden in Him,

you are a partaker of the divine nature,

holy and blameless,

seated with Him in the heavenly places,

blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ,

and so very loved.

Click here for scripture references to above statements.

So how do have hope when things feel hopeless?

We can put all of our stock in a God who is capable of doing all of those things.

Yes, He is capable of calming the storms and parting the seas, but He is also capable of turning His enemies into His kids, of turning sinners into saints. He can speak peace to a storm, but He is our peace in the midst of the storm.

Sometimes He might feel far from us or we might feel like we are far from Him, but that’s impossible. Remember, the Bible says He is in us and it also says we are in Him. Nothing we do changes God’s nearness.

“Closer to God” is a phrase I hear all the time. In songs, in prayer, in well intended messages. But if He is in us and we are in Him, could we possibly be any closer? Is there anything we can do to be closer or nearer, good or bad?

No.

No matter what you do, no matter the choices you make, no matter the circumstances, this reality does not change.

In John 16 he reminds His disciples to take heart, because He has overcome the world. Has overcome, past tense. He has already overcome everything you have walked through, are walking through, and will walk through.

He has purpose for your story, for your season.

Maybe you aren’t seeing what that is just yet, but remember that we don’t have to see the big picture…we simply trust the God who does.

God is good regardless of what comes our way, regardless of what the world says, regardless of what someone else says, and regardless of how we feel in any given moment.

And Christ is in you regardless of what comes your way, regardless of what the world says, regardless of what someone else says, and regardless of how you feel in any given moment.

All those things change - our feelings, our friends, our health - but God and His Word never do.

We can look around and every single one of us is carrying scars. Some may be external — ones we can see from surgeries like mine, but more often they’re internal — ones that can’t be seen, but are so deeply felt. You are not alone in your pain and sorrow. The Lord is so near to you. He is in you.

Now I wish I could wrap up my story and struggles in a bow and tell you that there’s now a cure for my genetic mutation, or that my friend and I worked out all of problems and we are all good now. But that’s just not the truth. Both things I’ve shared are still present. Both are still hard and sad and things I can’t run away from.

The circumstances didn’t change, but neither did God.

And neither did the core of who I am in Him.

What has changed is what I believe and know to be true. My experience in the midst of all of it has changed. My perspective has changed. And that makes all the difference.

When I share my story, or when anyone shares a story of struggle or hardship, our very nature can relate and empathize. And that’s a beautiful thing to be moved by someone’s story. God designed us to relate in that way.

But I don’t want the details of what happened to be what you remember. More than I want to share the benchmarks of my struggles, I want to share the benchmarks of the goodness of God in those struggles.

Instead of “this was hard, and this was hard, and this was hard,” I want my anthem to be “and God was good here, and here, and here.”

I want my story to be a story of Him.

I want the banner over my life to “but yet, I rejoiced in the Lord”.

There’s a quote I once heard from Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. She says:

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

We find our way out of the depths when we remember who God is, what He says, and who He has made us to be.

We become full of compassion and gentleness and love because we have the very life of Christ in us.

You, my friend, are beautiful because of the finished work of Christ.

Christ in you is the hope of glory.