Martha’s Cancer Story
by Karen Tripp
It’s hard for us to hear that in 2023 about 43,700 women will die from breast cancer. (1) It’s immensely more difficult for a woman to hear the doctor say “You have cancer.” Martha, a professional woman and mother from Minneapolis, says the time after her diagnosis was “one of the lowest points in my life. I was floundering. I was struggling to understand what was happening and I was fearful for my life.” Before she knew her treatment path or prognosis, Martha found the Cancer Companions Bible study group at her church. Like Cancer Companions, Martha was seeking a tangible way to engage the hope of Christ in the darkness of her cancer journey.
“I embraced that group. It was a lifeline for me. Very quickly I noticed my thoughts and my perspective transforming from a place of fear to a place of trust in Christ. Everyone is reminding each other of the power of faith, making sure that’s front and center as opposed to falling into the depression, fear or negativity of cancer. Other groups talk only about the numbers, your latest scan and there’s very little hope.”
“This group is constantly looking for ways to turn it over to God, to know you’re not alone, to even see the blessings - that was a hard one for me to get my head around in the early days after the diagnosis.”
“I was a little bit afraid to join a group because what if some people’s stories didn’t turn out well? And was that going to be too raw for me going through my own journey? The fear is all consuming. It’s the way so many of us feel in this journey.”
“Would you believe walking with others through the final stages of their journey took away a lot of the fear I had? Watching others face it with such grace and such certainty and almost joy and anticipation- it took away a lot of my own fears for my own mortality and my own journey. Now I see it as an honor to walk with them. An unanticipated gift.”
The fear that could have kept Martha away was the mighty tool God used to push back her fear. We know in our head that God gave us scripture, prayer and fellowship to engage the hope of Christ in any darkness but too often we withdraw into ourselves.
Cancer Companions is the tangible way to make a cancer journey hope-filled.
“So many people and families are facing this,” Martha reminds us. “You do not need to be alone.”