Cancer can feel like a winter that keeps pushing back spring. Whether all your treatments are going as planned or it’s filled with delays, it’s easy to ask God, “When is this going to end?” You’re not doubting God’s existence or your salvation, but perhaps you wonder, “God? Are you paying attention?” “Are you really bigger than this cancer?”

Have you ever played hard to get? It’s when you like someone—I mean REALLY like someone—but you don’t want them to know you like them. So, what do you do? You act like you don’t like them.

Our family plays in creeks. Other families have leisure pastimes like biking or camping or playing softball. My kids have grown up playing in creeks, I played in creeks and even my dad played in creeks. We have a creek-playing season, and we even have creek shoes. You can’t go out and buy creek shoes; they have to be the too-small pair of tennis shoes from last summer with your toe poking out of the top to really qualify.

Heavenly Father, Fill my days with more Christmas and less cancer. May the joys of the season bring me a new hope that is so strong the clouds of cancer in my thoughts disappear.

Listen to God’s Not Done with You by Tauren Wells.

In this prayer Doug prays for all those who may be dealing with depression on their cancer journey.

Clinically significant depression and anxiety have been shown to negatively impact cancer treatment tolerance, quality of life, and overall survivorship. Conversely, scientific literature has demonstrated the stress-buffering effects of religion and spirituality on physiological processes such as reduced cardiovascular reactivity, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activation, and inflammation.

Focusing on Christ does not mean pretending that cancer is small and has no impact on your life. We need to be honest with ourselves and face the truth that cancer is big, really big, gigantically big - but Christ is BIGGER!

A cancer walk is the type of struggle that can reveal new things about Jesus you’d never seen before. On the day before cancer came into your life, you probably understood that Jesus was your Savior, your Protector and your Comforter. Yet, sometimes your faith can jump from understanding who Jesus is to knowing who Jesus is.

There are so many amazing ways that Jesus can show up in the midst of your cancer walk. This helps us to breathe in our hope in Jesus. But, on some days, cancer looms so big that it can be hard to remember that Jesus Christ is bigger than the darkness of cancer.

To battle dark lies, we need a good weapon-the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:17) This means that to battle the lies we must think, speak and believe Scripture. We all need some Scriptures for when the lies get into our heads.

Sometimes, as we go through struggles, it’s easy to only pray for the big things, such as healing, and forget to pray for the little things along the way. The more things you pray about, the more opportunity Jesus has to answer your prayers.