Christmas is a season of anticipation. It’s easy to look forward to fun gatherings, amazing food and joy filled gift giving. Yet you know Christmas can be hard for cancer patients.

You did it! You carried my loved one through cancer treatment and now we are shouting your PRAISES! You covered them through every hardship, every pain and every fear. So now they have been declared cancer free!!

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.

Cancer is not easy for anyone to understand and yet children and teens have an additional difficulty due to the way they think. People do not learn abstract thinking until 12-15 years old or later. What does this really mean? It means that without abstract thinking younger people think everything is black or white, good or bad. We see a bright, articulate young person and believe they think like an adult when really they see situations as two sided instead of multi-faceted.

“When we admit to God that it feels out of control, it really strengthens their faith. We show them its okay: They can have their doubts and fears. The best thing to do is take their fears to God. They’re going to take their questions someplace. Why not take them to God?”

Listen to Good to Be Alive by Jason Gray.

Join Pastor Donna Montgomery as she prays for grandparents with cancer.

Hear me Oh Lord, I hunger for you to have the test from this biopsy come back clean- completely cancer free. If there is any cancer in me now, tear it from my body and leave me cancer free until the end of time.

Listen to Even When It Hurts by Hillsong United.

Join us as NFL Hall of Fame Star, Kurt Warner prays to find a cure for cancer.

“You find joy. Who doesn’t want to feel joyful? Who doesn’t want to feel hope? Who doesn’t want to feel connected? Cancer Companions gives you that.”

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!

Listen to Matthew West’s song Waking Miracles.