Anyone Can Beat Cancer

Anyone Can Beat Cancer

My friends Sandy and Ron Good are a fabulous example of “beating” cancer. Sandy was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer in June 2008, and Ron has been her biggest cheerleader and laughter “therapist” along the journey.

“Losing my hair was extremely difficult,” Sandy recalls. “I knew it would come out and I thought I was prepared, but nothing prepares a lady to stare at her bald head. But I decided to look at the positive: showering was so easy. I didn’t have to shampoo hair or shave my legs or under my arms.

“My husband said I was so fast in the shower that one day I would meet myself coming and going!”

Ron likes to explain that he was “Good” before he met Sandy, but she wasn’t “Good” until she married him.

I love Ron’s quirky sense of humor, and I especially love that Sandy bakes wonderful goodies for our support group. (Just while I was typing this, she e-mailed me to say she has a Bundt cake, four dozen cookies, and a pan of brownies for tomorrow’s meeting!)

And what I love most of all about this really Good couple is how they have refused to give in to cancer and instead are beating it with supernatural strength from God.

Would you be surprised if I told you Sandy’s cancer is not considered medically curable and doctors have told her to expect it will take her life?

Perhaps you’re wondering how she could “beat” cancer if she still has it in her body. Beating cancer is definitely about fighting this unseen enemy in an attempt to be cured, and I would urge you to do that with every breath in your body. But I also would urge you to enlarge your view of what it means to beat cancer.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, many well-meaning friends told me, “You can beat this!” I know those words were supposed to encourage me, but they didn’t. Instead, I thought, Great! Now if I don’t live, it’s my fault I didn’t beat this because you said I could!

I felt such pressure to “do everything right” to make sure I beat cancer. I researched vitamins and herbs and natural healing techniques. I listened to tapes by alternative-medicine doctors promising cures for all. I read stories of miraculous physical recoveries. But nobody said beating cancer could be about more than just a physical cure.

For quite a while, I was “beating” cancer—there was no sign of it in my body—but at the same time, it was beating me. It was controlling my mind, my attitude, and my relationship with God. It was the first thing I thought about each day and the last thing each night. It was hard to enjoy holidays and special moments because I wondered if they would be my last. My prayer time consisted of nothing other than self-centered pleas for my personal healing.

But God gradually began to enlarge my picture of beating cancer as He spoke to my heart: “Whether you live or die from this is up to Me, but how you live is up to you.”

The pressure was off. I would do my part to physically combat this cancer, but I would not judge whether I beat it by whether I was cured.

I would beat it no matter what because I would refuse to let it conquer me and control my life.

And by the grace of God I did, and I continue to do so more than two decades later.

I believe the real victory Sandy has over cancer is that she has triumphed over it in her mind and her spirit. She lives as a person who has cancer, but cancer does not have her. She is held in the palm of God’s hand, not in the grip of a disease.

But beating cancer is not a one-moment or a one-day, once-and-for-all accomplishment.

Certainly, we beat cancer when we are declared in remission or cured.

However, we also beat it moment by moment as we allow God, not cancer, to control our thoughts.

We beat it hour by hour as we remember that God’s power within us is greater than the cancer.

And we beat it day by day as we trust in God’s strength and not in cancer’s weakness.

The apostle Paul knew how to live in spite of his circumstances. He even wrote in chains from his jail cell:

Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

Philippians 4:11-13, NASB

Paul beat his circumstances.

Sandy beat cancer.

I beat cancer.

You can beat cancer.

Anyone can beat cancer because being victorious is much more than just being physically cured.

Lord, by Your strength today may my family and I beat cancer—body, mind, and spirit. In the victorious name of Jesus. Amen.