Circle The Wagons

Circle The Wagons

I remember so well the first cancer support group meeting I attended at our community hospital. As I mentioned yesterday, I was a reporter for a local newspaper, and in addition to interviewing Marc for my story about the new support group, I also had interviewed the group’s facilitator, Mary. Two months later when I showed up at a meeting, Mary naturally assumed I was visiting the group as a follow-up to my published article.

“How sweet that you would come to our meeting,” she said with a big smile.

“Actually, I was diagnosed with colon cancer last month,” I told her as her jaw dropped.

It was an incredible irony.

I had to talk myself into attending that meeting because I wasn’t sure I really wanted to be with a bunch of people with cancer. As introductions were made around the table, I happened to be the most newly diagnosed and the last to introduce myself.

I burst into tears before I could even get out my name.

I felt silly for falling apart like that, but I had been trying to hold it together in front of everyone else for so long that it seemed good to let down my feelings with others who had “been there, done that.”

In the more than twenty years I’ve run my own cancer support group, I don’t think I’ve ever had a new person who didn’t cry or at least get teary at the first meeting—and that includes all the men, too!

My friend Chris, diagnosed with an astrocytoma brain tumor in 1999 and still cancer-free, says what initially gave her hope was a cancer support group actually called H.O.P.E. (Hope for Oncology Patients & Encouragement). Soon she began attending my Cancer Prayer Support Group as well and found it “very comforting to get together with others who were going through a similar experience.”

“We can all talk about things we can relate to and others might not understand so well,” she adds. “And what I still find very helpful is that we actually laugh together and have a great time. Yes, there are times we cry together, but we’ve actually been asked to keep down the [laughter] noise when there are other meetings going on in rooms near us!”

After my friend Ken was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2002, he believed for a while that he wouldn’t need things like support groups.

“I assumed that because of my [spiritual] faith I wouldn’t need other forms of support such as groups, family counseling, and massage therapy, but I was dead wrong,” Ken explains.

Many years later and still cancer-free, Ken urges newly diagnosed patients not to try to go it alone.

“Circle the wagons—family, friends, coworkers, and anyone else who can and will be an available asset in your battle,” he says. “You can never have too many assets!”

I’m always inviting cancer patients and their caregivers to my support group meetings, and I hear a lot of reasons why they don’t attend. Often people tell me, “I’m not really so depressed that I need to come.”

To which I reply, “I need people there who aren’t depressed to support those who are!”

I believe there are two reasons for people to attend support groups—either to be encouraged or to be an encourager. And I’m pretty sure you could fit into one of those categories! I encourage you to find a faith-based cancer support group (I’m compiling a state-by-state list on my website, www.cancerpatientadvocate.com) or to think about starting one of your own in your area (free information to do just that also is available at my website).

The apostle Paul describes how God once sent someone to encourage him when he was down and out.

When we arrived in Macedonia, there was no rest for us. We faced conflict from every direction, with battles on the outside and fear on the inside. But God, who encourages those who are discouraged, encouraged us by the arrival of Titus. His presence was a joy.

2 Corinthians 7:5-7

Never forget that we serve a God who “encourages those who are discouraged.”

When Paul “faced conflict from every direction,” God sent his friend Titus at just the right time to fill him with joy. God knows exactly what you need in order to deal with today’s discouragement. Ask Him to bring a Titus (or two) into your life to encourage you. (He might even direct you to a support group with a bunch of Tituses!) And maybe someday you’ll be just the encourager someone else needs to meet.

Dear God, please lead me to people who understand what I’m going through and who will encourage me on this journey. Help me not to depend on my own strength, but to lean on others who have walked this walk and can give me hope. In the name of Jesus. Amen.