I remember the nights.
I would watch my four daughters as they slept, their little chests rising and falling with the rhythm of dreams untouched by fear. I, on the other hand, was drowning in it. Would I live to raise them? Would they remember me?
The sadness settled deep in my bones, a sorrow that no mother should have to bear. They were so young—too young to truly know me, to remember my laugh, my voice, my love. I sobbed for all the lost expectations of what my life should have been, for the birthdays I might miss, the scraped knees I might not kiss, the graduations I might never see.
Cancer had invaded my body and stolen the certainty of my future. A lumpectomy took the tumor, but the battle was far from over. The cancer had spread to my lymph nodes—34 of them removed, yet the invisible enemy lingered. Chemotherapy was no longer an option; it was a necessity.
And then, there was my unborn child.
At six months pregnant, I was faced with a decision that shattered my heart into pieces. There weren’t many cases of pregnant women undergoing chemotherapy at the time. The doctors urged me to start treatments immediately. But how could I? How could I pump poison through my veins while carrying life inside me?
The weight of it all crushed me. I wept in despair, curling into myself, shaking under the burden of fear. I had no strength left.
Then, in the silence of my sobs, a whisper—firm, steady, and unshaken—cut through the noise of my mind:
“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says the Lord of Lords. (Zechariah 4:6)
It wasn’t by my strength that I would endure. Not by the wisdom of doctors, nor by the sheer force of my will. It would be by His Spirit.
I let those words settle over me like a balm, and in the stillness of that moment, another verse surfaced in my heart:
“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
I breathed.
For the first time in weeks, I truly breathed.
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