Suffering through Lent: Illness and God’s promises

When Ash Wednesday arrived in 2009, I couldn't muster the courage to go to church. The thought of having one of our pastors make the sign of the cross on my forehead and say, "You are dust and to dust you shall return" was more than I could handle. The reminder of our mortality certainly has its place; it wakes us up and calls us to attend to the preciousness and fleetingness of life on earth. But in 2009, my recently diagnosed stage IV cancer had already reduced two of my vertebrae to dust, and I feared that the rest of me wasn't far behind.

What was on my immediate "to do" list was to learn how to live with stage IV cancer. I spent the month after my diagnosis resigning from virtually every aspect of my life: chairing my department, speaking at various places, leading different events at our church and volunteering at my daughters' schools. The only assignment from which I didn't resign was my spring theology course.

Holding on to this one aspect of life became integral to my slow steps toward healing. During the first month of class, teaching was the only activity that got me out of bed and dressed for the day. Outside the classroom, my colleagues lovingly and graciously encouraged me. Inside the classroom I was blessed with one of the most mature, inquisitive and good-natured groups of students I'd had in a long time. The students' enthusiastic engagement with me and with the theology we studied reassured me that cancer had not invaded every part of my life.