Jane Brashears

Life is terminal. You and I are on the same journey. Only the timing and circumstances of our journeys will differ… From dust we came and to dust we’ll go.

I have been diagnosed with breast cancer, but that’s not what I want to focus on now. I will learn what I need in order to go through my treatments, hopefully make wise decisions, and, if it’s God’s will, come out a survivor. However, I want my cancer to teach me more about what it means to “live fully” and to “die well”, than a disease process.

Obsessed with the physical body and material wealth, the world isn’t truthful about what it means to “live fully”. It is even less helpful in teaching us how to “die well”. There is a deafening silence outside of the tragic deaths we read about in the news. Only God has been able to meet me where I live in this new cancer diagnosis. He promises His light in my darkness, comfort in my uncertainty and fear, knowledge in my ignorance, and an eternal home with Him in my future.

I am deeply grateful I have studied God’s Word, because the Holy Spirit brings to my mind His promises when fear awakens me in the middle of the night or when the phone rings and it’s Hoag Hospital. To be like Jesus means I will love and serve others. To be like Jesus means I will suffer. To be like Jesus means I will trust the Father’s will for my life. To be like Jesus means to live in gratitude, not worry. God’s Word reminds me that to live is Christ… to die is gain.

I invite you, my dear family and friends, to go on this journey with me. I may not be as philosophical once my treatments begin.  However, I don’t plan on sharing a blow-by-blow account of each treatment and its side effects, because I want you freed up to be out in the world (or confined temporarily at home due to COVID) living fully as you love and serve the people God has put in your life. I plan on sharing enough for you to pray for my immediate needs and perhaps some of the things God is teaching me.

If a believer, we are all on the same journey, moving from the “perishable to the imperishable”… from life through death to eternal life.  I have an anchor for my soul. His name is Jesus Christ.