I’ve had a lump in my throat lately. You know the feeling? This small, intangible dam holding back every choked tear, every honest word that wants to rush over your tongue and spill out of your mouth? It builds and builds with intense, painful pressure until it gives way. Well this is that moment. The point where the dam collapses under the weight of needing to share some news about our family. 

This chapter of our lives is not one we would have written. This road, not one we would have chosen. Instead, it’s been laid out before us by a mysterious but merciful Creator who knows every cell in our bodies just as He knows every star in the sky by name. An Author unafraid of the hundreds of questions I’ve asked of him over the last month. Unafraid of the empty hands I’ve shown up with over and over. And wholly unafraid of the word cancer. 

My beautiful mama - inspiring, adventurous, artistic, generous, servant-hearted, fun, larger than life - has been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of Stage IV Metastatic Uterine Cancer. 

What began as a dull pain in her back after a cross country road trip grew to unbearable agony that brought her to the Emergency Room a few weeks later. After more tests and scans than we can count and weeks in the hospital, we received her diagnosis. I’ve always known that she is rare, like a shooting star or one of her garden’s roses at the peak of its bloom, but this diagnosis puts her in a group of only 24 people. Ever. Yes, that feels daunting and big. But let me tell you, our hope is bigger. 

We now know her cancer down to a genetic level and knowing our enemy intimately allows us to create a plan for battle made up of chemotherapy and targeted immunotherapy. The best minds in the field are studying her case alongside our brilliant oncologist and reviewing it together this coming Thursday, and that is a gift. Praise be to God.

On Thanksgiving Day she began chemo and shortly after, immunotherapy. Each step we’ve taken so far has already achieved outcomes only God could create. This road will be long and at times, painful. But we have also decided that it will be full of joy and gratitude. Of celebrating life’s littlest moments with fresh eyes and embracing all that God has for us in each day. Of trusting that His hand will strengthen us and His promises will sustain us. 

Some days our journey looks like crawling, weakly. Others it looks like dancing. Some days we simply sit drawing in the dirt, staring up at the trees fully at peace. Others we press our face to the ground in pleading prayer. We are fighting this battle with medicine and doctors but we are also fighting by surrendering to a God who fights for us and whose power goes way beyond what we know to ask for. 

That is the story we’ll tell no matter what twists and turns this road takes. That God is faithful and he’s proved it over and over. That He does not fail. That He loves our mom even more than we do, though it seems impossible. That he can heal her completely and make every diseased cell well again. And that hers is already a story of victory because she belongs to Jesus.

Our mom has touched so many lives with her beautiful friendship and incredible strength. She is loved far and wide because people see Jesus in her. We’re asking you to pray with us, interceding on her behalf. Please pray for ultimate complete healing if it be God’s will. Please pray for our doctors as they pour over her case. Please pray strength and rest over every nurse who enters our room. Please pray faith over our family and eyes to see the Lord move. And please pray peace over mom like none she has ever known. 

We love you all so much and pray that God would be glorified through her story and the way in which we testify of His goodness.