In the fall, the cancer came back once more. This time, surgery was not enough. The month after finding this new mass in his lungs was a whirlwind.
My now-husband and I had previously talked about getting engaged in the fall. He wanted to surprise me; however, this new development changed things. We realized that we had one week to get engaged before he started his treatment. Otherwise, we would be waiting around six months.
We got engaged, and the next day, he began chemotherapy.
My prayer for this season of our relationship was that we would find joy, and although there were times when things were tense, scary, or overwhelming, I felt the joy of the Lord throughout our engagement.
I cannot express my admiration for my husband enough during this period of our relationship. He was experiencing so much pain, fatigue, and loneliness, and yet he poured into me daily. He made me feel so incredibly special and loved. He held me and let me cry to him about the unfairness of the situation. He reassured me and comforted me in the middle of the worst seasons of his life.
Surrendering is being willing to lay what you want aside in order to conform to God’s plan.
That’s not to say it was not hard. I often found myself wondering, why? I knew God was good, and His plans for my husband and me were better than what I could plan, but why did it have to happen like this? When you are watching the person you love become a shell of themselves before your eyes, you doubt. I would be a liar if I did not admit that I had many intense conversations with God on my way home from my husband’s house. I cried out to God on the way back to the Rosedale apartment nearly every night. I would sit in my car and cry in the parking lot, collect myself, and then go inside.
He was twenty-two, and I was freshly twenty-one. It was incredibly sobering.
Surrender doesn’t necessarily mean you stop wanting. Surrendering is being willing to lay what you want aside in order to conform to God’s plan.
I still wanted things. I wanted my husband to be healthy. I wanted a normal life together. I wanted to make plans for our future without wondering whether those plans would be interrupted by cancer. I wanted the things that young couples are supposed to want.
Surrender didn’t mean that I stopped wanting those things. It meant that I was willing to give them to God, trusting that His plan was better than mine, even when I could not understand it.
None of this was in my plan, and yet it was somehow better; my husband and I got married on August 8, 206.
Although my husband is currently cancer-free, I am still doing my best to live in surrender. It is still, and probably always will be, difficult, because it is human nature to want and to plan. I still want things. I still make plans. I still hope for a long, ordinary life with my husband.
I am choosing to surrender my plans, my wants, and my life to the cause of Christ, trusting that whatever He asks of me will ultimately be better than anything I could have planned for myself.
I don’t know what our future will look like. I don’t know what the next scan will show, what our family will look like, or what the next few years hold. But I don’t need to know.
I know that God does not desert. He does not turn His face away. He is there regardless of circumstance. He has carried us through every season so far, and I trust that He will continue to carry us through whatever comes next.
My hope is that our story can be an encouragement to others in the same way that my husband’s faith and testimony have been an encouragement to me. Hold fast to the Lord. Surrender your cares to Him. Let Him carry what you cannot.
There is joy in surrender.
Photo credit: Josh Hochstedler
