Is There a Reason for My Suffering?

I have been fighting metastatic brain cancer since April of 2021. It’s been a true battle and I feel emotionally drained a lot of the time. I’ve endured the trifecta of painful cancer treatments — brain surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.

I’ve also been using a variety of alternative therapies which I credit with helping me survive far longer than the doctors anticipated. When I was diagnosed I was given a prognosis of 6 months.

I do believe that my faith in God and my willingness to try alternative therapies such as DHA supplementation has helped me better endure the traditional treatments and survive.

However, last week I was diagnosed with shingles.

Apparently, what kills cancer patients is often not the cancer, but other illnesses such as pneumonia and, yes, shingles, that their compromised immune systems cannot deal with.

My physical therapist, who is also a Christian, called me today to check up on me. I asked him not to come over again until I was no longer contagious, but he wanted to see how I was doing. We had a short conversation and he told me he thought my decision to take a break from chemo might have been inspired by God, as it allowed my white blood counts to rise high enough to fight off the disease.

But why didn’t it get high enough to prevent the shingles?

When I was first diagnosed, I got very angry with God.

“Aren’t I suffering enough?” I asked him. “Why do I also have to go through THIS?”

Because, let’s be clear, shingles is NO FUN.

IT HURTS.

However, after spending some time yelling at God, and crying on my Mom’s shoulder and on the phone with a few friends, I calmed down a bit.

I realized that I believe in an all-powerful God. If he had allowed this to happen then there must be a reason and I needed to trust it.

I remembered another time, over 30 years ago.

I was driving in Atlanta, on the highway. I was going with the flow of traffic. That was about 80mph.

I got pulled over.

I pointed out to the cop that I had just been keeping up with the other drivers and that it was safer to do that then to go the speed limit and force them to go around me.

He wasn’t buying it and wrote me a ticket.

I grumbled but kept to the speed limit as I went on my way.

Just a few minutes later, I came across an accident. If I had been speeding at 80mph, I would have been going too fast to stop in time and I would have been part of the multi-car pile-up that had formed. Because I was going the speed limit, however, I was able to stop in time and pull over to the side of the road, out of the danger zone.

I had felt unfairly targeted earlier — I was breaking the law, but so was everyone else. However, thinking of how I had been spared a potential injury and damage to my vehicle — I suddenly found myself thanking God. I felt extremely grateful to Him.

As a Christian, I am supposed to walk by faith. I don’t always manage that, but I try. And over and over again, Jesus has proved that whatever the status of my belief, He believes in me. He is my rock, my shield, my savior, and friend.

I am in pain right now but I know the pain is temporary and there is always a purpose behind the dark places we sometimes travel through. If we can get through the tunnel, there will be light at the end.

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This post was previously published on Shefali O’Hara’s blog.

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