My name is Gabriel. I am 20 years old and throughout my life, I have had cancer three times.

I had my first encounter with cancer in 2009. I was only five years old then. It started with just vomiting and having stomach-aches.

But after going to the GP a few times and doing some scans in the hospital, a tumour was found in my chest.  It was stage 4 Neuroblastoma, a type of cancer that develops in nerve tissues.

Life in the hospital was boring. There wasn’t much that I could do other than to play console games. My parents would often bring my siblings to visit me, and they would sometimes need to take leave from work to accompany me for certain treatments that required longer hospitalisation.

Thankfully, after one year of treatment, I recovered at the age of six.

Life became more stable until eight years later, when I felt that something was growing in my nose. They eventually noticed an unusual growth of a tumour blocking one of my nostrils.

That turned out to be a form of nose cancer.

At this point, I started to feel like I was a burden to my family – both financially and emotionally.

I still required much care and attention from my parents because I had to go for regular check-ups after the treatment was completed. I also had to pause my studies for a short period of time.

But that wasn’t the end of it. In 2021, the second cancer relapsed and resulted in a third cancer. A tumour had grown out of the area that was previously treated and developed into a new lump in my neck.

No longer the same

The treatment for this cancer was the most straightforward, but it also had the most significant side effects. It changed my facial features, and I had to go for physiotherapy and learn simple massages to manage the facial swelling.

Even though I recovered from cancer for the third time, my life was no longer the same with the side effects from all the treatments and surgeries. It felt scary because there was no way of anticipating what would come with each side effect.

For instance, my eczema started to worsen drastically. It became so bad to the point that it affected my daily life. I felt like I couldn’t even stop scratching for one minute.

Simple things like showering became a struggle because my skin would hurt from the water. There were also many times that I was unable to sleep for consecutive nights. 

It didn’t help that my memory and hearing were also affected by all the surgeries and radiation treatments. Staying focused and recalling things became a challenge, and together with my hearing loss, it became extremely hard for me to communicate with my family and friends.

I often felt misunderstood when people got frustrated after having to repeat themselves in conversations. I know it could seem like I wasn’t paying attention, but the reality was that I simply couldn’t hear them. 

How I wished they could understand. How I wished I could do all the things I wanted, but I just couldn’t.

Why did You let me live?

I believe that life is only found in God, so I feel it is only right for me to live my life to serve and love Him.

But I felt as if all my conditions were hindering me from serving God. As the eczema and other side effects continued to worsen, I only felt more and more helpless, more and more crippled. I started to question what my purpose in life was.

For the longest time, I thought my purpose was to share the Gospel. But how was that even possible with all my conditions? Just opening my mouth was a struggle because it would be so painful.

I remember crying out to God, “Why did You allow me to live when there are so many things that I can’t do? No matter how hard I try, things just don’t get better… What even is my purpose in this life?” 

The turning point in my life only came when I was interning in my church.

Out of a desire to steward my time well and to live life to the fullest for God, I decided to spend my time interning at church. I had started the internship before the side effects started coming up.

There, a course called “Freedom in Christ” left a profound impact on me. In that course, we were given a list of statements about our identity in Christ.

Among the list, Ephesians 2:10 stood out: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago” (Ephesians 2:10, NLT).

In that moment, I had an epiphany. 

I realised that my worth and value are not based on how much I can serve or contribute, but are simply found in the unconditional love of God. This realisation was an answered prayer from God, because I had been asking God where I could find purpose and hope.

All this while, I had thoughts that I was not useful and I was not a good testimony for God because of what I could not do. I was burning myself out by trying to find ways to please Him.

But God reminded me that it’s not about what I do not have, but what He has already given to me – I have freedom in Him. 

Though the knowledge that God works through my weaknesses helped me to be more content as a person, it didn’t mean things were smooth-sailing thereafter.

Different side effects still continued to surface after the revelation — but I now had truth and freedom which became an anchor to my soul whenever I struggled.

Because I know who I am in Christ, I can hold on to what God spoke to me and consciously walk through life living according to the Word of God.

And that is something that cancer can never take away from me.

As a 20-year-old who has battled cancer three times in my life, I don’t know what lies ahead of me.

But even though the future is full of uncertainties, even though I might even face another relapse, I can still look forward to each new day.

That’s one more day that I get to share about the love, hope and peace I have found in Jesus Christ!

Through my story, I hope to share that life is not all about the rat race or pursuing the “next thing” in life; take a pause to see that there is a deeper meaning to life in itself.

We may not know what the future holds for us, but we can take comfort in God who knows and created us!