I’m not the kind to keep up with health screenings, but I went for a mammogram anyway – something told me I had to. When my results came back from the lab, my veteran GP confirmed from her experience that it was cancer.
It was likely that I would have to have my right breast removed.
My first instinct was to rush to a private hospital and go for surgery immediately. As soon as possible. I had always believed that it was important for me to make and save enough money for medical emergencies like this – so I could get treated at a private hospital.
But when my doctor asked if I wanted to go to a private or public hospital to follow up with a specialist, God prompted me to go to a public hospital. So I obeyed and opted to go to one close to my home.
My GP referred me to a specialist at the Changi General Hospital; my appointment was set for two weeks later.
How would you spend those 14 days? For me, they were nothing like you would expect – it was nothing like what I had expected.
I experienced peace; and it wasn’t shallow, or transient. It was peace that was deep enough to envelope my weary heart and keep it afloat. It was also weighty and comforting; it was peace like I had never experienced before in all 50 years of my life.
A waiting room isn’t the place we usually expect to find peace, but there I found peace.
Caught between unexpected bad news and uncertainty, I spent those 14 days in deep and quiet devotion with God. He taught me what it meant to move together with Him, even in the face of cancer. And I learnt to trust the one who always has my best intentions at heart.
I was not going to let go of God, not even in the face of a mastectomy.
At the hospital, another mammogram was conducted by a senior technician. She confirmed that they found something in my right breast and I was sent for an ultrasound scan next.
Over the next few hours, they ordered more checks and scans for me.
During the last two rounds of ultrasound scans, I fell asleep, despite the discomfort. In my sleep, I saw a dark, shadowy figure standing on the left side of my ultrasound table. The figure spoke to me:
“If the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines;
If the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food;
If there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls;
Will you still rejoice in the Lord? Will you still be joyful in God your Saviour?”
Without hesitation, I answered him, without a sliver of doubt in my heart: “Yes, I will still rejoice and be joyful in the Lord my God.”
Upon my answer, the dark figure vanished.
The next moment, I saw a bright light and I heard a voice asking me if I would allow Him to take away a part of my body. I knew that it was God speaking to me. At this point, I thought it meant He would help me through the mastectomy, the removal of the breast.
Again, without hesitation, I told Him that He could take away whatever He wanted.
He was an even greater, more merciful God than I could have imagined.
My answers were coming from the deepest part of my heart – the part that is tested when confusing and painful things happen. I was not going to let go of God, not even in the face of a mastectomy.
Right after I answered, the ultrasound technician woke me up and I headed back into the waiting room for the final results.
When I sat down before the doctor, he told me: “Congratulations.”
In the final few rounds of scanning, they couldn’t find the lumps that had been detected previously. I didn’t even need a biopsy, or a follow-up review. The doctor stamped the word DISCHARGED on my appointment card … and that was it!
It only became clear to me then that when God had asked to take away something from me, He was referring to the cancer in my body, and not the mastectomy that I had already mentally prepared myself for.
He was an even greater, more merciful God than I could have imagined.
We question God’s faithfulness to us when bad things happen in our lives. But I wonder how many of us are able to stand firm when our faithfulness to Him comes to question.
I left the waiting room with my cancer healed – grace for today – and my faith intact. My bright hope for tomorrow.
Some time after my brush with cancer, as I studied the book of Habakkuk, I came upon a very familiar passage. I’d never read it before.
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Saviour.”
(Habbakuk 3:17-18)
