Lavender Hair: Devotions For Women With Breast CancerНамуна

 Coughing at Zanies 

Stand-up comedy is the scariest thing I’ve ever done. No, auditioning for Saturday Night Live (SNL) was. No, doing a back handspring on the four-inch-wide balance beam when I was twelve years old. No, getting held up by a robber with a gun in a parking lot in downtown Los Angeles in 1980. No, being told I had cancer. No … uh, marriage is the hardest! 

You know, when you get cancer, it doesn’t make all of your other ongoing problems go away. It just shuffles around your “trials and tribulations” list, and cancer jumps up on top.  And cancer can make your current list of challenges harder or eas­ier. Some problems fade under the magnitude of the word fatal. Other problems are exacerbated. My oncologist said weak marriages don’t survive breast cancer. Of my four married cancer friends, two of the four marriages did not survive. My marriage is a daily spiritual battle. We pray through each day. So far, we are still married. Twenty-five years. One day at a time. 

The enemy has tried everything to take me down, so cancer doesn’t sur­prise me. He tried temptation, ambition, addiction, discouragement, betrayal, divorce, peer pressure, loneliness, and even success—any­thing to take my eyes off of Jesus. Ephesians 6:12 says, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (ESV). 

My dad was a PE teacher and a gymnastics coach and he taught me to be brave at a very young age. I never questioned doing dangerous “tricks.” It was the family busi­ness. My dad would spot me. I trusted him. I competed in meets. My palms were sweaty. My stomach full of butterflies. Dad always said, “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s whether you do your best. If you do your best, you’re a winner.”  So, Dad taught me to be brave mentally and physically. But, also spiritually. I was taught to witness to people, to tell the lost about Jesus. At Dade Christian School I was graded on my perfect memo­rization of Bible verses, the King James version, with all the beautiful thees and thous; so for the rest of my life, these Bible verses pop into my head, and always at the perfect moment. Especially, when I’m scared. 

Inside of my childhood, red leather Bible are scribbled notes and dates of the worries I was giving to God. The worries changed as I grew older. It’s fun to go back and look at them and see how God answered my prayers. He gave me victory every time. And, He always will.

Tip: Play the song “Victor’s Crown” by Darlene Zschech on a loop and sing loudly while wearing a knight-in-armor costume and looking in the mirror. Prepare for battle.