Three years ago, three words changed my entire life: you have cancer.

I can only describe that moment as feeling like everything was rushing by me at a hundred miles per hour and like they were coming to a horrifying, screeching halt simultaneously. I’ve never been in such pure and utter shock, and it was nauseating and earth-shattering. I heard the words, but I didn’t want to believe them. My grandmother passed from breast cancer in her 30s, my father had the gene, and it ran in my veins too. I’d felt the lumps in my breast for months and realized that no amount of denial would stop the fact that my biggest fear and worst nightmare was unfolding before me.

I learned very quickly that two opposing things can be true. That chemo can be the thing that wrecked my body and stole so much of my vitality, but that it is also the treatment that killed the cancer in my body and gave me a second chance. I can look at the culmination of the entire experience and count what it robbed me of, but I also lose count of all the things it gave me—fresh perspective, a deeper trust in God, a renewed wonder for life, the ability to see and appreciate the little things, a marriage restored.

Read More