.001 |  A CHOICE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

As THE JULY SUN peeked over the horizon, I received the dreaded call.

My upper arm itched a few weeks earlier, and when I scratched the area, my thumb brushed against a knot. I paused, afraid to reach back and explore further. I willed myself to move. My fingers probed against my right breast, outlining the nickel-sized circumference.

Anxiety clutched my body. A second and third touch confirmed the solid intruder’s presence.

Calm down, Margaret. It’s probably nothing to worry about. Who gets breast cancer in her thirties?

I turned to my husband of almost a decade—my Leif, always a solid rock of strength in fearful moments—hoping he would say I was overreacting or hallucinating.

“Can you feel this?” I asked, pressing the tips of his fingers against my chest.

Concern shadowed his face. With his nod, I reached for a phone to schedule the mammogram.

Three days later, before a technician, I stood half-naked, skirted in a paper-thin hospital gown with icy bare feet. I initiated chitchat, but what do you discuss with someone tugging at part of your womanhood like it’s pizza dough?

“Have you felt anything unusual?” she asked.

“Nothing like this,” I said wryly. “I try to keep my lady parts out of pancake makers.”

Without cracking a grin, the nurse clarified, “I mean any lumps or bumps.”

The details of the discovery stuck in my throat. Maybe if I didn’t say it aloud, the lump would disappear. Perhaps if I clung to denial long enough, the mass would vanish.

“Well, there’s this, um, one small area,” I confessed.

She jotted a note on her clipboard.

“I’m pretty sure it’s nothing.”

“Most lumps are just thick tissue,” she explained. “But we have to be sure. Because you informed me, we’re required to schedule an ultrasound.”

“Is there a way to uninform you?” I asked.

“No.”

A letter arrived in the mail two weeks later. The images returned clean: no signs of lumps, bumps, or thick tissue. I later discovered that 20 percent of mammograms miss finding dangerous masses, which is why speaking up is crucial.

Just as the technician predicted, the office insisted I return for an ultrasound. This time I found myself sprawled on a table with my arm raised high above my head like a schoolgirl begging the teacher to recognize her. Only I didn’t want to be recognized. I wanted to disappear.

I eyed the screen but had no idea what I was seeing. The click of the digital camera froze a portrait of the lumpy villain I had found weeks before, but it also revealed a second hardened criminal. The radiologist excused herself, returning with the doctor. When I asked, “Is it cancer?” he avoided the question. I needed to schedule a biopsy.

Worst-case scenarios raced through my mind. I thought of a friend who died from cancer the previous summer, her body ravaged by treatment. Now I could see myself in her: the emaciated cheeks, the thin oxygen tube, the inability to lift a spoon to my cracked lips. I clenched my eyes tight, chasing away the mental images.

Time slowed to a leaden pace in the following days as I waited for the next appointment.

My third visit to the doctor’s office played out like Groundhog Day. Again, I raised my hand in uncertainty. Again, I asked about cancer. Again, the doctor dodged the question.

The doctor located the first mass with precision, the image taunting me from the screen. He lined up a gauged needle and shot it through the center of the dark, uneven circle over and over. My chest became a pincushion.

When the doctor located the second mass, an unedited comment slipped from his lips: “This is the one I’m concerned about.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Unaware he was thinking aloud, the doctor stiffened and backpedaled.

“More than ninety percent of our biopsies turn out to be benign,” he said. “You have nothing to worry about.”

I knew I did.

Toward the end of the procedure, he asked a nurse to let him see one of the syringes. I strained to catch a glimpse of the narrow tube. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched a somber expression sweep across his face.

That was the moment I knew.

I held out hope that perhaps I was wrong, that maybe I had misread the doctor’s countenance. But deep inside, I knew.

The nurse said the weekend would slow results from the laboratory. She instructed me to call on Tuesday afternoon. But Tuesday never came.

Early Monday, the phone rang showing an unfamiliar number. I almost didn’t answer. Leif and I were at Mount Hermon Conference Center outside of Santa Cruz, California, where more than forty of Leif’s extended family members had gathered for the first family reunion in ten years. I was scheduled to teach morning sessions at the conference center that week, the first of which started in a matter of minutes.

As a rule, I avoid taking phone calls just prior to speaking, but the unknown number piqued my interest. I answered on a whim.

“This is Dr. Jones,” the voice said. “Is now a good time?”

No. No, no, no.

As the physician spoke, my head dropped into liquid amber. Time halted. The conversation blurred.

Carcinoma.

Positive.

Both masses.

Surgery.

I’m sure he said more, but after carcinoma everything grew fuzzy. After the call, I stared at a wretched souvenir of the conversation: a scrap of paper on which I’d scrawled two recommended surgeons’ names.

Dazed, I beelined to the field house, where Leif was busy preparing the PowerPoint slides.

“I have your microphone ready,” Leif said.

He glanced up. I couldn’t hide my apprehension.

“What’s wrong?”

I took his hand, led him outside where we could be alone, and looked into his sky-blue eyes. I never spoke a word. Leif just knew. He always knows. My eyes are his second language.

He cloaked me in his arms and we stood motionless, knowing we had crossed a threshold through which we could never return. In the warmth of his strong embrace, I wondered where God was in all of this.

Did God ignite my heart’s desire for joy in preparation for this moment? Is this why so many of the joy experiments didn’t work out the way I hoped they would? Perhaps God was pumping the brakes, ever so gently, readying me for this moment, for the hard journey ahead.

“What if we fight back with joy?” I said to Leif.

“We’re in this together no matter what,” he replied, eyes swollen by tears.

With the morning session minutes away, I phoned my parents to inform them. My sweet, longtime Christian mother responded the way I suspect many moms whose guard is down would: with an expletive.

“Breast cancer doesn’t run in our family,” she protested.

The diagnosis busted a family myth—cancer happens to other people.

I delivered my talk that morning. Barely. Tears surged down my cheeks with the opening music, and holding myself together required my last ounce of strength. We corralled Leif’s family to deliver the news at lunch. Everyone wanted to know what they could do to help.

“More than anything, I need each of you to be your funny, ornery selves,” I said. “That’s how to help us fight back with joy.”

Throughout the rest of the week, Leif and his two bulky brothers exchanged love punches and razzed each other. We toured grand sequoias and took silly photos inside hollowed tree trunks. We threw a Mexican fiesta. Over the course of those precious days, we played Apples to Apples, grilled steaks, and ate way too much Alaskan smoked salmon.

Amid the revelry, the cancer loomed like Gollum in the shadows. Some days I had to dismiss myself to weep; others, I spent sequestered under the duvet, attempting to hide from the ominous news. Yet somehow my extended family offered what I needed most: a sense of normalcy, laughter, and joy.

When we arrived home in Colorado early Saturday evening, my parents stood in our living room, dinner already prepared. Their presence reminded me of the divine orchestration in the diagnosis. My parents live on a remote island in the Bahamas and only pass through Colorado twice a year. This was the Saturday they had long ago scheduled to visit.

On the heels of Leif’s family gathering, including those who had flown in from as far as Alaska, Hawaii, and South Africa, I realized the remarkable timing. The date of diagnosis seemed perfectly, providentially timed so that I would be surrounded by family from around the world.

If I had heard someone else tell this story, I would have been skeptical. Watching these events unfold left me amazed. One week later and there would have been no cheery family reunion to soften the blow, no welcoming committee at my door. Even in the seriousness and tragedy of the moment, it was as if God was whispering: I am with you. Yes, even in this.

An image that haunts me from that first week was the sight of a family member slipping out of the room when I broke the news. I later learned that he went to weep on the deck. Though I never saw his tears, I glimpsed something in his eyes that I soon recognized in those who had encountered similar adversity: tenderness, gentleness, empathy.

Those who stared down the disease, along with their loved ones, were like brave warriors engaged in a mighty fight. Forged by fire and affliction, many bore scars from grappling with the dark enemy, somehow escaping if only with their lives.

They, too, had been ambushed. They knew the battlefield I approached all too well. Like them, I would ooze and burn and bleed. I was now a member of the guild no one wants to join. I discovered that once you’re in, everyone lends a hand. Our shared experiences, desire to fight back, and will to survive bind us together.

These guilds don’t only form around diseases. Soldiers who have served on the front lines exchange meaningful looks with other veterans. Bonds form among believers who endure a painful church split or a leader’s moral failure. Solidarity emerges among parents whose children live with autism or ADHD. A powerful connection is felt among those who have lost a child.

Though the struggles we face are different, no one escapes this life unscathed.

Maybe your fight intensified during a traumatic injury or began with a foreclosure or bankruptcy. Perhaps you were handed divorce papers or you had to trod the painful road of a loved one’s death.

Maybe you are battling the loneliness of an empty nest or the lingering disappointment that life didn’t turn out as you hoped it would. Maybe you feel imprisoned by depression or trapped by a cantankerous boss or spouse. Maybe you are fighting with your parents or your kids.

Or maybe you’re just fighting to stay sober.

All of us are in a fight. Others can fight with you, but no one can fight this for you.

You see the scars when you look in the mirror or into your soul. And you know you’ll need to fight again tomorrow.

Everyone who wakes to confrontation and crisis—whether you picked the fight or the fight picked you—has an important choice: which weaponry will you choose? Cynicism and spite? Complaint and control? Or perhaps you are prone to deny and withdraw. To let your fleshy heart turn to stone. But there is another arsenal available to the daughters and sons of God.

From the day of the diagnosis, I felt compelled to choose a different type of weapon: joy. Such a selection might seem flippant and frivolous. One blunt friend called it “downright odd.” If I had to cry ten thousand tears, I wanted joy to be the companion that carried me through. Joy would not deny the hardship, but would choose to acknowledge and face it no matter what the outcome.

I define joy as a spectrum of emotions, actions, and responses that includes gladness, cheer, happiness, merriment, delighting, dancing, shouting, exulting, rejoicing, laughing, playing, brightening, blessing and being blessed, taking pleasure in and being well pleased.

The Bible insists that joy is more than a feeling; it’s an action. We don’t just sense joy; we embody it by how we respond to the circumstances before us.

What is the genesis of this joy? I believe that, at its core, joy emanates from the abiding sense of God’s fierce love for us.

The tigerish love of God from which joy comes is foundational to faith. God’s love guards us, protects us, grows us, strengthens us, and compels us to walk in greater trust and holiness. This is no passive affection, but a feisty, fiery pledge to grow us into the fullness of Christ. When we embrace this love and cultivate an awareness of it, our hearts are filled with joy.

Such awareness strengthens our resolve that no matter the fight, we face it confident that God is with us and for us. When we fight back with joy, we no longer size the character of God according to our circumstances, but we size our circumstances according to the character of God and his great affection for us.

Practicing defiant joy is the declaration that the darkness does not and will not win. When we fight back with joy, we embrace a reality that is more real than what we’re enduring and we awaken to the deepest reality of our identity as beloved, joyful children of God.

We spring from joy.

The character of God and all of creation is founded in joy. A close inspection of the first chapter of Genesis describes the fabric of creation as knit together with divine affection and delight. Throughout the process of creation, God observes and celebrates the goodness of what he makes. The declaration “God saw that it was good” rings out like a holy chorus until God eyes all he has made and concludes, “It was very good.”

God’s repeated declaration of “good” suggests that God delighted in the outcome multiple times. God was so pleased and happy with the results that he percolated with joy. The rich imagery of Genesis 1 suggests the kind of creative high an artist experiences upon completion of a great work.

Another vivid illustration of the creation story is tucked into Proverbs. The personified voice of wisdom, one of God’s active attributes in creation, describes, “Then I was constantly at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.”

In this passage, we see that joy springs from God and all that exists was born in joy. The astonishing love of God found in the relational dance of the Trinity is brimming with delight. Joy splashes at Jesus’ baptism as the Holy Spirit descends and the Father proclaims Christ as his beloved Son, with whom he is “well pleased.” The fullness of joy abides in God’s presence.

We are created for joy.

Just as the life of God is characterized by joy, those created in God’s image are imbued with joy. We are bestowed with a capacity to experience joy, happiness, merriment, rejoicing, playfulness, and laughter.

Our world is laced with divine gifts that produce delight. In God’s abundant generosity, he showers an array of joyful gifts on all people. Scripture mentions many: a cheerful word, a surprise birthday party, a good day’s work, sweet wine, extra virgin olive oil, just-out-of-the-oven artisan bread, sex, the birth of a child, a fiftieth wedding anniversary, the dawn of harvest season, and more.

The joy accompanying these gifts isn’t reserved only for followers of Jesus. Many who have not experienced redemption discover joy in all these and more. God is so generous that his goodness extends to all humanity.

Yet Scripture reveals those who give their lives to Christ are promised a new dimension of life and joy, including forgiveness, restoration, salvation, comfort, the law and decrees, God’s presence, and homecoming.

Perhaps no greater joy has been given to us than through the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to take away the sins of the world. Through his sacrifice, everything that stands between God and us is wiped away forever. We bring God and all of heaven great joy when we give ourselves wholly to Christ.

The Son of God crashed into our world with an angel broadcasting, “I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people.” Before leaving our world, Jesus endows the disciples with the promise, “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”

Jesus arrives in joy, departs in joy, and calls us to great joy through fellowship with him. The proper response to being drenched in so much wondrous affection is to bring delight to God by offering our lives to him through obedience.

We are destined for joy.

Not only are we founded in joy and created for joy, but we are destined for joy. Consider the following promise at the heart of the book of Isaiah: “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.”

The joyous creating of God continues to unfold. He has drawn the blueprints for an existence with the defining characteristics of gladness, rejoicing, and delight. One of the greatest promises to a child of God is that this life is not the end of the story.

You are founded in joy, created for joy, and destined for joy. Joy is where you come from. Joy is what you are created to experience. Joy is where you are headed.

Joy is your heritage, purpose, and destiny.

Joy is a far more dynamic, forceful weapon than most of us realize. The abiding sense that you are fiercely loved by God? That kind of joy empowers you to rise above any circumstance.

I decided to fight back with joy, to beat back depression, disappointment, and even the disease itself with this unusual weapon. I reached for God, asking him to fill me with the joy I needed for the days ahead. This decision turned out to be a choice that changed everything.

But before I could start fighting, I needed someone to create a winning battle plan.