When I was seven, my family moved to Madison and we started going to what was then, Buckeye, but is now Door Creek. When I turned nine, my dad died of lung cancer. It was really hard for me to see him go through that. It made me a very bitter and angry person.
I grew up and went to college. I graduated in 2013 and was just kind of looking forward to the summer. I was going to be going on a mission trip to Poland and I was just really excited to see what God had in store for me.
Before I was supposed to go on my trip, I scheduled a routine operation on a breast lump I had found. It was a routine procedure that a lot of people in my family had before and I wasn't really expecting anything out of it. On Wednesday, I woke up to my phone going off.
Jared: When we got the news, I was kind of heartbroken and also scared. I just felt like - I don't know - the world kind of stopped and stood still.
In the midst of all the appointments, the doctors told me they found a second lump. They decided it was probably best just to take the whole breast. That was honestly probably the hardest thing for me. I felt like they were taking a piece of me and that I would be less of a woman and less of a person.
It was in that moment that God revealed Himself the most to me through my husband, Jared.
Jared: She was just so upset thinking that no one would love her and that no one would want to marry her because of what she was going through. We had previously talked about marriage many times and I told her that I still wanted that.
I was seeing myself as broken and incomplete and not anything that anyone would want and Jared saw me and was like, "None of that matters. I want you."
Jared: We got married. We were able to go through a very trying time together but we learned a lot about each other and about God.
Now I'm about 2 1/2 years cancer-free. There was a sermon that Marc did on the 50th anniversary of Door Creek and he said something that was just really profound to me.
Marc: We want to remember God's faithfulness in the past. If we forget God's faithfulness yesterday, we're not going to trust Him for tomorrow and when that happens, we're never going to be in a position to follow Him in faith today, right? So remembering Him in the past helps us trust Him in the future and be engaged in the present.
Jared and I joined a Life Group shortly after I finished chemo.
Jared: And we've been doing that for about 2 years and it's been just amazing having that group of people to rely on. It's just kind of this community of fellowship when the rest of the world just seems to be so crazy.
Coming through everything and having this group there to support us has taken me from this place of bitterness and anger and only happy on the outside to happiness on both the outside and the inside and a lot less fearful of the unknown. Because I can see God's faithfulness in the past, I can trust Him in the future.