There Are Good Things Here

In this final episode of Season 3, we find Katie Hubbard characteristically wrestling with questions of doubt and faith, death and life, promises of provision and bills to pay. Most of all, we find her true to herself and her God, committed to the hard work of finding good things in the hardest of places. This podcast is probably the final one, so I share some final thoughts.

Katie hated almost everything about cancer treatment, except for the perspective cancer brings. She had a high tolerance for pain but a low tolerance for medication. Constant check-ups and scans left her feeling exposed and anxious. The surgeries, scars and hair loss felt like an assault on her womanhood. Yet, she could write without hesitation to the Lord, “I hate [my] anxiety and the uncertainty I live with, but I do love the perspective that comes with having cancer. Sometimes, I think everyone should have cancer.”

Katie Hubbard closes out 2013 with a long journal entry on everything she had done since mid-November of that year. (She didn’t journal a lot during that time because her journal went missing for a month.) It’s amazing to consider all she did after finishing chemo, radiation, and reconstructive surgery. It would have been a full life for a person in perfect health. Going into 2014, she lists out lessons learned from the previous year:

“What Have I Learned:

God is trustworthy.

He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

I can turn towards Him or away from Him in trials.

God will provide.

God will provide.”

Lest anyone think I (Norman Hubbard) edit Katie’s journals heavily when I read them on air, let this podcast stand as testimony. In early December 2013, you get pure Katie Hubbard, the quintessential Auburn Tigers football fan. (Really, the "kick 6" game might be one of the greatest moments in sports!) You also see another example of the way Katie wrote out Scripture in her journal as a means of meditating on what God was saying to her. It’s an inspiring model many of us could profitably adopt.

In this episode, Katie Hubbard talks about reconstructive surgery with her followers on Caring Bridge. It may be the only time you hear her publicly threaten to beat you with a baseball bat. And she reflects on a common theme in her journals: having a lot of stuff doesn’t make you grateful.

In this episode, Katie reflects on the challenges and joys of parenting four kids at very different stages of life, losing a friend to cancer, and meditating on Scripture.

In the previous podcast, we found Katie Hubbard struggling with the idea that her life, taken by cancer, might be dispensable. Here, we find her breakthrough as she writes out, Romans 8:38: “For I am persuaded that … death … shall not be able to separate us from the love of God.” She goes on to write of herself, “Katie Hubbard, beloved child of God. If you are loved, you are known, not forgotten. Not wasted. Not dispensable. If I am loved, the You are not holding out on me, withholding from me.”

Katie Hubbard grapples with the distressing notion that cancer might kill her, and God might regard her life as "dispensable." In her words: "I feel shaken to the core. I feel sad. I just feel totally dispensable. How do you face your life being taken away? Not being here at all?! It might not even be necessary for me to be here, according to Your plan."

In her journey with cancer, Katie Hubbard learned a thing or two about what truly satisfies. To God, she wrote, “You are the one thing that I crave and desire that FULFILLS. Everything else leaves me feeling empty.”

Cherishing the beauty of your own backyard. Asking God for the things you want. Trusting him for the things that lie ahead. That’s what you’ll hear from Katie Hubbard in her journal entries from mid-August 2013. And you get classic commentary like this: “You just keep providing, and I keep being stingy and amazed.”