There Are Good Things Here

This episode takes you into one of Katie Hubbard's most searching journal entries where she weighs all the good happening around her against the reality that she is dying from cancer. Friends and family were surrounding us to help us prepare our home for the market in Illinois, so that we could move closer to family in Wisconsin. The amount of support we were experiencing was staggering, and Katie never failed to give thanks for it. Yet, as the last line of her journal entry says it best, "We have had so many good things to happen, yet all under the specter of hard, hard, hard."

This episode marks the first entry in Katie Hubbard's last journal, chronicling her faith and hope as she lived with cancer. With characteristic wit, she relays how she advised God that "it only takes one buyer" to sell a house. God responded to her that by saying, "Don't tell me how to sell your house." Katie would have probably said it was a gentle reminder, not a harsh rebuke. She wrote the entry with a smiley face and expressed anticipation about how God would act on our behalf.

Katie Hubbard was struggling with the mind-numbing effects of narcotics to keep her cancer pain at bay, yet she knew the consoling help of God. From Scriptures like Psalm 34, she knew that God saw and heard her. She knew that believers who share in the sufferings of Christ also share in the consolations of God. She experienced both on the day she went to the mall and realized she would need a wheelchair to get around.

On October 14, 2015 Katie woke up tired and sad on her long road with cancer. What did she do with her feelings in that state? She canvassed the book of Job in the Bible, and wrote out verse after verse in her journal. Those who believe that religion offers only a crutch to people who are suffering might be hard-pressed to account for what she wrote. There are more questions than answers in this journal entry, just as there are in the book of Job itself. What mattered to Katie on her long road with cancer was that she was asking those questions of a God who was listening and who was not silent in the face of her sadness.

Katie Hubbard began her journal entries in October 2015 facing her greatest anxieties with cancer. Her greatest anxieties happened not to be the normal ones: a fear of death or the probability of pain. She was most anxious about how her family would fare in her absence. From the devotional book, Jesus Calling, she heeded God's invitation to write out her anxieties and bring them into the light of God's presence and goodness. When you are facing your greatest anxieties, whether it be with cancer or kids or an unknown future, will you place them alongside the promises of God?

Katie Hubbard was feeling the stress of cancer and parenting, yet she believed that every circumstance coming at her had been filtered through the hands of a loving Heavenly Father. Some people assume that is a cop out when you can't explain the bitterness of life. Others say things like this when they are desperately grasping at hope. Katie had spent a lifetime cultivating the confidence that every circumstance, including cancer, reached her after it had filtered through the hands of her Heavenly Father. With this kind of faith—faith that is its own kind of inner strength—she penned her last entry on Caring Bridge in an attempt to encourage others who might be growing weary in prayer.

Home from Mexico, Katie Hubbard was beginning a new alternative therapy for cancer that left her feeling pretty bad. She had gone through all the traditional regimens of chemo and radiation, and she was searching for any alternative that might extend her life for the sake of her kids. Though none of us knew it at the time, her systems were already beginning to slow down in advance of her death.

You can hear in her journal how badly she wanted something to work. She wasn't afraid of death for herself, but for others. May we all find ourselves in the same place someday, longing to stay on earth for the good of others but confident of eternal life when this one ends.

Katie Hubbard faced some powerful internal doubts about moving from Illinois to Wisconsin while her health was failing, but she decided to rely on God's facts instead of her fears. She found assurance of God's power and providence from Habakkuk 3:19 and Isaiah 48:17. She regarded these promises as facts to be relied upon, not lofty sentiments to be hoped for. Her journal entry comes to an end with a powerful question and pointed answer: "Q: What are God's facts? A: My grace is sufficient for you." No matter where you are, you can rely on God's facts instead of your fears.

In late August 2015, Katie Hubbard was struggling to hold on to hope in the face of mounting discouragements with cancer. Life was moving full-speed ahead with her oldest child beginning college and all the demands of preparing to move from Illinois to Wisconsin. You can hear in her journals how deeply she longed for some promise from God that she would be healed. Even so, her greatest desire was to stay close to God—pliable and tender—rather than letting circumstances, stress, and disappointment make her hard and bitter. This episode will encourage people dealing cancer ... or just life ... to know how to hold on to hope.

Katie Hubbard really wanted to trust the Lord moving forward ... with cancer treatment, with building a new home, with life! In this episode, she journals her way through several of the pressures she was feeling, not the least of which was how we would pay for our new home in Wisconsin.

In the midst of her processing, she writes out or alludes to several Scriptures that were beckoning her not to worry or to trust in God's provision. The greatest pressure, of course, was "cancer, cancer, cancer," as she says. The final sentence in this podcast is a sobering reminder: just a year before, doctors had predicted she might only live a year. Katie knew what it meant to trust the Lord moving forward. We can too, but we will have to walk hard roads like the one she was walking.