There Are Good Things Here

As Katie Hubbard thought about the demands of moving from Illinois to Wisconsin, she also thought about the prospect of true rest when the Lord called her home. She wasn't exactly facing the hope of heaven with serenity. Rather, she was fighting through constant anxiety and fear to lay hold of the promises of God. She was also making hard (and sometimes wonderful) decisions about building a home in Neenah, Wisconsin near our family. In a time filled with fear, she found hope in the assurance of true rest in her true home with the Lord.

In this week's podcast, Katie Hubbard can be found building a fire with her seven year old son, Joe, and pondering what it means to live without fear for your kids in the face of cancer. We were visiting Wisconsin from Illinois, as we made preparations to move to a new place, so Katie could be closer to family for whatever time she had left.

This episode finds her revisiting a familiar passage of Scripture from 2 Samuel 7, where God had established King David after many tumultuous years. Katie had been through her share of turmoil over the years, but she knew that God could be relied on to draw good things out of hard times. The hardest place of trust for her was probably choosing to live without fear for her kids in the face of cancer.

Almost no entry Katie Hubbard wrote during her final year of life captures her heart and highest values like the words from July 25, 2015. Only four words say so much. Katie characteristically addresses herself directly to the Lord, in gratitude that she was home from Mexico and together with the kids again. I imagine that she will say something like this to us all when we meet again.

This week's podcast also features Tom Hubbard, our oldest son, reading and reflecting on a journal entry Katie wrote at the end of July. It was penned almost 6 months to the day before she died, and just days before Tom's birthday. You will be blessed to hear Tom's voice and his reflections about his mom.

Katie Hubbard was undergoing alternative therapy and thinking about eternal life. She was not ready to die -- "far from it" -- but she was more than willing to face death and the life that is to come. Sitting in a hospital bed in Mexico, she asks powerfully and poignantly what it says about us that we are so reluctant to die.

Katie Hubbard was pursuing alternative cancer treatment but looking to the Lord for help. This was a hallmark of her journey through life with cancer. So much was uncertain ... even the ways of God. However, God's nearness, goodness, and power were Katie's constant source of help. You and I can trust God's character even when we cannot trace his ways.

Katie Hubbard had come to the end of chemotherapy options, but she was grateful (and sad!) to have an alternative cancer treatment option available. In early July 2015, we were planning to board a plane for Mexico to pursue another course of therapy.

For some people, alternative therapy is a first choice. For Katie, it was a last resort. Her body simply couldn't tolerate any more chemo treatments. She wanted to satisfy herself that, for the sake her kids, she had done everything possible to beat the progress of cancer. The open door to pursue alternative treatment made her grateful but also broke her heart.

As Katie looked back on an unconventional life that was rapidly headed toward an untimely death, she had no regrets. This blog post, written in 2015 for other women in vocational ministry, makes two things clear: she was grateful for her years in ministry, and she remained single-minded about her goal. As she put it, "I don’t want recognition, fame. I don’t want the big selling book, I don’t want a thousand people at Nav Nite…I want laborers."

She knew that God had promised to reach the world through the faithful witness and service of those who would reach and raise up other disciples. That's what she had devoted her life to, and that's what mattered to her in the end. The glory of God and the progress of the gospel through life-to-life disciple making: that was enough for Katie. She looked back on her life with no regrets, because she had obeyed God's call and trusted him with the outcome.

In this podcast, Katie refers to an email from a friend (Wendy) who had received a lot of help from others when her husband was terminally ill. The email (and the painting) meant a lot to Katie at a time where she was on the receiving end of a lot of help. I thought you might want to see the image here on the website at therearegoodthingshere.com.

As the battle rages, Aaron and Hur help Moses keep his hands lifted.

Katie Hubbard was running out of cancer treatment options but not faith that God could heal her if He wanted to. As she contemplated the prospect of alternative treatment in Mexico and meditated on Namaan's story from 2 Kings 5, she sincerely asked God again to heal her from cancer. She knew the road of right thinking was getting harder, the longer she lived with metastatic disease. She also felt like her grace to bear it was running out. So, she asked again in faith for God to heal her of cancer.

If He had, this podcast would be a very different experience for you. As it stands, God was not planning to answer Katie's prayer in the way she asked. Yet, her ultimate hope was not fixed on the answer she wanted but on the God she trusted. What about you?

At the halfway point of this first season of "There Are Good Things Here", Katie Hubbard reminds us all that God is the source of all the goodness we seek. This episode in not a re-broadcast—but it is a re-reading—of Katie's journal entry from June 18, 2015. The podcast began (actually, it was episode 2) with this entry because it represents Katie's perspective so well. She didn't hope to become famous and she didn't want to write things for personal glory. Rather, she found herself increasingly impressed with the source of all goodness in God.

Katie Hubbard peppers the pages of her June journal with pithy questions like this, "What does God want to do with this life he bought?" She gives credit where it's due, to our friend and mentor Vic Black who said this in his book, Speak Lord.

Katie also records her own proverbial observation, "The tradeoff to losing your youth is that (hopefully) you gain perspective." She certainly had lost the one and gained the other. That's what enabled her to live the answer to the question, "What does God want to do with this life he bought?"

There's a bonus feature in this episode, too. I include the questions we used to use to help our kids evaluate a movie. This came up in a recent conversation over dinner with friends, and, lo and behold, it showed up in Katie's email in June 2015.