A Journey Through Cancer and Faith

Three years ago, at 35, I received a call in my office with the results of a recent scan. I had finally gotten pregnant after years of infertility and had a perfect one-year-old boy, Zach. I was working at my dream job in academia with my husband. But a few months before, I’d started feeling pain in my stomach. After seeing many specialists without answers, a physician’s assistant called to tell me I had stage IV cancer and needed to come to the hospital immediately.

All I could think was, "But I have a son. I can't end. This world can't end. It has just begun." I called my husband, and as I walked to the hospital, I thought, "Oh. How ironic." I had just written a book called "Blessed." (Laughter)

I am a historian and an expert on the idea that good things happen to good people, researching Christianity’s "prosperity gospel," which promises health, wealth, and happiness for the faithful. I never considered myself a follower, just an observer. By 25, I was interviewing televangelists and megachurch pastors about divine rewards. I visited people praying to be cured, earning my reputation for being dropped off at the fanciest megachurch in town.

When I first started studying this, the idea of being "blessed" wasn’t what it is today. It wasn’t yet a line of "#blessed" home goods or a hashtag on Instagram for bikini shots. I hadn’t fully grasped how the prosperity gospel had become the civil religion of the American Dream, deifying Americans and their optimism.

Despite telling myself, "I'm just studying this stuff, I'm nothing like them," my diagnosis revealed how deeply I believed in my own version of the prosperity gospel. If you live in this culture, religious or not, it's hard to avoid believing that virtue and success go hand in hand.

I thought hardships were just detours in my long life. The gospel of success drove me to achieve, dream big, and abandon fear. It worked until it didn’t, until I found myself saying, "But I have a son," because it was all I could think of to say.

The hardest moment was accepting that my personal prosperity gospel had failed me. My hard work, personality, humor, and perspective couldn’t save me. I had to face that my life, like everyone else’s, is built with paper walls. It’s hard to accept that we are always a breath away from a problem that could destroy something irreplaceable.

People often ask if I wouldn’t go back or if I’ve gained perspective. I tell them no, before was better. A few months after I got sick, I wrote about this for the New York Times. I received thousands of letters and emails. People wanted to reassure me that my cancer was part of a plan, a test of character, or proof of something terrible I’d done. They needed a reason for what happened to me.

We all want reasons and formulas to predict whether our hard work will pay off and our love will make our families happy. We want to believe that nothing is lost. But living with stage IV cancer, I’ve experienced more pain and trauma than I thought I could survive. But I’ve also experienced immense love. When I thought I was going to die, I didn’t feel angry; I felt loved. It was surreal, feeling buoyed by the love and prayers of those around me. My suffering revealed the suffering of others, connecting me with people stumbling in the debris of dreams.

I asked friends, theologians, and nuns, "What will I do when that loving feeling is gone?" They said, "Yeah, it’ll go. But when the feelings recede, they will leave an imprint." It’s not proof of anything, just a gift.

Today, the immunotherapy drugs seem to be working, and we are watching and waiting with scans. I hope to live long enough to embarrass my son and watch my husband lose his beautiful hair.

Life is beautiful and hard. It may break your heart and take everything you have, but in the darkness, there will be beauty and love. And sometimes, it will feel like more than enough.