MARISSA HENLEY|GUEST

Editor’s Note: Below is an excerpt from Marissa’s newly published devotional, After Cancer: Thriving with Hope (P&R, 2025), used with permission.

Filled with both dread and hope, I forced a deep breath through my anxiety-stricken lungs and stepped into the counselor’s office. Almost two years had passed since I had been diagnosed with a rare cancer called angiosarcoma. The chemotherapy, clinical trial, radiation, and surgery had ended about a year prior, and my scans showed no evidence of disease. Some days, I was thrilled to be alive. I felt happy, grateful, and free. Other days, I felt like cancer still had me in its suffocating grip. The new perspective that made me grateful for each day also made me greedy for years I wasn’t sure I’d get to enjoy.

Cancer had been purged from my body, but it wouldn’t leave my mind. I was tired of feeling consumed by cancer.

A few minutes later, I sat on the counselor’s sofa, telling my story through tears. I started with the facts: The lump in my breast. The phone call two weeks later. The internet search that revealed a grim prognosis. The oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center who looked me in the eyes and said, “I can cure you.” The months of chemotherapy. The clinical trial that took me away from my three young children for weeks and weeks as I received treatment in Houston, six hundred miles from home. Radiation and surgery, also in Houston. God’s faithfulness and provision through dark days of suffering, sickness, and fear.

But my story was more than those facts. Fear, grief, and trauma interwove through those details, but I often buried my emotions as I shared the happy ending of my story. I talked freely about the when, where, and how, but I didn’t think people would want to hear the questions I wrestled with daily: Why? What now? I often separated the facts from my feelings when I told the story, but in the safety of the counselor’s office, my emotional turmoil rose to the surface and overflowed.

After I concluded my weepy monologue, my counselor gave me an assignment. Throughout my cancer journey, I’d been sharing updates—both medical and spiritual—on a blog. I loved seeing how God used my experience to encourage others. But what would I write, my counselor asked me, if no one else were going to read it?

I went home, sat at my laptop, and placed my fingers on the keys. I was free to type whatever I wanted without worrying about anyone else’s feelings. I wouldn’t upset anyone with my honesty. I wouldn’t alarm anyone with my fears. I could finally let all my anger, sadness, and anxiety run freely on the page. The dam burst, and I wept and typed and wept some more. I had been physically healed a year earlier, but that day began my spiritual and emotional recovery.

If you’re reading this devotional, you probably have a similar story or know someone who does. You got that phone call. You sat in the waiting rooms, weighed your options, and went through treatment that was both physically and emotionally challenging. Maybe you’re physically healed; maybe you’re still battling. Either way, you’re wondering how you move forward through life after cancer. How do you cope after your cancer diagnosis changed everything? Wherever you are in the process of adjusting to life as a survivor, this devotional is for you.

You may feel surprised by the challenges of survivorship—I felt that way too. Perhaps you made it to the finish line of chemo, radiation, or recuperation from surgery only to find that your spiritual recovery was just beginning. For me, the bell I rang at the end of my cancer treatment might as well have been a starting gun for the even longer race of survivorship and all its challenges.

This new, unexpected race is very different from the marathon of treatment. Most of the spectators cheered your victory and then went home—they don’t know you’re still running. You may even feel guilty if you tell your friends that you’re struggling, because, after all, you’re one of the fortunate ones who survived. But while you do feel grateful for each day, each day still brings significant challenges, and you still need support.

Over the course of thirty-one days, this devotional will take an honest look at the challenges of cancer survivorship: the tumultuous fears, the difficult feelings, the changed relationships. It will also direct you to your greatest and surest support. We’ll see that God himself comes alongside us in our suffering and that the grace of the Lord Jesus is sufficient to sustain us on the hardest of days (see 2 Cor. 12:9). Hoping in him—his unchanging character and his work of deliverance—helps us keep moving forward.

So we’ll go to church, even when we don’t feel like it. We’ll ask for help, because our grief can be isolating. We’ll cry out to God when our anxiety threatens to overwhelm us. We’ll humble ourselves and fight to thrive with hope, not because there is anything special in us but because we know that Jesus cares for us (see 1 Peter 5:6–7).

We’re in this together, so throughout this book, I’ll share insights from fellow cancer survivors. I hope their stories will encourage you as you see that you aren’t the only one who feels this way. The details of our experiences may vary, but many of our struggles are similar.

As you read this book, my prayer for you is this: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Rom. 15:13).

Photo by Taylor Wright on Unsplash