My mother is the strongest person I know. She raised five children, stood beside a preacher through decades of ministry, and poured herself into everyone she loved. She carried burdens most people never saw and did it with a strength that seemed endless. Even now, when I think of resilience, I think of her. I am honored to be her daughter.
She had endured a seven-hour surgery for a deep brain stimulator and came through it stronger than ever. Watching her recover only reinforced what I had always believed: there was nothing that could break my mother. She was the kind of woman who met adversity head-on, refused to surrender, and somehow found the strength to keep going when others would have given up.
She was my calm in the storm, the voice of reason when my world felt like it was falling apart. I was her heart-on-my-sleeve daughter, feeling every joy and every sorrow with an intensity she often tried to temper. Where I was emotion, she was strength. Where I was chaos, she was peace. Together, we found our balance.
In late 2017, my mother began having stomach issues. Eating became difficult, and there were times when she couldn’t keep food down at all. She mentioned her symptoms to her primary care physician, but they were dismissed as acid reflux, and she was given medication to manage it.
As 2017 came to an end and 2018 began, her condition worsened. The nausea became more frequent, and the vomiting became impossible to ignore.
Then I received a call from my sister.She had taken Mom to the emergency room because the vomiting had become constant. The doctors had run tests and discovered a mass in her colon. The local hospital wasn’t equipped to handle her case, so she was being transferred to a larger hospital.
I can still hear my sister’s voice.
“Don’t cry.”
She knew me well. She knew my emotions always lived close to the surface.
I was standing at work, surrounded by my students, trying to process what she was telling me. My mind raced ahead to all the possibilities I didn’t want to consider. Fear settled into my chest, but I swallowed it down. There would be time to fall apart later.
In that moment, I just needed to keep it together. For my students. For my family. For my mother.
I did cry.
Despite my sister’s warning, the tears came before I could stop them. Standing there in my classroom, fear and uncertainty washed over me. The thought of something being seriously wrong with my mother was more than I could bear.
My students noticed immediately. They didn’t know why I was upset, and most of them couldn’t fully understand what was happening, but they knew I was hurting. One by one, they came to me with hugs, gentle pats on the arm, and concerned expressions.
In their own simple, beautiful way, they tried to comfort me.
They had no idea what my sister had just told me. They didn’t know about the mass, the hospital transfer, or the fear that had suddenly taken hold of my heart. They only knew that their teacher was crying.
As they had done so many times before, they became a blessing to me. In one of the most frightening moments of my life, their kindness reminded me that even in the middle of fear, there is still love. And on that day, love looked like small arms wrapped around me and sweet children trying their best to make everything okay.
The next few days were a whirlwind of appointments, tests, lab work, consultations, and preparations for surgery. Everything seemed to move at lightning speed, yet each hour felt painfully long. We were desperate for answers.
Her gastroenterologist carefully explained what they had found and what they expected to face during surgery. He answered our questions with honesty and compassion, but no amount of explanation could quiet the fear that had settled over our family.
The day of her surgery was one of the hardest days I can remember.
We gathered in the waiting room, trying to stay strong for one another. The hours stretched endlessly as we watched the clock and waited for updates. Every time the doors opened, my heart skipped a beat.
All I could do was pray.
My dad was the same way. A pastor for most of his life, he had preached countless sermons about faith in the midst of trials. Yet now, sitting beside me, he was not a preacher standing behind a pulpit. He was a husband waiting for news about the woman he loved.
We prayed silently, each lost in our own conversation with God, holding tightly to faith when there was little else we could control.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the surgeon walked through the doors.
We immediately stood.
The room grew quiet.
And we waited for the news.
Cancer.
The word seemed to echo in the room long after the doctor said it. It was the word we had feared most, the one none of us wanted to hear.
The surgeon explained that they had removed sixteen inches of her colon along with twenty-one lymph nodes. The surgery had gone as planned, but there were still many questions that could only be answered in the days ahead.
He told us that an oncologist would visit the following day to discuss the next phase of treatment and what our family could expect moving forward.
I listened to his words, but they felt distant, as if I were hearing them through a fog. All I could focus on was that single word.
Cancer.
My mother—the strongest person I knew, the woman who had raised five children, stood faithfully beside my father through decades of ministry, and faced every challenge life had placed before her—had cancer.
Fear wrapped itself around my heart, but when I looked at her, I saw the same strength I had always seen. She had made it through surgery.
The battle ahead would not be easy, but if anyone could face it with courage, it was my mother.
Still, as we left the hospital that night, the reality of it all settled heavily upon us. Our lives had changed in a matter of hours, and none of us knew what tomorrow would bring.
The weeks that followed settled into a new routine—one none of us had wanted, but one we would face together.
My mother began chemotherapy treatments every week for the next six months. Life suddenly revolved around appointments, lab work, treatment schedules, and waiting rooms.
My daughter stepped up in a way that still touches my heart when I think about it. She adjusted her work schedule so she could be off on the days Grandma had chemotherapy.
Because of her sacrifice, I was able to continue working without having to miss so much time.It was one less burden for me to carry and one more reminder that when hardship comes, family finds a way to hold each other up.
The chemotherapy was hard on Mom. There is no other way to describe it. The treatments drained her energy, stole her appetite, and left her exhausted. Some days, she barely felt like herself.
Yet even when the chemotherapy wrecked her body, it never broke her spirit.
She was a fighter.
Week after week, she showed up for treatment. She endured the side effects, the fatigue, and the uncertainty with a quiet determination that amazed all of us. There were difficult days and tears, but there was also courage.
I watched her face one challenge after another with the same strength she had shown her entire life. The woman who had raised five children, stood beside a pastor through decades of ministry, and overcome every obstacle placed before her was now fighting cancer.
And she was determined to win.
As difficult as those months were, we had no idea that another heartbreak was already making its way toward us.
Ebbs & Flows 