Facing My Biggest Fear
Roger Broersma
About 40 years ago, my wife Karen found a lump under her arm. She was a nurse, and immediately suspected breast cancer. We had been married about 12 years and had three daughters (Tammy, 8; Becky, 6; Lisa, 4). It was confirmed with a biopsy that it was indeed cancer, and she had a partial mastectomy, followed by radiation. The doctors were sure they got it all, and no lymph nodes were affected, but I always had a bad feeling that we had not seen the end of it. It is hard to say if premonitions like this are given by God to prepare us for what is to come or if it’s a function of the brain that can be explained by psychology. It may be both. Karen never recovered completely from the surgery, and by November, they found out that the cancer had gotten into her bloodstream and gone throughout her body, particularly her lungs. This is a rare progression of breast cancer, but that’s what she had. They started her on chemo, which, of course, had a devastating effect on her body. Over the next 8 months, the cancer took over her lungs, slowly suffocating her. Toward the end, she needed morphine to keep away the panic of not being able to breathe- and the panic of leaving her little girls. God took her home to heaven on July 6, a month short of our 13th anniversary. Needless to say, I developed a severe fear of cancer myself and would have high anxiety whenever a friend was diagnosed with cancer. I don't know how I could have made it through Karen’s illness and death without the love and support of our church community at Hillside.
Right before Karen died, I had just started a new job as an operations manager for the Pella Windows distributorship of West Michigan. It was really hard beginning a new job and being a single dad. I needed lots of help. I had to be at work early, so I hired a neighbor woman to come over early in the morning and get the girls ready for school. Then my mom and sister-in-law took turns greeting them after school. Getting three girls ready for church was a real challenge, made even more difficult because I was one of seven boys and knew almost nothing about fixing hair and dressing my daughters in their Sunday clothes. We ate a lot of frozen pizza, fish sticks, and Banquet frozen chicken. Laundry and other household chores kept me so busy that I could almost ignore my grief. And I was able to do what needed to be done. I was told later that there was a Monday morning prayer group of 10 or so older women who made my daughters and me special subjects of their prayers, including finding me a new wife.
God was listening. There was a woman named Margaret who had been widowed when her husband was killed by a hit-and-run driver while biking to work. She was attending Western MI University, working on her Master’s so she could get a teaching job. There, she met one of the praying women from church who was also working on her degree. Judy Otte (a former Hillside member) decided that Margaret was the wife for me after their first coffee together! Judy suggested that Margaret should visit Hillside and meet me, but before she did that, I signed up for a Christian single magazine. (Remember- no internet!) and I sent three letters. I imagine that two of those who got a letter from me thought, “Three kids, no thanks!” But Margaret, who had also subscribed to this magazine, was the third woman I wrote to. When she read the letter I sent her, she immediately knew that I was Judy’s friend. The thing is, I had no idea Judy had told anyone about me! You see how God did that? We both credit the prayers of the Hillside warriors for getting us together. Margaret brought her two sons (Aaron, 7, and Andrew, 6) to the mix. So, we had 5 kids within 5 years of each other, two the same age. When we got married, the children were 5, 8, 8, 9, and 10.
Margaret had hesitated about “a man with three children” too, because when she was 30 years old, she had had an aortic valve replacement for a congenital defect. She knew that she’d have to do it again sometime or that her heart could cause problems for a growing family. But God knew. For the first 20 years of our marriage, little happened in regards to her health. It wasn’t until she was 50 and the children were grown that she had to have another valve. Having her heart cut open a second time was very hard on her heart as well as the rest of her body. There was a lot of scar tissue that made it difficult, and after all, she wasn’t 30 anymore! On the fourth day, there was a crisis, and she almost died. Since then, she has had increasing health issues, including another valve. At least four times, she has been close to death, but God said, “Yes, you have an appointment with me, but not yet.” Even here on earth, she has been known to get an appointment wrong from time to time. I have always been the healthy one. I had a few stitches here and there and a shoulder repair once. But that’s about it for me.
Through it all, there was that fear of cancer. I’d count up the number of relatives who had cancer and wonder, what if?? We’d joyfully lived in our new condo for a little over a year when I began to get a pain in my side. It persisted over a few weeks, gradually getting worse. I went to my Internist, who ordered a CAT scan. He suspected diverticulosis. They must have used a very “cranky cat” that day because I got a bad report. It wasn’t diverticulosis, it was cancer. I was immediately referred to an oncologist who did a few biopsies and lots of blood work. The conclusion was that I had large B cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. My oncologist told me that this is an aggressive, fast-growing cancer of the blood, similar to leukemia, but with growth in the lymph nodes. He said, “If this is untreated, you will not see spring.” This news shocked me to the core. My worst fear had come true! The good news was that since the cancer cells multiply quickly, chemo is usually very effective as it enters the cells and kills them as quickly as they multiply. And the best news is that when I turned to God for help, I heard him clearly say, “I’ve got this.” So every three weeks I spent 6-8 hours at the Lemon and Holten cancer center getting poison put into my veins. According to the internet (so it must be true!), the survival rate for this cancer is 70-80 percent. After the chemo is out of my system, on March 27th, I will have a PET scan to see if the poison has worked; if not, I’ll immediately begin immunotherapy. So here I am, facing cancer. I can face my biggest fear because I know that the Hillside community is praying for me, and I know that “God’s got this” 100%.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. - Matthew 11:28-29