Episode 34: Are You (Still) There, God?

Written By Kayla Crum

Are you (still) there, God? On today’s podcast, the sisters discuss the ways their faith shook, grew and changed throughout the course of Ella’s cancer. It’s complicated and personal when you start to ask the big questions about the universe and if there’s a loving God. But it’s worth it.

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TRANSCRIPT

 Kayla 0:09

 You're listening to the My Sister’s Cancer podcast. I'm Kayla Crum, registered nurse and writer.

 Ella 0:15

 And I'm Ella Beckett, social worker and cancer survivor.

 Kayla 0:20

 We're sisters on a mission to care for the cancer community through the sharing of real life stories, a sprinkle of sass, and lots of support. 

Ella 0:28

Join us in a new kind of pity party. It's a pity so many of us carry the heavy burden of cancer alone. So let's make it a party and carry it together.  

—-------------------

Kayla 0:42

Hello and welcome back to the My Sister's Cancer podcast. I'm your co-host, Kayla Crum, and I'm joined today by my sister Ella Beckett, as always. Welcome to February. We are midway through our season of winter and isolation. If you've been following along, this is sort of addressing the season immediately post cancer treatment. So whether you are physically isolated due to a transplant or you're just in a time of some more social and emotional isolation as you recover, that is the theme we are addressing this winter. I also want to give a shout out to our mom: happy birthday Mom! This episode drops on our mom's birthday. We've mentioned her here and there through the show, but we cannot overstate how involved she was in Ella's cancer journey and how much of an advocate and a champion she was and is for both of us. And so we love you, Mom. Happy birthday! Before we jump into the episode, I just wanted to say we would love if you could leave a review or a rating for the show. That takes just a few minutes, and it lets other people find the show when they're searching for something cancer-related. So today, you probably guessed from the episode title, we're going to talk about faith and God. The question we posed is, are you there, God? And for a lot of us, that might bring to mind the classic book, “Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret” by Judy Blume, which is a great book about a young girl who has a Jewish parent and a Christian parent and is trying to kind of figure out her faith. There was recently a movie made that is excellent as well. We'll link to those in the show notes. But that is sort of the posture I wanted to take today, sort of that wrestling and questioning posture. Are you there, God? I think that for people who were raised in a faith, cancer can shake that. And yet sometimes it can also be an anchor to hold on to. And then for people who maybe weren't really raised in a faith, I think it is a time of spiritual questioning when you're kind of considering life and death. So we're going to talk a little bit about particularly once cancer's gone on for a long time, as it has in the isolation space, what that looked like for our faith, and just kind of wrestle through that and hopefully make people feel less alone by doing so. So Ella, we did talk many, many episodes ago about your initial reaction to your diagnosis, your first diagnosis, and how you did cling to the - the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul” and kind of used your faith as an anchor. And I'm wondering if you could sort of tell us in broad strokes, like kind of what happened to your faith as you recovered and then relapsed, and then at this point, we're in isolation after a transplant. Was that still an anchor for you? Was it a point of tension? Was it maybe nothing? Where were you at with that? 

Ella 3:52

Yeah, I think there was definitely highs and lows, as there is with any sort of journey or faith or relationship. It's really interesting to me, reflecting back now, how much I was fully reliant on God, like in the midst of that initial diagnosis. I think you're right. I mean, I think I really clung to my faith as an anchor, and it served as just such an encouragement and hope to me. My relationship with the Lord. And I felt really close to him, honestly, in that time. The second time around, I definitely struggled with more feelings of anger and questioning than I did even the first time. Again, it kind of waxed and waned. And when I was actually in the hospital with my transplant, I just felt this all surpassing peace that I really hadn't experienced before. You know, you hear people always talking about, like, “the peace that surpasses understanding.” And in a time when I really was my worst, I would say when I was inpatient, physically receiving my stem cells for transplant, like I was at rock bottom, essentially, physically, emotionally could be spiritually. But in those moments, I just remember feeling closer to God than I had ever felt before in my life. And I thought that was really interesting, that I think for a lot of people, that would be maybe the time when you feel the most alone and the most isolated from the Lord. But I just felt his presence so tangibly in those moments. But then I guess as I reflect kind of after transplant and as I sort of, you know, tried to gain strength in everything, I just think there was a lot of ups and downs along the way as I kind of processed a lot of what had happened to me. I think that's also when I started to question and ask more “why God” questions; “Are you there?” Right. I think a lot of times if you're praying for something specific or you're wanting answers to some of your prayers and then you're not getting them, or they're answered differently than you hope for, at least in my experience, I think that's when I would start to kind of wrestle with him more, I guess.

 

Kayla 6:16

I want to ask a follow-up question about that time when you were stuck at home after your transplant. So you'd been discharged. And yet you had really a couple of months of little to no social interaction or anything besides going to and from appointments. I mean, we grew up in a family where you went to church on Sunday. When we were really little, we went twice on Sunday. Yeah, we did the events. Often they say Wednesday nights is like a church night, like we were there when the doors were open, basically. We even would find churches on vacation to attend, like just, you know, that was just very clearly like a day where you set aside a few hours for God and I don't - I can't believe I don't know the answer to this, but what did you do about church attendance when you and Mom and Dad were, like, living at home after your transplant? Because this was kind of before everything was online, like, in now this post-pandemic world, pretty much every church seems to stream their services. Did you have, like, a rhythm at all of any sort of gathering or no?

Ella 7:25

 You know, you say, oh, I can't believe I don't know the answer to this. Kayla, I don't even know the answer to this question. If my memory serves me correctly, I just don't think I went to church for those few months. I'm assuming. I know I definitely tried to do like devotionals and like listen to sermons and things, but I will say that's one I think really positive thing that's come from the COVID-19 pandemic is virtual church, and making that more of an accessible thing for people who are isolated at home. I think of older adults who are stuck in their homes. Now, technology might be a challenge for some of them, but in theory, it's like they can still jump on and get that message and the songs and like the main things. Now, I do think it's a little bit different to do church remotely, like I found in the midst of the pandemic, that I wasn't connecting as much as I was when I was in person, if that makes sense. But no, I don't really think that was a thing, so I don't - again, we'd have to fact check with Mom and Dad, but I don't really think that I had that option available to me.

Kayla 8:40

 Yeah, and I don't ask that to, like, shame you in any way. I just - the question had never occurred to me before, and I definitely think that our family has shifted a little bit over the years. And maybe your cancer had something to do with this subconsciously, but that, you know, church attendance and wearing your nicest clothes and all of that is less important, I think, to us than it used to be. I think you can be spiritual or even like what someone - people would call a Christian or a believer without ever going to church. However, I do, like you said, during the pandemic, like I missed some element of the gathering. 

Ella 9:21

Totally. 

Kayla 9:22

Partly it was like the community, like the people, and partly though it was like the ritual and the worship aspect, which surprised me. I think that I missed that or that it was so hard to connect over a screen. I visited a friend who lives near Duke University, and they have a beautiful chapel on campus there, and it's the closest thing I've seen to one of those European cathedrals, just like a very huge, gorgeous old building. And it was just interesting because I was thinking about the contrast of like the money, right, that goes into building a building like that and sort of the ways that across history, churches have sometimes been used as places of exclusion and continue to be to this day. Versus like: ah, there is something to this though, like something about that space did make me feel something inside. And the building almost reminds you like, wow, we're so small and we're connected to this divine being who is so large and constructing a building like this is, like our best attempt at like, reaching to the heavens type of thing. So that's a bit of a tangent. But as we speak about seasons of going to church or not going to church, I do think there's something to be said for - like you said, I'm so glad that now there's more virtual options. And yet, if you are a person right now who it's not safe for you to go and gather in person. Whether you miss like the people aspect or you miss just being in that space, I think that's valid if you still miss that. I guess I'm just saying I see that, and I - I feel that for you.

Ella 11:17

 What about you? Kayla, what did your trajectory of your faith kind of look like during this time?

Kayla 11:24

I think I've mentioned before that I used my faith as an anchor throughout your first experience with cancer. I remember certain songs on the Christian radio stations meaning a lot to me during that time. And you got better when they predicted four months later, like you were in remission. So it was kind of like, yay! Like, God got us through it. And then, like I've said before, your relapse really threw me for a loop. And I think it really revealed to me some things about my faith that I didn't know I believed, but that I did subconsciously believe in. I wasn't like explicitly taught or raised to treat God like a vending machine, or to think that he doesn't let bad things happen to good people. It's not like I was explicitly taught that, but I was kind of operating from, let's say, like, prosperity gospel light. I don't mean like those televangelists who are like, “And God will give you millions,” but like the watered down version is what a lot of churches preach. And I think some element of me had internalized the idea that, like, if you're humble and loving and kind and you make good choices and you put your family first and you put God first, like he won't really fail you in the end, like he'll protect you. I think that was like a subconscious belief that I had. So it was really upsetting, I think, then, to be confronted with that belief. I definitely didn't see it that clearly at the time, but I think that's where my anger came from, is like, I felt like God had let down his end of some sort of bargain or that, you know… I could see how he could let this happen to you the first time. But to pull the rug out or drop the other shoe the second time felt like a slap in the face and really made me wrestle with those big questions of like, why do bad things happen to good people? Or does he allow things to happen? Or does he send things? Because you hear a lot of platitudes about “God gives his toughest warriors his worst battles” or, you know. So that took me years to untangle. Throughout that time, I mostly still attended church. And it wasn't just fake for me. It was like, I never quit believing in God altogether. I kind of wished I could because there's some C.S. Lewis quote where he's like, when he changed from being an atheist into a Christian. It was actually harder because now I was mad at God, whereas before I could just say he didn't exist. And - and I'm not saying that to belittle people who've struggled with questioning God's existence. I think that's totally valid. I've just always been more of a spiritual, sort of, even what you might call whimsical or woo woo person from childhood where I like, sense God in nature and like, at least the divine has always felt very real to me, so I couldn't really drop that. I think what I had to like wrestle with was, well, who is this divine God that I thought that I knew? So anyway, yeah, similar to you, like the first time through, for some reason it didn't really hit those buttons for me. But then I really felt betrayed when you relapsed and went on a long journey of wrestling with what I believed about God, and I don't have all the answers today. I just have finally shed most of my bitterness towards God through a lot of like, counseling and then spiritual direction and reading books, which is one of my preferred methods of grappling with things. We'll put some books in the show notes too. I landed in a place where I don't believe God sends evil or bad things, like he sent your cancer, but I do believe he can use bad things for good. What really helped me, and I'll have to dig up where I got this from because I've read too many books, but I'm sure I can figure it out for the show notes. The idea that, like, you can decide, right? Because faith is a decision to believe in something, you can decide for yourself that you're going to believe God is good as your crux of your faith, and then all your other theology flows from that. So that's not to say you just blindly ignore parts of the Bible or things that you wish weren't true, but the Bible is a contradictory book, and there's different realms of thought about what different things mean. And so, like, I just had to decide if God was good or not and choose to believe that he was, and let the rest of it flow from there. So if that means, like, I don't believe he sent your cancer, like for me, that's that's how I sleep at night, you know, and we're just never - we're finite. So like, I'm not claiming to have the answer on that, but, like, that's where I landed. Did you wrestle with that idea of God's goodness?

Ella 16:28

 Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I do want to, before I answer that question, I do want to just, like, put in a little asterisk in an aside and say, like: We both were just talking about how our faith was really like an anchor for us, and we didn't as much struggle with like, the wrestling and the anger and everything the first time around. That's not to say that we didn't struggle at all with our faith. Like, I don't think every day we were like, “Yes, like, God is so good. Life is amazing.” Like, I just want to - I just want to say that here. I want that on the record that like, even though we're saying we didn't wrestle as much the first time around, of course we were just like super crushed and wrestling with, okay, like, what does this mean? What does this mean about God? Like those questions were there, but I think they were magnified the second time around. I just wanted to say that. But circling back to the question about the goodness of God, like, I think I struggled a lot after the fact. And I think, like you were saying, to kind of trying to unpack some of that in the years after everything happened. I also did struggle with it, like in the midst of everything. And I think this is going to sound kind of weird, but I think one of the things I most struggled with was other people's interpretations or other people's theology, almost like them saying to me what I should be believing or how I should be perceiving God like, right? Like I spent 18 years of my life building this foundation of my faith. I had a relationship with God and a perspective of him. And then this really terrible thing happened, and I was still kind of trying to sort through, like, okay, what does that mean then for my relationship with God? Is the God that I've known my whole life still true? Is this still him, like all that kind of stuff? But then I think what really was difficult for me was these other voices, again, the best-intentioned people. Right? But it's like, yeah, you go to other churches or you're talking to people and you hear this underlying theme of like, “Blessing follows obedience” and “God hand designs your valleys,” right? All these things that I was like, wait a second. Like, what does that mean for me? As someone who was diagnosed with cancer at age 18, we've said before, right, like, that's such a turning point in your life when you're an emerging adult. Like I think anyone at that age is kind of trying to sort through what their faith means. If it still translates into their life as they move into adulthood, like there's a lot there, and then you throw in a cancer diagnosis, it's like. What? So I think… yes, I was wrestling with it, but then I think it was amplified by theology from the outside. Other people's opinions, if that makes sense.

Kayla 19:31

Do you feel like people were trying to convince you of their belief, or they were speaking as if they assumed you already agreed with them?

Ella 19:41

 I think both. There were people that probably thought that I was really struggling with my faith, and I needed to be reminded of God's goodness. And - and that's true. I think there are times when we, as believers, can remind our loved ones and the people that we care about, like when it's the right time and place. Um, you know, reminding them in a way of like who God is and what he has said in his Word. But I think there's a time and a place, and I think sometimes if it's done when it's the wrong time or the wrong place, it's not perceived super well, at least in my experience. 

Kayla 20:20

Yes, I think I mentioned this in a previous episode, but I'll say it again. Romans 8:28 is that verse that’s something like all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord or something like that. And there's different translations. But a pastor once said to me, “Romans 8:28 is always true and sometimes better left unsaid.” Um, and so I think that speaks to what you're saying, like the time to actually challenge someone about their faith and/or remind them of truths are few and far between, and I think only appropriate if A) asked for, like if people are sharing their struggle and asking you for advice, help, whatever, or B) you're super close to someone like a spouse, a sister, or like you're meeting with them as their pastor, right? And like there's certain contexts where that's appropriate, but not in the grocery store, not with the daughter of a friend you haven't seen in a long time. Like I think it's to reassure themselves too; it's to keep it out there and keep their theology from falling apart. And I'm not saying that in a cruel way, because I think I've been guilty of this, too. They're not being forced to reckon with their faith in the way that the family going through a crisis like cancer is, and we can't all live in that reckoning every day for all of our lives. Right? The world is full of too much pain. We can't stay there every day. But I think, especially in our American identity, where we're less willing to admit the struggle or deal with the tough stuff than maybe some other cultures. We want to keep the faith questions out there and just put platitudes over it instead. I've noticed this trend with funerals being called celebrations of life. Um, and everyone has the right to plan their own funeral and every situation is unique. So this is not a blanket criticism, but I'm afraid that if we let that pendulum swing too far, we aren't even opening a space for mourning anymore. There are some traditions in which literal, outloud wailing is part of the grieving process. A lot of different religions or denominations used to have people wear black for a period of time after their spouse or whoever died, and that's just like not done anymore. And we've moved into sort of a like, “Look at how great their life was!” type of thing. And again, if that's you or that was a meaningful thing for someone that you grieved, that's great. But I am conscious of the fact that we don't leave space for the - the morning.

Ella 23:19

I think that's really true. And I think that also translates into the church. I would argue that I think what you were saying about people just like saying platitudes and not necessarily like wanting to reckon and wrestle and whatever. I don't think that the church or our faith often holds enough space for lament and for questioning and for unknowns, right? Like as I've gotten older and just had more life experience and matured some in my faith and, you know, read the Bible in different ways and learned different people and different teachers, like, God can handle our laments, too. And I think they're important. You know, I think of a lot of the Psalms that are just completely crying out to God, like, “Where are you?” I mean, I think we could open our Bible and find so many Psalms that, like, speak to that theme. And I just think there's a lot of churches, too, that just don't hold enough space for that and just want to be like singing all the praise songs all the time and preaching the good news. But it's like, yeah, if we don't hold space for the hurt and the brokenness and the lament like, we're kidding ourselves, you know.

Kayla 24:38

 Mhm. Well, and you speaking about the praise songs reminds me. I go to a church now where we primarily sing what I guess I would call contemporary worship music as opposed to traditional hymns. We grew up in a church with more of a blend. And I do miss some of the hymns. My church brings them out sometimes around like Easter, Christmas or whatever. But the huge difference to me is the hymns, you know, had verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, and the verses were all pretty wordy and distinct from each other. And you could kind of cover a lot of ideas and theology in one hymn because, you know, there's usually three to five verses. And they might take you on a journey through wrestling and then praising and whatever. Whereas a lot of the songs today are extremely repetitive, which again, I have found these to be meaningful in different ways. But there's a song - I can't think of it, but it's where we repeat over and over, “He hasn't failed me yet, and He's not gonna fail me now” is like the gist of the song. And you just say that over and over. And when you were sick, that song drove me crazy because, yeah, I just wanted to be like, “Asterisk, eternally, yes. In this life, no.” You know what I mean? Like, and I think that sometimes these songs really condense or seem to oversimplify ideas that I'm afraid for people who haven't maybe, like you were saying, sought out different teachers, wrestled with these ideas. It's setting people up to have what I had. Where “Oh, God doesn't fail me if I just, like, believe.” Yeah, well, he failed because you got cancer twice. I mean, I know you're alive, but, like, if you had died, like we have dear people who have died from cancer and it's like, okay, so then how do you say he doesn't fail? That's if you're, like, constructing the view that God sends the bad stuff or failure is in this finite world, you know what I mean? I have to think of it as like, yes, eternally God doesn't fail me and like it's bigger than what happens in this world, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, worship music can be a balm or a open wound I think. 

Ella 27:05

Totally. 

Kayla 27:06

I did want to share one quote before we sign off that was a huge turning point for me as I was sort of turning back toward God after being upset for years. Um, it was in this book called “Prayer in the Night” by Tish Harrison Warren. She's, I believe, an Anglican priest, and we'll link to it in the show notes. It is hefty, like it's short, but has weighty ideas throughout. So I like read it pretty slowly to kind of take it in and think it through. And I mean, trigger warnings abound, like, loss, grief, miscarriage, death, all the things because it's dealing with the whole question is, you know, the goodness of God. And how do we pray in the night, like in the time of darkness? But my absolute favorite quote from that book, uh, stuck with me as a, as a story she tells about one of her friends who had to send her little toddler son in for surgery, and his mom said to his dad, “We have to decide right now if we think God is good or not, because if we wait for the outcome of this surgery, we will always be keeping God on trial.” And I can hardly even say that without choking up, because that quote just hit me like a ton of bricks. That is what I was doing. And what I have to work every day to not do. I was - for years after you were better from your transplant, keeping God on trial. Like every time you had a scan or whatever, I was waiting for him to fail me again, you know? And so for that mom to be so perceptive as to say like, no, like faith is being certain of what we hope for and what we cannot see. You have to make God's goodness the primary thing and let everything else flow from that. That is not easy to do. I'm not saying that that answer just fixed everything, but that really woke me up to like the barrier in my heart, I think, is I was keeping God on trial. And that language really helped me see that.

 

Ella 29:12

 I just got the chills when you shared that though, because yeah, I read that book at the beginning of last year and that, like, it rocked my world. It's so good. Yeah, it's definitely a hard read. I mean, I agree with you. Like, I think you have to kind of chew it in little bites. But yeah, that is so hard. And I think what you were just saying made me think of like, yeah, declaring God's goodness and not having it be dependent on the outcome and like, not letting your life circumstances determine that truth about him. Oh, that's so hard to do. Well, thanks so much for hanging with us. I do want to take a minute before we sign off for today and just acknowledge that we understand that not all of our listeners are people of faith. And so if you're here and that's you, we appreciate you. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to listen. We hope that something in our conversation was informative to you, or sparked something in your mind or in your heart. Um, and those of you who do have faith, I hope that this was encouraging or made you feel seen in a way that you hadn't before. Next week we are going to be discussing the winter blues and the importance of mental health in this season of isolation. And we hope that you have the best week available to you in the meantime.

Kayla Crum
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Episode 35: The Winter Blues
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