When My Husband Was Diagnosed with Cancer After Our Honeymoon and the Moment I Had with God That Helped Me Through It

No one is immune to the trials of life. And often, these trials strike when we least expect them. Like when TOFW presenter Emily Belle Freeman found out her husband had cancer just after they returned from their honeymoon. Faced with hardships she never expected, Emily turned to God and had an experience that showed our Heavenly Father will never leave us comfortless. Read more about this experience excerpted from her book Even This below.

It is four days before the happiest day of my life. The satin and lace hang pressed and ready, the hand-sewn veil is finished and waiting, the white roses and gardenias have been ordered, and we sit behind closed doors in sterile quarters for the news. Greg is sick. We consider allergies, strep throat, or a winter cold, but the doctor fears something worse. We see it in his eyes, in the way he touches the same spot on Greg’s throat two times, three times, and then just one more time before he leaves the room.

When the doctor returns he asks if we can postpone the wedding. The happiest day of my life. The one I’ve been dreaming of since I was twelve. The celebration I lay awake nights planning—the right colors, the right flowers, the right song. The invitations are sent; flights have been booked. We can’t postpone the wedding. We won’t. “How long is the honeymoon?” he asks. He is serious. I am twenty, and we are invincible, and our wedding is in four days. Four days. I try to think seriously, but the butterflies and the anticipation and the nearness of the celebration cloud out what he is saying. There is a possibility that Greg has thyroid cancer. An appointment with an oncologist is made for when we return from the honeymoon. We put the thought of it in the back of our minds as soon as we leave the urgent care clinic and drive back to the house to finalize the wedding plans and continue on with the celebration.

I would tell you about the wedding, but my memories of that short week are shrouded by what happened when it was over. The biopsy, the surgery, the three months of recovery—those are the memories that fill my mind when I think about the beginning of our marriage. What were supposed to be our first blissful days actually turned into hours spent waiting on pins and needles for results. The nights were filled with pain. The days with worry. Three months of recovery meant three months without work. We had no money; I remember how we barely got by on nothing. Maybe some people picture their wedding day in vivid detail. The memory I remember most from those first days actually took place at two in the morning in a dark hospital room.

It was after the surgery to remove the tumor, after Greg’s mother and father left to go home. After the last doctor walked out and the pain meds were administered. After making the decision to spend the night at the hospital because I didn’t want to go home alone. That’s when it all finally hit. It was years ago, before there were comfortable sofas in hospital rooms, and I remember it as if it were yesterday.

I pull the orange plastic chair over to the hospital bed and reach under the stiff white sheet to find the warmth of Greg’s hand. In that moment, I hold on to all that is familiar; I hold desperately to the dreams I used to know. The monitor beats a steady rhythm as I lay my head down on the rough green blanket. I wonder if those dreams will have to change now. Change is never easy, but this change, this unexpected change to my happily ever after, echoes through the corners of my heart. Is twenty years enough to prepare someone for this much uncertainty? Because I don’t feel prepared for this. The loneliness frightens me. I am alone in this. It’s dark, and Greg’s parents have driven home, and my parents live hundreds of miles away, and Greg is here, but he is sedated. I am alone.

I see soft light flooding in under the door and I focus there, on the truth that all is not dark. I try to remember that. But there, in that dark moment, the tears start to fall. There is no one to talk to, cry to, lean on, and so I pray. I talk to God and I tell Him I am frightened, I am too young for this, I am alone in this. I am alone. There, leaning over the hospital bed, clutching the hand of my new husband, I weep. And in the silent stillness of it all, an intense feeling of love fills the room and a whisper of words settles into my soul. It is a thread of scriptures I have read a hundred times, pieced together, meant to mend what is broken in my heart. I want to write the words down. I reach for the paperback book sitting on the small table and try to find a pen. I hold on to the words as I search—I don’t want to forget them, the promise of them, so I whisper them out loud as I look. Finally, I find a pen, turn to the blank pages at the back of the newsprint book, and begin to write.

Early morning, January 1990

I can’t describe this moment. It’s almost as if I could reach out and touch the feeling in this room. For the first time I realize I’ve lived my whole life watching but never really seeing. Never knowing I was not alone. Maybe I never took the time to understand. Sometimes it has to hurt to make you strong, to make you realize how much you need God. I don’t want to forget this. These words. His words. Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you. My peace I give to you. Be still, and know that I am God.

The handwriting is scribbled, scattered across the pages, but the words won’t be forgotten, and that is all that matters. For the first time I realize that I can turn to God with the real things, that I can trust Him with the hard things, with anything, even this. It is the first time I realize that God, who is infinite, can also be personal. For some reason, knowing that the Creator of the entire universe could be aware of a young, frightened girl in a dark hospital room strengthens my heart. I carry those whispered words as the healing days turn into weeks and then into months, until finally it is over and Greg is well and life begins to move forward again.

You wonder why that memory is more vivid than my wedding day. Perhaps it is because that experience, there in that dark hospital room, was the first time I had ever met God in an intimate space. It was the first time I had let myself be vulnerable with Him. The rawness led me to experience His realness. In that moment I felt His goodness.

Maybe there was a first time for you. Maybe you hold on to the memory of it just like I do. You’d think after an experience like that, my heart would have been won for life.

But it isn’t so.

One experience with God’s goodness doesn’t tie you to Him forever.

Want more from Emily Belle Freeman? Find her at a TOFW event near you! But if you can't make it (because, you know, life can get pretty crazy) then be sure to check out her book Even This available on deseretbook.com and Deseret Book stores.