“In the first post of this series [for my church blog], I shared the story about how I received a breast cancer diagnosis just a few minutes before my friend Susan announced her benign results from her own recent biopsy. I confronted the reality that sometimes, God says no to our prayers for things to go well, even extremely tender and important things like our health. From that painfully honest space, we have to reckon with how a woman in her mid-40s with a husband and young children, with dreams and ministries and a still-blossoming career, must think about the truest substance of her life, and also the truest substance of her death. This is not only my reckoning; it is all of ours, if we dare dig deep enough, speak honestly and bravely enough. The beautiful truth is this—at the end of the reckoning, we can still find solid hope. We can find salvation.”

You can read the rest of the post here.

Part 3 of this series will be published this coming week.