In 2016, I got the dreaded call that no one wants to get. The call that confirmed I had breast cancer.

The day I was going to Houston for my first surgery, I was a nervous wreck. Having surgery was bad enough, but I wouldn’t know if the cancer had spread until after surgery. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, all I could think about was the dreaded C word, and needing to be there to raise my two young sons.

My parents were driving me to Houston and I was in the back seat reading my Bible. I was praying God would give me a sign that everything was going to be ok, but I didn’t know where to look. I remember as we were getting into Houston I could see the skyscrapers in the city. That made me even more terrified because we were almost at the hospital. I looked out the window and I saw a truck beside us on the freeway. On the back of the truck it said Jeremiah 29:11. I’ve gone to church all of my life, but I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never really memorized scripture, so I quickly turned to it in my Bible. God had given me the exact words I needed to calm my fears. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

This is now my favorite Bible verse. This verse made me realize that even through hard times, God will be with me. This does not mean that we will be spared pain, suffering, or hardship. The next year and a half I dealt with 5 surgeries, too many procedures to list, chemo and radiation, and as if that is not enough, I was also going through a divorce. Any of those things in and of itself would be too hard for me to handle alone, but not too hard for God. I’m not going to lie and say it was always easy, but with God’s help I made it through, and I learned many great lessons in the process.

A lot of blessings came out of that time in my life. My dad decided to go to the doctor because I had cancer, and they found out he too had cancer, so they were able to catch it in time to remove it. God sent me a loving Christian husband towards the end of that year and a half that took care of me and was with me through chemo and radiation. God gave me parents that were with me at every single doctor’s appointment and everything in between. He also gave me the best family and friends a girl could ask for, they prayed for me and helped me in ways I didn’t even know I needed. Most of all, my relationship with God grew. God has a reason for allowing things to happen. We may never understand, but we simply have to trust him.

The day my doctor called in 2016, I was thinking it was the worst day of my life. Thinking back to that day now, it was not the worst day of my life, it was probably one of the best days of my life. It actually was a blessing from God, so that my dad and I could become cancer free. Even through all of the bad times, God has always been so good to me!