I wrote this for the Kansas City Star’s Faith Walk column, it was published Sept. 22, 2012.

By Norma King

It was a year ago I got the word that I was packing a cancerous tumor in my breast.

I wasn’t surprised when the nurse told me a week after my biopsy. I’m not a fatalist, but something inside had told me I had cancer, even though the lump was so small I couldn’t feel it.

My biggest dread was telling my mother. A year before we’d buried my older brother after his battle with Hodgkin’s disease; and Mom suffered from another cancer, Multiple Myeloma.

 Up to that point in my life my biggest health concern was if I would follow my dad and my grandmother down the path to Alzheimer’s disease—something we referred to as the Wheeler Curse after a great-great-grandpa.

I wrote in my journal short sentences like, “I can’t believe it,” and “Nothing ever happens to me” and “How is this going to change my life?”

I made doctor’s appointments, checked out stacks of books, surfed the internet and made up my mind I didn’t want a mastectomy, chemo or radiation. The surgeon gave me a choice: mastectomy or lumpectomy. I choose the lesser.

At church the Sunday prior to my surgery we sang “Be Still My Soul.” I was sure that my organist friend had chosen it just for me. Many people asked how I was doing and expressed concern.

Later my husband, Nick, gave me a comforting blessing that “Heavenly Father was walking by my side” and that I should “Have faith, nothing wavering.”

On the way to the hospital on the morning of the surgery the sun shone off the reflectors alongside of the road prompting my husband to call it the “golden road.” In addition, the highway had been graded in preparation for a new surface and the tires hummed as we drove. “The road is singing,” he said.

As I look back at those small moments, and other tender mercies my Heavenly Father sent my way, I am astonished and warmed by His notice of this little one upon the earth.

I told my mother I had cancer a few weeks after the diagnosis. It was a long-distance call to Utah. Her gentle response was, “Norma, why did you do that?”

“Well, I had to do something different,” I answered, meaning a different cancer than that of others in the family.

A year out from the experience I look back and redirect Mom’s question: Why did Heavenly Father do that?

I don’t know the full answer yet, but I find some comfort in these words from “Be Still My Soul”:

Be Still My Soul

Thy God doth undertake

To guide the future as he has the past.

Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;

All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

(Text: Katharina von Schlegel, b. 1697; trans. by Jane Borthwick, 1813-1897.)