How Can Grace & Cancer Coexist? What Grace Looks Like in Your Hardest Seasons

The words you are about to read from this beloved woman — not only could change your life, but are profoundly costly words, written by a woman who shared this past week with us all that, unless God grants her a miracle, which we are all so so so praying for, earnestly, her doctors have said there is no more medically they can offer and she has between 3-6 months left with on this side of glory. So the words that she so vulnerably offers us here — are words that she is living, full of wisdom that she can wholly testify to, as she walks this road with heart-wrenching grace — and I implore you to read her words slowly, letting them fully enter the deepest place of your heart — because her wisdom is what we are all going to need for our own tender roads. Whitney Capps, a wife, boy mom, author, and Bible teacher, whose life was turned upside down with a stage-4 small bowel cancer diagnosis in 2021, is brilliantly, blazingly, beautifully — and unforgettably — stewarding a testimony of God’s grace. I beg you to pick up her new Bible study, The Melody of Grace, which explores the multifaceted beauty of God’s grace: grace that saves, sanctifies, and sustains us in every season of life. I read Whitney’s words here with tears brimming and my heart aching with the wisdom she shares here — it’s a humble, exquisite gift and unforgettable grace to welcome Whitney and her story to the farm’s table today…

Guest Post by Whitney Capps

To be honest, I never intended to write about grace.

There wasn’t a burning in my heart to plumb the depths of God’s Word to learn the boundless gifts of grace. Grace wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. Quite the opposite.

For the last four years, our family has been living an incredibly hard story, and grace sure hasn’t felt like the soundtrack for this saga.

The background music for the last four years has felt more like the rhythmic, pulsing, dissonant chords that underscore rising conflict in a movie. These tense melodies were appropriate to highlight the anxiety and tension of our days. Honestly, it’s been hard to look for grace.

To me, grace has always felt like the gifts of ease, compassion, and blessing. It’s music that accompanies a season of joy and peace.

But when I leaned into the opportunity to study grace, I quickly learned this primary truth: grace has been the melody playing not just every day of this hard season, but every day of our lives.

It’s just that our family had become so accustomed to the gifts of grace that we failed to notice them all around us.

Grace is that glorious church word that feels familiar to many of us. We know grace deep in our bones. It’s so ubiquitous it seems like a part of our spiritual DNA. We acknowledge it and are grateful for it, but can we explain it? 

Perhaps, like me, you’ve quoted these sound bites and generalizations to define grace: 

“…grace is greater. Greater than a privilege, greater than a promise. Grace isn’t merely transactional or positional. Grace, at its core, is relational. Grace is a Person. Grace is God Himself.“

• God’s unmerited favor
• Getting what we don’t deserve
• God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense (acronym that spells G.R.A.C.E!) 

These may be helpful summaries or memorable mnemonics, but each is insufficient to capture the full glory of grace. 

Why aren’t they enough?

Grace is a free gift of God. Grace is an “expense” that is costly in nature. Grace is rich. But these definitions focus on the what of grace. In each context, grace is a thing we receive. 

But grace is greater. Greater than a privilege, greater than a promise. Grace isn’t merely transactional or positional. Grace, at its core, is relational. Grace is a Person. Grace is God Himself.

Grace isn’t merely His doing. Grace is His being.

Grace is the work of salvation, but it is also the sustaining work of sanctification. Grace is the gentle gesture that cups our chin and lifts our gaze heavenward. Grace is the hope of glorification that we will one day be with Him. Grace makes Him the prize.

“Grace isn’t merely His doing. Grace is His being.”

Mercifully, grace is both a “now” and a “not yet” feature of the kingdom. We don’t have to wait for grace even in the most difficult parts of our stories.

I have Crohn’s disease, and in late 2021, we discovered that the persistent inflammation in my gut had turned into a malignant tumor. Cancer became a part of our family’s daily experience and DNA. It’s not a story I would have chosen, and if I’m honest, the burden of chemo, crippling side effects, and general malaise have all felt not at all like grace or at least what I used to think of as grace. 

Maybe you’ve struggled to feel or define grace in your current circumstances, too. Your story doesn’t have to be like mine. In fact, we have an unhelpful habit in the church of comparing pain. We tell ourselves that we aren’t allowed to complain or share in sacred spaces because our story isn’t as “heavy” or “tragic” as someone else’s. That’s a ploy of the enemy to keep us further in bondage and far from even the fringes of grace. 

No matter your pain, let’s not do that. Your story is safe here.

Whether you’re caring for an aging parent, struggling with estrangement from an adult child, reeling from church hurt, watching a loved one battle addiction, or feeling dangerously low on hope, we know what it feels like to be shackled to fear, anxiety, worry, regret, shame, and any number of unhelpful feelings that keep us from experiencing grace.

Over the last five years, here’s the truth to which I’ve been clinging: 

“Grace promises not just the means to endure, but the very presence of the enduring Eternal One in every circumstance and in every season. “

Jesus is much more interested in my holiness than my happiness. 

That means grace shows up in various ways, working to make me more like Jesus.My grandfather, the consummate pastor, used to say, “You get dying grace on your dying day.” The longer I walk with Jesus, the more I realize the staying, sustaining power of grace. I got cancer grace on my cancer day. I have enough grace for each new day and the kind of grace I need for each new trial.

In Christ, you do too.

Grace is greater than the pain you’ve endured.

Grace is sufficient for the story you are stewarding.

Grace is stronger than the heartache you carry.

Grace is greater than any need you have.

Grace promises not just the means to endure, but the very presence of the enduring Eternal One in every circumstance and in every season. 

I may be asked to steward cancer for the rest of my days, but make no mistake, these things are true:  

Because of Christ, I will endure.  

Because of Christ, I have hope.  

Because of Christ, I will win.  

Cancer won’t follow me into the glorious presence of Jesus.

This life is a vapor.

Eternity is a reality my mind can hardly fathom, but I can say with Peter, “to Him be dominion forever. Amen.” 

Soli Deo Gloria. Glory to God alone.

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