By April 2024, my dad’s metastatic melanoma had spread almost everywhere—lungs, liver, pancreas, bones, neck, lymph nodes.
His doctor didn’t offer hope.
Just stabilization.
He even said, “Let’s not talk about remission.”
But my dad—he’s not like most people.
He believed he was going to beat it.
Even after his doctor told him he probably wouldn’t.
I, on the other hand, believed every word. I read every PubMed article. Every single one said this was a poor prognosis.
And for the first time in my life—I resigned.
I quit my Bible study after 11 straight years.
I stopped reading Scripture.
I didn’t stop believing, exactly. I just stopped trusting that God was as kind as He claimed to be.
If that offends you, that’s fine.
Just promise me you’ve been honest about your own beliefs before you judge mine.
Because people who’ve never doubted usually aren’t the ones asking the hard questions—
and you don’t go looking for answers if you think you already have them.
But here’s the part I wasn’t telling anyone:
I didn’t have the emotional energy to fall apart.
Not as a mom of four. Not as a wife trying to hold it all together.
So I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just… shut down.
One day in April, we were all outside—me, Robert, the kids. It was one of those rare, golden spring days that shows up like light through a dusty window: soft, sudden, and sacred.
I had my headphones in, trying to follow my counselor’s advice: lean into the grief instead of numbing it.
And that’s when I saw her—my welwitschia plant.
She was gone.
Brown, wilted, scorched.
I’d paid $50 for her. Split her the year before. Watched both halves thrive.
Curious what kind of plant I’m talking about? It’s called a Whalefin plant—officially known as Dracaena masoniana.
You can read more about it on Wikipedia, or check out a visual example from Costa Farms.
In January I noticed the fireplace had scorched her in some spots, so I cut off the parts that were dead, and left what I thought would survive and regrow. I had done this before and it worked.
But in April, I realized, it did not work this time.
And that was it. The last Jenga block.
I walked over, grabbed her by the stem with my bare hand, yanked her from the pot, and threw her across the yard.
I wasn’t just mad at God. I was done.
“So you’re taking my dad and my plant too?”
I know how ridiculous that sounds.
But on days like that, everything feels like betrayal.
But then, in the middle of my tantrum…
I saw it.
A baby shoot.
Green.
Alive.
Growing quietly behind what I thought had died.
I froze.
Because I realized—God had been working beneath the soil this whole time.
Even when it looked hopeless.
Even when it looked dead.
Even when I was yelling at the sky.
That new shoot?
It didn’t just appear that day.
It had been growing in the dark for months—while I was doubting, quitting, giving up.
And that’s when I surrendered.
Not in shame. In awe.
I obviously ran back in the yard to grab the dead plant so I could show Robert what I was hearing from God. It was a moment of reckoning.
A month later, my dad’s next scan showed no evidence of disease.
The doctor didn’t believe it.
Said it was probably just “no new tumors.”
But three months after that, a second scan confirmed: my dad was cancer free.
The radiologist confirmed it with a call.
Right around the time that baby shoot showed up in my garden,
he was already healing.
And I hadn’t even known.
I’m not saying I have it all figured out.
You don’t pull that far away from God without a long walk back.
But here’s what I am claiming:
- That God shows up even if you don’t.
- That sometimes your eyes lie.
- That faith is not always felt first—but it’s never wasted.
They say “believe what you see and only half of what you hear.”
But now?
I believe none of what I hear, only half of what I see—
and all of what I know about God’s mercies.
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