Austin’s Experience – July 10th, 2022

“You have allowed me to suffer much hardship, but you will restore me to life again and lift me up from the depths of the earth.” Psalm 71:20

April 11, 2022 is the day my life changed forever, the day my wife of 16 years was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. My story with how it affected me starts several months earlier in December 2021.  

Amanda and I had been doing full-time campus ministry for 10 ½ years with The Navigators, with 6 ½ of those years campus directing and leading changing teams of campus ministry workers every year at the University of Arkansas. Amanda and those around me were starting to see signs of ministry burnout in me but I was trying to deny it. All the years of trying to lead large and small staff teams, getting everyone trained and on the same page, as well as constantly trying to engage and connect with students was wearing me down. It felt like I wasn’t ministering with my soul anymore. So, at the end of December 2021 I remember saying something to God that He won’t let me forget: “Father, I know something needs to change.”

The first thing that began to break me was when a beloved staff couple told us in January that the Lord was calling them to move to Texas to work with their family. I loved working with this couple and the thought of them leaving was too much to bear. After we received the news I went out to lunch and I started to feel a deep emptiness in my soul. When I came home Amanda sat down with me on the couch and said these words, “Ministry is really tiring.” I immediately began crying in a way I hadn’t for at least 12 years. It was the gut-wrenching kind of cry that happens when the soul is deeply injured. After that moment everything felt sad. I talked with my supervisor and he recommended Amanda and I take a sabbatical sometime later in the year and we agreed that would be helpful.

It was at this same time, early February, that Amanda’s stomach pains began to ramp up. She had had pains to some degree since November 2021 but by early February 2022 they were becoming constant. We went through two months of scans and results.  Every diagnosis that was suggested to us as a possibility I googled.  And with each search, I became more and more worried.  My mental health at this point was at an all-time low and I could hardly function. I remember praying many times, “God, you knew I was already at one of the lowest points in my life, I can’t take anymore.”

Finally, it was April 11th. We headed to the surgeon’s office to get the results of the biopsy on her liver. I felt okay because the doctors told us the odds were in our favor and that it would probably be a benign, non-cancerous growth. We were called into a cold, semi dark room and the surgeon said, “I’m sorry guys but I don’t have good news for you today. The pathologist called me on Thursday night concerned that he found colon cells in the liver.” I asked, “That’s not good, right?” He then explained that she had colon cancer and it was stage 4. I immediately began pacing around the room and Amanda said she thought she was going to throw-up. We spent the rest of the day in the oncology building in a state of shock.

For the next week I felt pain like never before. I lost 10 pounds because I couldn’t eat. I didn’t shower because it felt too lonely. I cried over and over telling God, “My life is over.” I went to a friend’s house, who graciously sat with me for hours, telling them I know people are praying for peace but I don’t feel even a single ounce of it. I couldn’t understand how my otherwise completely healthy wife had a disease like this. She was thriving in life and ministry and her influence was spreading rapidly. I thought to myself, “does God really want to take her now??”

A week after the diagnosis I was finally able to open my Bible and have a heart to heart with God in prayer. The sense I got from Him was that I was on a new discipleship journey: one I couldn’t learn in class at seminary or in the training I had received while being on staff with The Navigators. I sensed God telling me that I was like the Israelites in the wilderness who were promised something great in the future (the Promised Land) but had no idea where it was or how long it would take to get there. The only thing they could do was trust God each day for the direction and food He would provide for that given day. God didn’t want me to know how it would end but that I needed to come back tomorrow and spend more time with Him.

I have realized two significant things through what has happened in my life since January of this year: God removed a crutch I had in ministry by calling the staff couple away and I was forced to deal with the reality of my soul, how truly broken and empty I was, and the way I was finding my identity in trying to create a “successful” ministry. Then the place I found the most comfort and peace in life, my marriage, became completely destabilized. 

Over the past three months I have cried countless times. I have begged God over and over not to take my wife (“please don’t take her” is a common phrase). But through all the pain and despair, I do see the Lord working in many ways in my life and in so many others. The Word of God has become even more meaningful, in fact, I feel like my life depends on it. It also gives me hope and joy in new and deeper ways than before. I feel like the Lord has broken me down to a place where I feel like I’m starting over: learning what it means to live and abide in him each day.

I still feel a little shocked that this is all happening and have times of despair and anxiety.  But I am more confident than ever that God is in our midst and working all of this out for our good. I don’t know how any of this will end, but I’m clinging tightly to the only One that can carry me and my family through, and learning to be patient in the process.

Thank you all for your prayer and your friendship. It means the world to us.

P.S. We are still planning to take a sabbatical soon.