As hard as it was to admit, wellness was not a state of mind as every attempt to find a solution for the original abdominal pain and gastrointestinal problems led to the discovery of more issues. During a week when I found it especially challenging to think about anything not related to my health, I received a tweet from Michael Hyatt who offered this advice: “Remember, what you focus on increases.”[ii]

A short while later, God worked through Chip Ingram to reinforce Michael’s message when I read this on page 105 of the book Finding God When You Need Him Most: “If you hold a little problem very close, and you focus on that, what do you see? You see everything through the lens of that problem … pull back and get perspective.”

“As long as we focus on our problems,” Ingram added several paragraphs later, “they loom large. If you have a really big problem that overwhelms you to the point of depression, it indicates that you see God as small. Once you change your perspective, you can see that you have a tiny problem.”

I didn’t want medical issues to be the focus of my family’s summer, or a physical condition to dictate my emotional one. It was time to take the stand that I avoided just weeks before. From that point on, wellness was a state of mind as I took advantage of every opportunity to make our summer a great one. We visited friends and family in Wichita over Memorial weekend, flew to Las Vegas for my fortieth birthday in June, and drove to Nebraska and Indiana in July.

When we weren’t traveling or entertaining visitors, I maintained my mantra by memorizing several verses and reciting them whenever I needed encouragement. Jeremiah 29:11 came to mind on the day my colonoscopy was to be performed.  

For I know the plans I have for you, I thought to myself as the nurses wheeled me into the procedure room, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

I did not feel like I had a bright future when I woke up to learn that, instead of finding the reason for my original symptoms, I now had yet another problem to monitor: a large, flat polyp that my doctor was unable to fully remove.

“We’ll wait two months for it to heal and try again,” the colon surgeon explained. “It could take two or three tries to get it all.”

Why is this happening? I asked myself as I tried to make sense of the situation. What kind of bright future includes multiple colonoscopies?

In search of answers, I turned to the internet where I read that colon cancer is known as a silent killer because there are usually no symptoms in the early stages.[iii]  Next, I googled the term “flat lesion” and learned that this type of polyp grows directly into the inner wall, making it much more difficult to remove than typical polyps and five times more likely to cause cancer.[iv] With those words I understood why the Spirit brought Jeremiah 29:11 to mind: God wasn’t trying to distract me from my bright future . . . He was saving me for it.

I didn’t know how much saving I needed until two months later when I awoke from another colonoscopy to find that the second attempt to remove the flat polyp was also unsuccessful. 

“We’re going to have to remove the part of your colon that contains the polyp,” my surgeon explained. “If you don’t have surgery, you’ll need many, many colonoscopies; and even then, we won’t be certain that we got it all.”

In two short months, the future God had planned for me went from multiple colonoscopies to an open colon surgery.[v] Although it was not the direction I was hoping for, I knew that it was the right one when the biopsy results showed signs of advanced dysplasia.

Because I was unfamiliar with the term, my doctor offered this analogy: “If you use the colors of the rainbow as an illustration where one end of the spectrum is benign and the other is close to cancer, which we'll say is black,” she explained, “the biopsy we took in June was yellow, which is more on the benign side, while the one we took in August is violet.”

I had no idea where either of these colors were on a rainbow as I left the doctor's office. Thankfully, my oldest daughter proved to be an excellent resource as she explained that the spectrum consists of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

“How do you know the right order to put them in?” I asked.

“ROYGBIV,” Katie replied, as if everyone should remember the mnemonic devices they learned in elementary school.

Her words didn’t register until I looked at a picture of a rainbow and saw just how close I was to falling into the black cancerous abyss. While I'm not excited about everything I had to go through this summer, I am grateful that it led to the discovery of the flat polyp while it was still a color on my doctor's rainbow. Whether we recognize it in this lifetime or the next one, our pain really does serve a purpose.

Romans 8:28 is not just a passage of scripture, it’s a promise that “God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Chip Ingram agreed when he wrote this on page 30 of his book: “God will use your raw deal to build your character, to change your life, to give you a testimony, and to fulfill a greater purpose. But you must hang in there, trusting in God to bring about a good end.”

That’s what I was doing as I approached my surgery: trusting God for a positive outcome. While most people would find it hard to see an operation as the “good end” that Chip Ingram was talking about, for me it was easy … especially after the post-surgery pathology report revealed that the abnormal cells were more advanced than previous biopsies had indicated. Because the carcinoma in situ—cancer at the site of origin—was removed before it had a chance to grow beyond the innermost lining of the colon, no additional treatment is necessary. I am cured of the problem and assured of God’s promise to teach me (and all of us) one trial at a time: What we focus on increases because wellness ... is a state of mind.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,

present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,

will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:6-7

Quotes to Grow On

“Our only responsibility is to trust God for today.”

Chip Ingram, Finding God When You Need Him Most, p. 121

“As long as we focus on the problems, they grow. But the moment we begin to focus on our response to the problems, we gain a whole new level of self-awareness. We move from being a victim upon whom all these terrible things/feelings are piling up to being a chooser who has the power and responsibility to deal with them positively or negatively. This small shift in focus is when we move from having big problems and a small God to having a big God and small problems.”

Chip Ingram, Finding God When You Need Him Most, p. 110