When the Sun Feels Complicated

Lately, I keep seeing cardinals.

Not just one here or there, but so many of them in my backyard. And every time I see one, I feel this quiet sense that God is reminding me, It’s okay. I’m here. I see you. I love you.

Then today, I was listening to a woman talk about hearing from God through birds, and it felt like the gentlest little confirmation. Not proof. Not a formula. Just a tender reminder that God is near, even here, in a season where I understand very little.

It has been a month and a half since I was diagnosed with cancer, and my brain is still reckoning with that reality.

Cancer.

It still feels strange to write. It still feels cruel in many ways. Especially melanoma.

Because the sun has always felt sacred to me.

I have always felt God’s presence through sunlight. The way it warms my skin. The way it brightens my mood. The way it somehow reminds me that God is close.

I can still remember one of the hardest seasons of my life, when my fourth child’s adoption was up in the air and some very scary realities were in front of us. I remember crying out to God, begging Him to make a way. And in that moment, a ray of sunlight came through the window and landed right on my face.

It felt like Him. I know it was Him.

And now, somehow, that same sun—the thing that has so often made me think of God—is connected to the cancer in my body.

I do not understand that.

It feels unjust. It feels confusing. It feels especially hard because we had just uprooted our lives and moved ten hours away to a place where we knew almost no one. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, cancer entered the story.

But here is the truth I keep coming back to: God knew I would get cancer here. and He placed me here anyway. Not as punishment. Not because He is cruel. Not because He turned against me. But because He saw what I could not yet see.

Because even from the outside, this move may have looked like upheaval. But in the middle of this diagnosis, I can honestly say I am deeply thankful we are here.

The love that has been poured over me in this place has been overwhelming. Community is building faster than I ever imagined. Our home feels healing. Our yard feels healing. Even now, as I write this, I am sitting by the pool—in the shade, of course—and there is something restorative about it.

We are not living under the same pressures we were before.

This place feels like a place to nourish.

And I am thankful.

I am thankful for the doctors. I am thankful for the people praying. I am thankful for the meals and messages and check-ins. I am thankful for the ways my body is responding. I am thankful for every small mercy I am learning to notice.

And still, I am asking God for healing.

Complete healing.

Miraculous healing.

I am asking Him for wisdom for me and for my doctors. I am asking Him to guide every decision. I am asking Him to make clear what I am supposed to learn from this and what I am supposed to do with it.

Because I do not want to waste this diagnosis.

I want this season to strip away everything hollow and leave only what is real. I want to pursue the things that bring life. I want to be pruned, not crushed. I want this season to realign me, not destroy me.

Slowly, I am learning that I can still experience light without standing fully exposed beneath it.

Even in the shade, I can feel warmth on my skin. I can still sit beside the pool with my family. I can still watch the light dance through the trees. I can still experience beauty, joy, and the presence of God without fear having the final word.

Maybe this season is teaching me that the truest light was never the sun at all.

Maybe it is the light God placed within us from the very beginning. The part of us that reflects Him because we were made in His image.

A light that illness cannot take away.

And maybe that is why this diagnosis feels like it is pressing against something deeper in me. Because if I am honest, I have spent much of my life trying to dim that light. Staying smaller. Quieter. Less visible. Afraid to fully step into who God created me to be.

But perhaps God never asked me to shrink.

Perhaps He is teaching me that wisdom is not the same thing as fear. That I can protect my body without dimming my spirit. That I can live thoughtfully and carefully while still allowing His light within me to remain visible.

Even here.

Even now.

Even in the shade.

And even in the shade, I can still see the cardinals.