Member-only story
Featured
Why We Should Stop Saying “God Has a Plan”
Losing the Script: How Real Faith Begins After the Plan Fails
Today, the oncologist told my wife her chemotherapy will continue indefinitely.
No more countdown. No end date circled on a calendar. Just an open-ended road paved with side effects and scans, with no clear destination. No promises. Just the quiet hum of ongoing treatment — week after week, month after month — for as long as it helps.
I wasn’t there when she heard the news. I didn’t see her face when the doctor said the word indefinitely. I didn’t witness the moment it dropped into her chest like a stone.
But I felt it later — when she told me. I saw it in her eyes, in the weariness that clung to her voice. I felt it settle between us in the silence, in that tender space we both protect but that sadness finds so easily now.
And in that moment — just for a split second — I heard it echo in my own head. A phrase I’d once offered others without hesitation:
“God has a plan.”
How quickly those words used to come. How sure they once sounded. How hollow they feel now. Sometimes, the hardest thing to hear is the one you’ve said a hundred times yourself.
