Healing from Cancer and Sexual Betrayal

This week marks the 29th year since my lymphoma diagnosis when I was 34.

Yes, I’m giving away my age!  But, there are some important truths I learned from that time which parallel living with sexual betrayal:

When our lives are shattered by an event that threatens our very existence, we can feel like we will die—we actually begin to look at life through the lens of death.  But, God can use something evil and deadly to create a new way of living.  He is supernatural and He overcame death in every sense of the word. 

A wise counselor told me at a time when I didn’t think I would live until the next year…” if you can’t plan next year, then you plan next weekend.”  Making intentional plans for something that feeds our souls, EVERY WEEK, not only makes us feel better in the moment, but it helps us to learn to look forward, and not only at once was.

Healing from sexual betrayal can feel a bit like chemotherapy.  We may lose some things along the way that felt precious—that felt like a part of our identities.  When my hair and my eyebrows and my eyelashes disappeared, I was embarrassed, and felt as if I no longer recognized the person I saw in the mirror.  But, I was told when I began to lose my hair, the medicine had reached my body’s cellular level and was simultaneously beginning to kill cancerous cells. 

What’s Necessary

Facing truth, setting boundaries, and learning to heal, regardless of our partner’s choices may seem excruciating.  The process can feel frightening and life-threatening and like chemotherapy, it may include challenging and uncomfortable side effects. Yet, it’s what’s needed to stop and reverse the damage caused by the secrecy and lies of sexual betrayal that have been silently stealing our lives.

I came through my battle with cancer changed in many ways.  I have physical scars of my battle, my body has been physiologically altered, and my hair is different, even though I’m very grateful that I have hair again.  Although life may look different when we come out the other side, as we continue the lifelong healing process from sexual betrayal, we discover strength and other God-given qualities within ourselves that we never knew existed. 

What the Lord told those many years ago, has helped me live through these years since learning of my husband’s sexual betrayal—the Lord told me that I was to live every day, even if I was dying.  That’s quite a challenge, isn’t it?  But, we were not put on this earth to let anything—including illness, another person’s actions, our own self-doubt, or …fill in the blank here—other than God set the limits of our life.  He created us with a purpose that no one and no event can change.  The purpose is one that is uniquely ours, His gift to us and others who He places in our lives.  God only asks that we trust Him to provide what’s necessary to fulfill that purpose in His time.  And in doing so He promises we will see His goodness in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13)