There Are Good Things Here: Recent Episodes
Norman Hubbard
Life can sometimes get so complicated, confusing, and painful that we lose sight of the good. No one knew that better than Katie Hubbard, a mom of four who lived with cancer for seven years and left 50 journals behind her filled with hope, longing, and sincere faith. If you’re skeptical of simple answers but open to honest searching after God, there are good things here. You’ll find that seven minutes a day is good preparation for living well eternally.
My new book, More Than Christians, comes out on January 14, 2024. The book is dedicated to Katie's parents, Charles and Betsy Hansen, and there's a section in it about my early relationship with "Mr. and Mrs. Hansen." The people we love and who love us have a lot to teach us about the gospel. If this podcast reaches you, consider buying a copy of the book, More Than Christians.
On November 10, 2024, Betsy Hansen passed from this life into the presence of the Savior she loved. Mom Hansen was one of the most influential women in my life, not least because she brought Katie into it! Here are the remarks I shared about her at her funeral.
Today, December 17, 2024, would have been Katie's and my 30th Anniversary. To commemorate this day, I reflect back on some stories from our wedding day. God's goodness and steadfast love have followed me through many years of sorrow and loss. On this day, I remember both: the grief and the goodness.
In this final episode of Season 3, we find Katie Hubbard characteristically wrestling with questions of doubt and faith, death and life, promises of provision and bills to pay. Most of all, we find her true to herself and her God, committed to the hard work of finding good things in the hardest of places. This podcast is probably the final one, so I share some final thoughts.
Katie hated almost everything about cancer treatment, except for the perspective cancer brings. She had a high tolerance for pain but a low tolerance for medication. Constant check-ups and scans left her feeling exposed and anxious. The surgeries, scars and hair loss felt like an assault on her womanhood. Yet, she could write without hesitation to the Lord, “I hate [my] anxiety and the uncertainty I live with, but I do love the perspective that comes with having cancer. Sometimes, I think everyone should have cancer.”
Katie Hubbard closes out 2013 with a long journal entry on everything she had done since mid-November of that year. (She didn’t journal a lot during that time because her journal went missing for a month.) It’s amazing to consider all she did after finishing chemo, radiation, and reconstructive surgery. It would have been a full life for a person in perfect health. Going into 2014, she lists out lessons learned from the previous year:“What Have I Learned:God is trustworthy.He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.I can turn towards Him or away from Him in trials.God will provide.God will provide.”
Lest anyone think I (Norman Hubbard) edit Katie’s journals heavily when I read them on air, let this podcast stand as testimony. In early December 2013, you get pure Katie Hubbard, the quintessential Auburn Tigers football fan. (Really, the "kick 6" game might be one of the greatest moments in sports!) You also see another example of the way Katie wrote out Scripture in her journal as a means of meditating on what God was saying to her. It’s an inspiring model many of us could profitably adopt.
In this episode, Katie Hubbard talks about reconstructive surgery with her followers on Caring Bridge. It may be the only time you hear her publicly threaten to beat you with a baseball bat. And she reflects on a common theme in her journals: having a lot of stuff doesn’t make you grateful.
In this episode, Katie reflects on the challenges and joys of parenting four kids at very different stages of life, losing a friend to cancer, and meditating on Scripture.
In the previous podcast, we found Katie Hubbard struggling with the idea that her life, taken by cancer, might be dispensable. Here, we find her breakthrough as she writes out, Romans 8:38: “For I am persuaded that … death … shall not be able to separate us from the love of God.” She goes on to write of herself, “Katie Hubbard, beloved child of God. If you are loved, you are known, not forgotten. Not wasted. Not dispensable. If I am loved, the You are not holding out on me, withholding from me.”
Katie Hubbard grapples with the distressing notion that cancer might kill her, and God might regard her life as "dispensable." In her words: "I feel shaken to the core. I feel sad. I just feel totally dispensable. How do you face your life being taken away? Not being here at all?! It might not even be necessary for me to be here, according to Your plan."
In her journey with cancer, Katie Hubbard learned a thing or two about what truly satisfies. To God, she wrote, “You are the one thing that I crave and desire that FULFILLS. Everything else leaves me feeling empty.”
Cherishing the beauty of your own backyard. Asking God for the things you want. Trusting him for the things that lie ahead. That’s what you’ll hear from Katie Hubbard in her journal entries from mid-August 2013. And you get classic commentary like this: “You just keep providing, and I keep being stingy and amazed.”
Join Norman Hubbard as he reflects on Katie Hubbard's life, the "voice" of this podcast, and Jesus' promises of eternal life. January 25, 2024 is the 8th anniversary of Katie's passing.
Katie Hubbard tried to find her footing in "the land of the living" after weeks of chemotherapy had kept her sidelined. Resuming something like normal life meant confronting the anxiety of normal life. She wrote down a quote from a friend about Satan's goal to turn us into "cowardly joyless souls" by filling us with fear.
Katie Hubbard had lived under the shadow of cancer and cancer treatment so long, it was hard to look ahead with hope. Even so, that's what her God and her garden asked her to do. Sitting under her new pergola (of course), she meditated on the way that spring flowers gave way to mid-summer blooms. She felt challenged to look ahead with hope in the Lord. This was important because she also decided to stop her chemo regimen early. It was taking too much away with too little promise of helping.
Katie Hubbard must have spent every morning in June of 2013 under her new pergola thinking about the troubles in her world and the beauty of her God. I don't know that you need a pergola to do so, but if you do, find a friend to build you one. For Katie, it proved to be a place of peace where she could slow down (inwardly) to meditate on the presence and goodness of God in a troubled world.
Katie Hubbard was capable of tutoring an entire generation on thanksgiving in the face of suffering. Many of us know what it's like to write a half-hearted thank-you note or "give thanks" over a meal. It's an honest effort to do what's right, and we ought to keep trying honestly. However, Katie disciplined herself to find the good in her kids and her circumstances so that she could give thanks with the kind of feeling most of us only aspire to.
In her journal entries for late May 2013, Katie wonders how to trust God for the healing that others need. She was not only walking through her own cancer journey but also praying for friends whose cancers had recurred. Her true struggle was not with medication and side effects at this point. It was an inward struggle to trust God in the face of perplexity. (She also had to figure out how to keep me from spending too much money.)
As Katie wrestled with her own sickness and fear, she knew how tempting it was to turn her eyes only on herself. The Scriptures were calling her to focus on God's holiness with humility. GK Chesterton's quote captures Katie's reflections masterfully: "How much larger your life would be if you were smaller in it."
Katie was not just struggling with cancer. She was struggling with self-pity. Everyone in the world would have given her a pass, but she would not allow herself to go down that road.
From Isaiah 40:13, 14, Katie Hubbard wrote, "From whom did God take counsel, and who instructed him and taught him the paths of justice?" Her reflection on this thought: "You seek no counsel or direction. You are the perfect source. From you flows justice, truth, knowledge, direction." Words likes these anchored Katie as she finished radiation and faced another round of chemo.
"I have to walk through this valley no matter what. No matter how I respond, I am still here. So I can slog through with bitterness and a pity party or I can choose light, love, thanksgiving. God I need the Holy Spirit to work in me love, joy! I can't walk this in my own strength. I can't choose rightly apart from you." —Katie Hubbard, April 2013
As Katie Hubbard faced the challenges of radiation and the fear of losing her life to cancer, she told the Lord what she often told me. If she only had her own interests in mind, she would choose heaven in a heartbeat. Her concerns were all for us, especially the children. So what do you do with earthly fears and eternal confidence that are both so strong and seem to be pulling you in opposite directions?
Stress and anxiety have a way of driving us forward while blinding us to reality. Katie Hubbard was experiencing massive anxiety as she faced radiation, but she was beginning to analyze the deeper cause of her stress. In her own words: "I think I have come to the crux of my anxiety: 'Thy will be done.' I want MY will in all of this: no more cancer, me here. And I can't make that happen or make you make that happen."
After Katie Hubbard's diagnosis with recurrent breast cancer, she struggled to take every stressful thought captive. The idea behind this comes from 2 Corinthians 10:5, "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." In its original context, the verse had to do with combatting false teaching from others. In Katie's situation—and often enough in our own—we deal with internalized false teaching. We doomcast about our future and spend our lives guided by inward fears. Perhaps you understand something about the "battle" with cancer. Katie will help you see that there's more to the battle than radiation and chemotherapy. There's an inner battle involved in taking every stressful thought captive.
For me (Norman Hubbard), it's an emotional start to a new season of the podcast. Today is the 7th anniversary of Katie's passing, and it falls very close to the time of year when she was diagnosed with recurrent breast cancer ten years ago. Opening up her journals and this chapter of our life together is still very painful for me. (I decided not to edit my tears out of the recorded audio.) More important than my tears, however, are her words as she reflects on God's Word. There is no distant shore of distress or depth of pain where a child of God will be abandoned: "If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there ... if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand will lay hold of me" (Psa 139:8-10).
Katie closed her journal entries for 2009 by reflecting on a December that was a fitting end to a hard year! Everyone in our family got sick with strep the week before Christmas. We were so sick we could not even celebrate Katie's birthday (which happened to be our anniversary). However, everyone was back on their feet for our pilgrimage to Wisconsin to be with family for the holiday. Katie rejoiced at the splendid winter weather ... and the chance to go shopping with her mom. If you asked her at the time how she was doing, she would say, "Really well, and forever altered; deeply happy and profoundly emotional; up, and down!" Maybe her experience is not too far from your own. May her reflections strengthen you.
In September and October of 2009, things were looking up for Katie after months of feeling bad from cancer treatment. Consistent with her custom of talking with God about everything, Katie looked up because things were looking up. She offers a tremendous prayer where she reflects on God's abundance and asks him to draw her out of a mindset of poverty and want. "My resources are lacking," she writes, "but you're are infinite through eternity." Her journal is a great reminder to look up when things are looking up.
As Katie Hubbard geared up for a new school year, she found herself confronted with so many negative thoughts about the challenges of life with cancer, kids, and limited resources. As she listed her troubles in her journal, she prayed for the courage to trust God in the face of trials and uncertainty. "You have given us promises for times of storm and trial," she wrote, "not blue sky and ease."
Katie Hubbard was recovering strength after several rounds of chemotherapy for breast cancer. Though her progress wasn't without setbacks, she was looking ahead and looking back on the lessons she had learned: how trials produce character; how God has to be trusted to hold all things together; and how God is big enough to do so. She wasn't just recovering strength after cancer treatment, she was developing trust, hope and gratitude.
Katie Hubbard never quit meditating on what it meant to walk with God in faith. The pressure of a cancer diagnosis, the challenges of chemotherapy, and the worry about her future just made the question more insistent in her mind: What does it mean for a person to walk with God in faith?
As Katie Hubbard regained her strength after chemotherapy, she faced all the fears the future might hold for her. More importantly, she turned to the Lord and his word to figure out how to live forward. She was resolved to hear God and trust him, no matter what, taking her cue from the greatest story of deliverance in the Old Testament.
After months away from her personal journal during chemotherapy, Katie Hubbard reopened a dialogue with the Lord about his power and our weakness. She wrestled with her own anxiety about money and wondered whether she truly trusted the Lord. In characteristic Katie Hubbard fashion, she considers how effortlessly God sends abundant rain and concludes, “You work out of abundance, no limits, vast power, perfect holiness, complete wisdom.”
Katie Hubbard excelled at passing on perspective, even when chemotherapy was making her miserable. As she chronicles her final round of chemo, with all its lows and woes, she helps us enter into the valley. That’s one of the gifts she gave as she blogged through this journey. She helped fellow-travelers with cancer and friends who will never face cancer understand what it’s like to laid low … and to look up.
This is quite simply one of the best podcasts you will listen to as Katie Hubbard wrestles through the darkness of cancer into the light of God. This entry from her blog is nearly miraculous, because she was at a physical low point from chemo and fighting through dense mental fog. Even words were hard to come by during this time … until she sat down to proclaim the good things God had done for her. If ever there were a podcast that capture the radiance in her soul in the darkest hours, this is it: “Mountains had become, in my mind, immovable. So God has flattened me on my back and said, ‘Look UP!’”
In this week’s podcast, Katie Hubbard reflects on the difficulties of raising a toddler while undergoing chemo. She also humorously recounts how perilous it can be to pack a diaper bag with chemo brain. With her third chemo treatment behind her, she takes some solace in the fact that she only has to do this “one more time.” Those were hard words to read so many years on.
As Katie Hubbard lived through her second round of chemo, she found grace from God through the Scriptures that encouraged her not to fear. This was particularly important for her as her hair fell out and she decided to shave it off. Katie’s words during this time teach us how search out the balance between staying grateful and staying honest about your pain.
In her blog post, Katie Hubbard shares a cherished family memory that involves Rachel’s baptism and a pair of very small pants. You’ll want to listen in! She also reflects on her struggle with being so sidelined and energy-less as a mom. One friend’s child even prayed, “Lord, help Mrs. Hubbard know how to do nothing!”
Katie Hubbard was adjusting to life with a toddler (along with 3 older kids) while undergoing her first round of chemo for breast cancer. Things got pretty interesting right away as some of the kids got sick at home, while the fog of ‘chemo brain’ settled on Katie. Throw in insomnia and loss of appetite, and it’s a wonder she could write with the wit she did about her experiences. At the same time, she meditated on the grace that had carried her through these difficult days, knowing that same grace would carry the children, too.
When Katie Hubbard started chemotherapy for breast cancer, she stopped writing in her journal but started writing more frequently on her Caring Bridge blog. The world is probably a better place for it, because more people got a window into the practical and emotional challenges of going through cancer treatment for the first time. In this episode, you'll find Katie doing what she can to find the good and express it with humor as she begins chemotherapy for breast cancer.
In mid-April 2009, Katie Hubbard picked up her pen and journal after a few weeks away (recovering from surgery). The three entries from this time all focus on God’s purposes in times of testing and his power in our weakness. Katie also reflects on the fact that Jesus, who never did any wrong, learned obedience through suffering. If “the captain of our faith” suffered, how should we expect to pass through life without suffering, too?
For the first time since receiving her initial cancer diagnosis, Katie Hubbard finally received good news: there was no evidence that her cancer had spread. Though she couldn’t write in her journal (because she had drainage tubes under her arm from the mastectomy), she did post a couple of updates on Caring Bridge about the relief that good new brought. Of course, learning that the worst hadn’t happened gave her the mental space to process the hard things that had happened. In her own words, she almost fainted twice in one day thinking about the surgeries she had been through. Even so, the kids were back at home with all the energy they brought, and Katie was resolved to find the good (and even humorous) things in life as we were living it.
When Katie Hubbard went in for a mastectomy and initial pathology on her breast cancer, she was prepared for good news and bad news. She did not know there was a third option: even worse news. When Katie woke up from anesthesia, she discovered the doctor had to remove all her lymph nodes, putting her at long-term risk of developing lymphedema. It also meant waiting for a pathology report to stage the cancer and move on with treatment. In this bleak hour, Katie relied on Romans 8:28 about how God works for the good of those who love him, no matter the circumstances. In doing so, she staked the peace of her soul on the promises of God.
In this episode, Katie wrestles with practical and emotional demands of an upcoming mastectomy and lymph node biopsy. She knew the procedure would leave her humbled and scarred. None of us knew what it would say about the stage of her cancer. Both the known and the unknown were heavy loads to carry.
In her journal entries for mid-March 2009, Katie Hubbard describes the apprehension she felt after and MRI biopsy to determine whether her breast cancer had spread. “What will today bring?" she asks the Lord. “Good news? Bad news? No news?” This is the tension every person (and family) lives with after an initial cancer diagnosis. In Katie’s case, she received bad news that she would have to have a mastectomy. This led her to a lot of soul-searching and she cried out to God for help. One of the most searching moments you will find her journal comes when she writes, “I will have wounds. You have wounds … but you had no anesthesia.” In the midst of her pain, she was discovering how Jesus had entered her pain already to be with her in the suffering.
Katie Hubbard gives a rare glimpse into her heart and mind as she prepares for a follow up MRI and biopsy after her initial cancer diagnosis. You will be inspired (and sobered) by her raw pleas for help, and you'll smile at comments like, "I survived my MRI! Thankfully, Lord, I had you and two Valium." Mostly, she wanted the procedures to be painless and the news to be good, but she recognized that her Savior, Jesus, had "suffered without anesthesia". She was learning what her own share of suffering would entail at this time.
As Katie Hubbard lived through the early days of a cancer diagnosis, she faced the fatigue and fear you'd expect. She also took the time to write short entries of prayer to the Lord. Many of us feel like we ought to say something substantial to God when we pray. That's not a bad idea if you can manage it. If you have a one-year-old who won't sleep, an unexpected cancer diagnosis, and worries about how you're going to make it financially, it may be better not to force things, though. In the early days of her cancer diagnosis, Katie Hubbard shows that you can write (pray) the simple things—like praise and thanksgiving—when life gets complex.
As Katie Hubbard tried to wrap her mind around her initial diagnosis of breast cancer, she was not traveling alone. The philosopher-pastor Dallas Willard was helping shape her thinking through his book, The Renovation of the Heart. She wondered whether it was possible for God to transform her in the midst of her trials. In her words, "What if all of these tribulations produced perseverance, character, and hope? What if I looked to the future glorying in tribulations, instead of cowering in fear that something might go wrong?" What if your trials could accomplish the same thing in you? Katie Hubbard was not simply trying to wrap her mind around an initial cancer diagnosis; rather, she was fixing her mind on the promises of God in Jesus Christ.
Welcome to the second season of There Are Good Things Here, the podcast where we follow Katie Hubbard's journal entries through her first year with a breast cancer diagnosis. The podcast opens with Katie's prayers and reflections on the normal busy-ness of life with four kids, lots of company, and the stresses of life near the end of the Great Recession. Katie's practice had always been to process her days in prayer to God, often writing out her prayers in her journal. On January 27, 2009, she received word that a biopsy on a mass from her right breast had come back positive for breast cancer. What do you do when life takes such an unexpectedly hard turn? You turn to God and the truths of his word. At least, that's what Katie Hubbard did when she was first confronted with an initial breast cancer diagnosis.
Katie Hubbard's journal entry when she was first diagnosed with cancer in 2009
Katie Hubbard journals came to an end the way that her life did, with an expression of trust in Jesus in the midst of the trials with cancer. She still brought her prayers and concerns to the Lord to the very last. She mentioned her own sickness, but she concentrated on how the kids were doing at a new school. She also kept praying for the sale of our house. Katie was, if this expression can be used, a "practical saint". The trials of cancer could no more shake her from her practical concerns than they could her trust in Jesus. She held firmly to both until the end. May we have the grace to do so, too.
Katie Hubbard was nearing the end of her cancer journey on earth, as her comments about dying well suggest. The full quote from her journal, written one month before she passed, was: "If I am to die soon, I would like to die well, which is easier said than done." It may not have been easy to do, but she did it. She kept God and her family in focus throughout it all. She kept giving her life away to others, and she didn't complain about her lot. She kept her Bible and heart open to God. These are some of the dominant themes you see in her journals, and you saw them in her life, too. She proved through her own journey with cancer that living well and dying well are possibilities for a person who trusts in Jesus.
Katie Hubbard was living through her favorite holiday, Christmas, one final time in 2015. She wondered openly—to her journal if not to the world—whether this would be her last. The angels announced good news of great joy to the shepherds when Jesus was born (see Luke 2:10). Katie wrote poignantly, almost prophetically: "Good tidings. Great joy. Will I know those two things here on this earth again?" In retrospect, the painful answer to that question was, "No." However, it seems significant that Katie phrased the question, "here on this earth." There would be no more good news here on this earth, but soon Katie would hear glad tidings of great joy that would last for all eternity.
The days leading up to Christmas in 2015 were filled with frustration because of cancer, fatigue, and preparations to move from IL to WI. As she surveyed the scripture, Katie Hubbard knew two things: unbelief would make the journey ahead harder and there were poor people around her already suffering misery during the holidays. As her cancer pain grew more pronounced, she was more attentive to other peoples' hardships. She also knew where she had to focus her attention during a Christmas with cancer.
In this podcast episode, Katie Hubbard gives you a window into all the small stresses that compounded her challenge of living with advanced stage cancer. Anyone rubbing shoulders with her during this time would know that she was taking most of her frustrations to the Lord, instead of airing them out for others to hear. At the same time, she was reading through Deuteronomy to keep herself anchored in her faith. She believed that the Lord would work "little by little" through the hard things confronting her. The greatest the challenge of living with advanced stage cancer was not the pain or the fear, but the challenge of trusting the Lord in the midst of it all.
How could a woman living with a terminal cancer diagnosis possibly feel like she was under a benevolent magic spell? For Katie Hubbard, it boiled down to this: she could see example after example of how God had been generous to her. This podcast provides a wonderful window into the power of a proper perspective. When Katie kept her eyes on God—his word and his provision—the world seemed magical even though her life consisted mostly of trips from the bed to the bathroom.
Katie Hubbard was nearing the end of her long journey through life with cancer. She didn't know how close, of course, but she could sense it. Curiously, her Bible reading had taken her from Genesis through the Torah, to the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses contemplates the ways of God on "this side of the Jordan River". He will not cross over. In this podcast, Katie reflects on her everyday life and her deeper meditations on life if the Lord does not allow her to keep living forward.
"What do you do on this side of the Jordan? You review what you already know to be true. Remind yourself of the promises and what God has already said." May we all have grace to do the same on the long journey of life.
Katie Hubbard walked the road of life with God knowing that veering off to the right or to the left would lead her into futility and fear, especially with cancer. Nothing helped her keep her gaze more fixedly on God that reading the Scriptures diligently. When she beheld God in the word, she was better able to glimpse him in the world. When she was the ways of God in Leviticus, she could see how he was at work in the furniture outlet in Arcola, IL. If this sounds odd, you should give it a try.
Katie Hubbard's journal entries from mid-November 2015 cover the range of emotions from gratitude to repentance to impatience for a cure for cancer. Two things stand out: First, all her emotional output is directed God-ward. It's gratefulness to God, repentance toward God, and impatience with God ... before God. Second, all her emotional wrestling is done with an open Bible on her lap as she reads Genesis and Exodus. Katie rarely (if ever) engaged in an emotional free-for-all. She usually processed her heart on the pages of her journal through the pages of the Scripture she was reading. If her journals offer one, consistent challenge to all of us, whether we are praying for a cure for cancer or not, it is to stay open before God with our Bibles open before God.
It seems almost ironic that Katie Hubbard "happened" to be reading the book of Exodus as cancer forced her to pack her home for a move from Illinois to Wisconsin. She models a very active approach to listening for God's voice as she reads her Bible. At one point she noticed how much more difficult the situation became for the Israelites when Moses came back to deliver them. Perhaps their situation had to grow more difficult so they would see the necessity of leaving. "Like us," is Katie's simple reflection. Cancer had forced a move that she would not have willingly undertaken otherwise.
This episode takes you into one of Katie Hubbard's most searching journal entries where she weighs all the good happening around her against the reality that she is dying from cancer. Friends and family were surrounding us to help us prepare our home for the market in Illinois, so that we could move closer to family in Wisconsin. The amount of support we were experiencing was staggering, and Katie never failed to give thanks for it. Yet, as the last line of her journal entry says it best, "We have had so many good things to happen, yet all under the specter of hard, hard, hard."
This episode marks the first entry in Katie Hubbard's last journal, chronicling her faith and hope as she lived with cancer. With characteristic wit, she relays how she advised God that "it only takes one buyer" to sell a house. God responded to her that by saying, "Don't tell me how to sell your house." Katie would have probably said it was a gentle reminder, not a harsh rebuke. She wrote the entry with a smiley face and expressed anticipation about how God would act on our behalf.
Katie Hubbard was struggling with the mind-numbing effects of narcotics to keep her cancer pain at bay, yet she knew the consoling help of God. From Scriptures like Psalm 34, she knew that God saw and heard her. She knew that believers who share in the sufferings of Christ also share in the consolations of God. She experienced both on the day she went to the mall and realized she would need a wheelchair to get around.
On October 14, 2015 Katie woke up tired and sad on her long road with cancer. What did she do with her feelings in that state? She canvassed the book of Job in the Bible, and wrote out verse after verse in her journal. Those who believe that religion offers only a crutch to people who are suffering might be hard-pressed to account for what she wrote. There are more questions than answers in this journal entry, just as there are in the book of Job itself. What mattered to Katie on her long road with cancer was that she was asking those questions of a God who was listening and who was not silent in the face of her sadness.
Katie Hubbard began her journal entries in October 2015 facing her greatest anxieties with cancer. Her greatest anxieties happened not to be the normal ones: a fear of death or the probability of pain. She was most anxious about how her family would fare in her absence. From the devotional book, Jesus Calling, she heeded God's invitation to write out her anxieties and bring them into the light of God's presence and goodness. When you are facing your greatest anxieties, whether it be with cancer or kids or an unknown future, will you place them alongside the promises of God?
Katie Hubbard was feeling the stress of cancer and parenting, yet she believed that every circumstance coming at her had been filtered through the hands of a loving Heavenly Father. Some people assume that is a cop out when you can't explain the bitterness of life. Others say things like this when they are desperately grasping at hope. Katie had spent a lifetime cultivating the confidence that every circumstance, including cancer, reached her after it had filtered through the hands of her Heavenly Father. With this kind of faith—faith that is its own kind of inner strength—she penned her last entry on Caring Bridge in an attempt to encourage others who might be growing weary in prayer.
Home from Mexico, Katie Hubbard was beginning a new alternative therapy for cancer that left her feeling pretty bad. She had gone through all the traditional regimens of chemo and radiation, and she was searching for any alternative that might extend her life for the sake of her kids. Though none of us knew it at the time, her systems were already beginning to slow down in advance of her death.
You can hear in her journal how badly she wanted something to work. She wasn't afraid of death for herself, but for others. May we all find ourselves in the same place someday, longing to stay on earth for the good of others but confident of eternal life when this one ends.
Katie Hubbard faced some powerful internal doubts about moving from Illinois to Wisconsin while her health was failing, but she decided to rely on God's facts instead of her fears. She found assurance of God's power and providence from Habakkuk 3:19 and Isaiah 48:17. She regarded these promises as facts to be relied upon, not lofty sentiments to be hoped for. Her journal entry comes to an end with a powerful question and pointed answer: "Q: What are God's facts? A: My grace is sufficient for you." No matter where you are, you can rely on God's facts instead of your fears.
In late August 2015, Katie Hubbard was struggling to hold on to hope in the face of mounting discouragements with cancer. Life was moving full-speed ahead with her oldest child beginning college and all the demands of preparing to move from Illinois to Wisconsin. You can hear in her journals how deeply she longed for some promise from God that she would be healed. Even so, her greatest desire was to stay close to God—pliable and tender—rather than letting circumstances, stress, and disappointment make her hard and bitter. This episode will encourage people dealing cancer ... or just life ... to know how to hold on to hope.
Katie Hubbard really wanted to trust the Lord moving forward ... with cancer treatment, with building a new home, with life! In this episode, she journals her way through several of the pressures she was feeling, not the least of which was how we would pay for our new home in Wisconsin.
In the midst of her processing, she writes out or alludes to several Scriptures that were beckoning her not to worry or to trust in God's provision. The greatest pressure, of course, was "cancer, cancer, cancer," as she says. The final sentence in this podcast is a sobering reminder: just a year before, doctors had predicted she might only live a year. Katie knew what it meant to trust the Lord moving forward. We can too, but we will have to walk hard roads like the one she was walking.
As Katie Hubbard thought about the demands of moving from Illinois to Wisconsin, she also thought about the prospect of true rest when the Lord called her home. She wasn't exactly facing the hope of heaven with serenity. Rather, she was fighting through constant anxiety and fear to lay hold of the promises of God. She was also making hard (and sometimes wonderful) decisions about building a home in Neenah, Wisconsin near our family. In a time filled with fear, she found hope in the assurance of true rest in her true home with the Lord.
In this week's podcast, Katie Hubbard can be found building a fire with her seven year old son, Joe, and pondering what it means to live without fear for your kids in the face of cancer. We were visiting Wisconsin from Illinois, as we made preparations to move to a new place, so Katie could be closer to family for whatever time she had left.
This episode finds her revisiting a familiar passage of Scripture from 2 Samuel 7, where God had established King David after many tumultuous years. Katie had been through her share of turmoil over the years, but she knew that God could be relied on to draw good things out of hard times. The hardest place of trust for her was probably choosing to live without fear for her kids in the face of cancer.
Almost no entry Katie Hubbard wrote during her final year of life captures her heart and highest values like the words from July 25, 2015. Only four words say so much. Katie characteristically addresses herself directly to the Lord, in gratitude that she was home from Mexico and together with the kids again. I imagine that she will say something like this to us all when we meet again.
This week's podcast also features Tom Hubbard, our oldest son, reading and reflecting on a journal entry Katie wrote at the end of July. It was penned almost 6 months to the day before she died, and just days before Tom's birthday. You will be blessed to hear Tom's voice and his reflections about his mom.
Katie Hubbard was undergoing alternative therapy and thinking about eternal life. She was not ready to die -- "far from it" -- but she was more than willing to face death and the life that is to come. Sitting in a hospital bed in Mexico, she asks powerfully and poignantly what it says about us that we are so reluctant to die.
Katie Hubbard was pursuing alternative cancer treatment but looking to the Lord for help. This was a hallmark of her journey through life with cancer. So much was uncertain ... even the ways of God. However, God's nearness, goodness, and power were Katie's constant source of help. You and I can trust God's character even when we cannot trace his ways.
Katie Hubbard had come to the end of chemotherapy options, but she was grateful (and sad!) to have an alternative cancer treatment option available. In early July 2015, we were planning to board a plane for Mexico to pursue another course of therapy.
For some people, alternative therapy is a first choice. For Katie, it was a last resort. Her body simply couldn't tolerate any more chemo treatments. She wanted to satisfy herself that, for the sake her kids, she had done everything possible to beat the progress of cancer. The open door to pursue alternative treatment made her grateful but also broke her heart.
As Katie looked back on an unconventional life that was rapidly headed toward an untimely death, she had no regrets. This blog post, written in 2015 for other women in vocational ministry, makes two things clear: she was grateful for her years in ministry, and she remained single-minded about her goal. As she put it, "I don’t want recognition, fame. I don’t want the big selling book, I don’t want a thousand people at Nav Nite…I want laborers."
She knew that God had promised to reach the world through the faithful witness and service of those who would reach and raise up other disciples. That's what she had devoted her life to, and that's what mattered to her in the end. The glory of God and the progress of the gospel through life-to-life disciple making: that was enough for Katie. She looked back on her life with no regrets, because she had obeyed God's call and trusted him with the outcome.
In this podcast, Katie refers to an email from a friend (Wendy) who had received a lot of help from others when her husband was terminally ill. The email (and the painting) meant a lot to Katie at a time where she was on the receiving end of a lot of help. I thought you might want to see the image here on the website at therearegoodthingshere.com.
As the battle rages, Aaron and Hur help Moses keep his hands lifted.
Katie Hubbard was running out of cancer treatment options but not faith that God could heal her if He wanted to. As she contemplated the prospect of alternative treatment in Mexico and meditated on Namaan's story from 2 Kings 5, she sincerely asked God again to heal her from cancer. She knew the road of right thinking was getting harder, the longer she lived with metastatic disease. She also felt like her grace to bear it was running out. So, she asked again in faith for God to heal her of cancer.
If He had, this podcast would be a very different experience for you. As it stands, God was not planning to answer Katie's prayer in the way she asked. Yet, her ultimate hope was not fixed on the answer she wanted but on the God she trusted. What about you?
At the halfway point of this first season of "There Are Good Things Here", Katie Hubbard reminds us all that God is the source of all the goodness we seek. This episode in not a re-broadcast—but it is a re-reading—of Katie's journal entry from June 18, 2015. The podcast began (actually, it was episode 2) with this entry because it represents Katie's perspective so well. She didn't hope to become famous and she didn't want to write things for personal glory. Rather, she found herself increasingly impressed with the source of all goodness in God.
Katie Hubbard peppers the pages of her June journal with pithy questions like this, "What does God want to do with this life he bought?" She gives credit where it's due, to our friend and mentor Vic Black who said this in his book, Speak Lord.
Katie also records her own proverbial observation, "The tradeoff to losing your youth is that (hopefully) you gain perspective." She certainly had lost the one and gained the other. That's what enabled her to live the answer to the question, "What does God want to do with this life he bought?"
There's a bonus feature in this episode, too. I include the questions we used to use to help our kids evaluate a movie. This came up in a recent conversation over dinner with friends, and, lo and behold, it showed up in Katie's email in June 2015.
In characteristic fashion, Katie Hubbard explained the ups and downs of a "cancer straightaway" by saying, "I focus on what I have not what I have lost". This was her secret when the currents of life were tumultuous and when they were relatively calm.
You and I can experience the same kind of life with God in Christ, but we can't simply will it into existence. We have to practice the same kind of Scripture meditation and deliberate thanksgiving she did. This will help us be able to say with greater gratitude to the Lord, "I focus on what I have, not what I have lost."
In this episode, Katie Hubbard signs off her final journal entry for May 2015 with the words "after we have suffered, things will be made right." That conviction didn't come from observing her circumstances, but from observing the ways of God in the book of Genesis. Joseph suffered many things through his life, but God exalted him in time. If I can nudge a very powerful statement from Dr. King in a slighty more biblical direction, Katie understood that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward righteousness". After we have suffered for a little while, things will be made right.
In this episode, you also get a feel for Katie Hubbard, the mama bear ... the Christian mama bear living with cancer. She sent an email to our school principal asking (constructively) why families were limited to 5 tickets for the graduation ceremony. Let's just say that the principal responded positively and made all the tickets we needed available.
If you read the journals of Katie Hubbard without reference to the dates, you would think she was always seeing astonishing things from God's word. As was often the case, though, there had been a lapse of more than two weeks since Katie had last journaled. When she took up her pen again, it was to remark on her sorrow for a young man who had committed suicide and to marvel at the astonishing things from God's word
This week's episode features guest host, Rachel Hubbard, reading a letter that Katie wrote, encouraging her to smile at the future. Rachel, our third-born child, received this letter on her 8th grade retreat in 2015. Katie wrote to affirm and encourage her. There are some priceless memories from Rachel's early years, plus characteristic Katie-wisdom about life. Rachel also reads a letter that I wrote on the same occasion. Hearing these letters today brings tears to my eyes, but hearing Katie's words remind me, too, to smile at the future.
Katie Hubbard knew that her cancer was progressing, but she was able to face eternity with excitement. She also knew a thing or two about parenting through the ups and downs of life. This podcast will take you through two journal entries, one email update, and a blog entry that Katie wrote for moms in ministry. You'll find loads of Solomon-like wisdom from a well-seasoned mom living with cancer, and you'll discover secrets about how to face eternity with excitement.
Katie Hubbard knew how to spot God's providential care, not because her life was easy but because she kept looking toward him not her circumstances or herself. The title of this podcast, There Are Good Things Here, doesn't imply that life is easy but that God is good. God's providential care surrounds those who love him and have been called into his eternal, saving purposes.
Katie asked for a huge miracle of healing. God didn't grant her that request. Along the way, though, she learned to keep her focus on the good things he was doing by giving thanks. She also kept her attention on his word. The last words of her last journal entry in April 2015 were these: " Fear ye not, stand still and behold the salvation of the Lord, which He will shew you this day. For the Egyptians whom ye have seen this day, ye shall never see them again. The Lord shall fight for you, therefore hold you, your peace." (Exodus 14:13,14, KJV)
Through her journey with cancer, Katie Hubbard had to learn an art of stillness that deepened her faith in God. She believed that God himself was a strong rock that remained stable when all else was shifting or uncertain. From that place of stability, she offered one of her deepest prayers in her final year: "not my will but yours be done".
Join Katie as she reflects on this prayer of Jesus: it's not resignation but total trust. So deep had her own faith taken her through hours of stillness on the long road of cancer that she actually says, "If it weren't for Norman and the kids, I don't know if I would ask for healing."
What would you do with more time and mental space on your hands? Katie Hubbard lets you know where her heart was inclined when time was on her hands. She kept juggling many of the demands of life (Easter preparations, speaking at church, prom dress shopping), but when cancer forced her to slow down, she turned to Jesus.
May this brief episode bless and challenge you. What would you do with more time and mental space?
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Peter 1:3)
On Easter Sunday 2015, Katie Hubbard knew that she was dying. She also knew she had to stand in front of Twin City Bible Church (our home church in Illinois) and describe what it meant for her to have a living hope. She told about her cancer journey, pointed people to Jesus, and expressed her own confidence in the Lord.
Katie did not hope in a miracle cure, though we both prayed for a miracle and a cure. Instead, her living hope was anchored to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. May her testimony inspire and challenge you.
Katie refers to her four kids in her testimony. This picture was taken in April 2015.Kayla, Katie, Tom, Joe, Norman, and Rachel
In this episode, Katie Hubbard talks about living life as a mom in ministry with no regrets. When you say 'yes' to Jesus, you often walk an unconventional road. However, as Katie makes clear in a journal entry and email, the way is filled with blessing.
You will appreciate Katie's characteristic humor in this podcast, along with her down to earth account about the challenges of motherhood. More than that, I hope you'll be inspired to keep saying 'yes' to the Lord. There may be no greater joy than to look on a life well-lived and say, "I know it's coming to an end, and I would do it all again." Are you living life with no regrets?
In this episode, Katie Hubbard simply ponders examples from Scripture where people express faith or disbelief in the face of fear and pain. “Where is your faith?” It was a question Jesus asked many people in his day, and Katie heard the divine challenge in her own.
Her subsequent journal entry ends with an epigram, the kind she was known for: “I am trading my physical symptoms for mental ones. I must cling to what is true rather than what I feel.”
Finally, I read from my own journal entry from mid-March of 2015. I thought it might interest some of you to hear how I was processing life (really, my own sin) during this same period of our journey.
In this episode, Katie Hubbard writes about the fruit of faith and the frustration of missed expectations in the struggle with cancer. “The fruit of faith. Hope. Courage. God is pleased. Fortitude. Stepping out. Encouragement for others.”
She had no idea what kind of impact she was leaving behind when she wrote the words, “Without faith and belief, what do we have to offer others?” Her words are raw and powerful as she asks God what her own future will hold, as she tries to hold on to her faith in the present.
Katie probes the question of what faith means for others and for herself in the face of cancer.
Katie Hubbard was coming to grips with the extent of pain and suffering in the world as she waited for her own miracle. She also knew that the trials recorded in the Bible far outnumbered the miracles recorded. What is more, you can't minister to people in pain unless you've experienced it yourself.
That was a lesson Katie learned well. She was waiting on a miracle herself in the face of her own pain and suffering. Yet her heart was growing softer toward a hurting world around her. That is a miracle in itself!
Katie would often say (in her mom's words) that trials can make you bitter or better. Perhaps her journey will help you see how suffering can make you better, softer, more compassionate when you keep turning your attention to Jesus.
Please take note that Katie was also turning her attention to Plutarch! What a fantastic window into the kind of person she was. Though she felt so sick that she could hardly leave her room, she was expanding her mind by reading The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (as a part of her reading in The Great Books of the Western World).
"We want the miracles of Acts but not the trials."
Katie Hubbard had struggled through the final week of February 2015, but she surged into a new season of faith and hope in the face of cancer when March rolled around. She identifies the source of the change in her first journal entry for the month. The first was practical, or circumstantial. We rearranged our bedroom to make it beautiful and functional for her when she didn't have the energy to go anywhere but didn't want to stay in bed.
The second reason was deeper. She resolved to do the hard work of believing God. In the face of cancer, faith and hope are easy to let go of. It's easy to find faith foolish or too assume you're standing at the back of the line, nowhere close to receiving another display of God's favor. Katie shows some of the interior work that was going on in her mind and heart that leads to her final declaration for March 1: "I need to accept cancer and quit looking at it as ruining my life. I can have cancer and a good life. it doesn't have to go away in order for me to start living or even enjoy living. I just hav to do what I can around it."
"I can have cancer and a good life."
In this special episode, I want to give you a chance to hear Katie Hubbard in prayer … not just her voice coming through as I read her journal entries … but her actual voice. I recorded a handful of prayer times we shared together in 2014 and 2015. There were not remarkable occasions, but I wanted to capture her heart and voice for the Lord so that others could hear her. (By this point in our lives, we knew she would not survive cancer without a miracle.)
The recording you’re going to hear was made in Illinois in February 2015. As you listen to it, pay attention to the way Katie refers to Scripture. In short, to hear Katie Hubbard in prayer was to hear her telling the Lord what she was learning from The Word.
We learned to pray this way in The Navigators, largely because of the influence of Vic Black, our campus staff. If you'd like to learn more about this kind of prayer, you can check out Vic's book, Speak, Lord, on Amazon or at Navpress.com.
When Katie wrote the two entries featured on today's podcast, cancer treatment and pain medication had combined to leave her so low you can actually see it in her handwriting. If you only had her journal entries, you would assume that she was simply sitting in her bedroom trying to get over her fatigue and nausea. Far from it!
Though she was not letting on to anyone (not even me!) how bad she felt, she was still opening up our home to international guests and visiting alumni. She was also welcoming former students who were learning their chops as new parents.
Where does a person find inner resources to keep giving her life away when cancer treatment and pain medication leave you almost powerless? Katie would surely say the resources didn't come from her, but from God. At least, that's what her journals show. She honestly cried out for help and experienced it in real life.
Katie's journal entry actually reveals how bad she felt. Yet, she kept opening her home and life to others.
The presence of cancer and the threat of paralysis cannot overwhelm a soul that trusts in God. This week’s podcast features Katie at her best in the worst of times. She opens her heart in a journal entry (below), email, and Caring Bridge post with striking vulnerability, spirituality, and wit. She was passing through a deep place of uncertainty in her soul, faced with the reality that cancer was now destroying her spine and threatening her with paralysis.
You see the damage cancer is causing and think "This can't be me"
In the face of it all, she says, “I have no control over the cancer that is relentlessly eating me up, but I do have control over my thoughts, emotions, reactions, and choices.” She quotes from The Incredibles, Rocky, Handel’s Messiah, Jesus, and Lecrae. This podcast is vintage Katie: facing the threat of paralysis with tenacious faith, spunk, and humor. (Her unofficial guide to all the machines they stick you in during cancer treatment is also priceless.)
In these posts, Katie talks about the snap trip we made St. Louis to consult with a spine specialist. We went to Atlanta Bread Company for dinner when all was said and done. We checked into our hotel in the early evening, and Katie had nothing left. She wanted to stay up to keep me company, but she needed to sleep. I remember sitting in the room, just watching her sleep. Hours of watching filled with stillness and sorrow. They are holy to me now.
How do you keep living forward day after day with a Stage IV cancer diagnosis? If you're Katie, you just open your Bible up and read the next passage. Then, you open your journal up and write out the verse(s) that meant the most to you, underlining the words that matter most.
That's what you find in her journal entry from Feb 6, 2015. It's obvious that she wanted to see the salvation of the Lord, just as Israel had. Of course, she was working out that longing while saying "Everyday is such an effort to get up and get going." That's what a Stage IV cancer diagnosis hands you: a hard option to trust God in the face of continual fatigue.
For Katie, one bright spot was the overwhelming kindness of friends who were renovating our motorhome. Another was a fun-filled night for The Navigators at the University of Illinois, a formal Katie helped plan to bless students.
Katie was living with Stage IV cancer and didn't often wake up feeling happy or hopeful. Her journal entry from January 31 was uncharacteristically upbeat for this season of life. She sets a good example for all of us going through hard times. It's OK to feel happy and even better to express it to God!
In this entry, Katie's lighter side really comes through as she recounts a visit we made to Elkhart, IN, "kind of a dumpy town". (Sorry to all of you who love Elkhart.) As we were shopping for supplies for our motorhome, Katie encountered a particularly helpful person and reflected, "I always think of kindness as doing good when it is within your power to do so, and that is what Trina did for us."
Katie was didn't often wake up felling hopeful about her future with cancer, but she almost always stayed thankful. Thankful for small kindnesses, ironic restroom signs, and beautiful decorations.
"I would rather be disappointed ...""... tomorrow we will trust you again."Journal entries for January 24 and 28, 2015
In her entries for January 24 and 28, 2015, Katie reflected on lessons she was learning from fellow-travelers as she walked her own road with cancer. In particular, she was processing the tension she felt over parenting (when you never feel good) and trusting in God for a miracle (when you never feel good).
In times of intense suffering, it's easy to let circumstances cloud your clear thinking. That's when it's most important to have others around you who are supporting you on your journey, not just with meals but with words of truth.
In these two entries from early 2015 (dated January 12 and 14), Katie laments how judgmental she feels as a parent. She has been hard on our son's faults while ignoring her own. She considers the example of the father in the parable of the prodigal son and expresses how much she wants to be generous, rather than judgmental. She also journals about an encouraging word on parenting from a friend. You just show up with what you have—your five loaves and two fish—and trust God for the rest.
"In everything give thanks ..."
As a parent, show up with your five loaves and trust God
"I feel like I have so much to learn."
In case you're wondering, I did ask our son Tom if it was OK for me to share these entries. His response blessed me greatly: "Yeah I’m fine with it honestly. Not scared of my past ... ."
Katie did not shy away from the fatigue and fear that were her constant companions during her years of living with cancer. She was open to the Lord about her fears, her longings, and her concerns. She felt keenly her inadequacies as a mom living with cancer."I don't know how to handle any of this—and how do you handle it when you don't ever feel well?"
I would suggest that one of the ways she handled it was by speaking continually with the Lord about her heart. You'll see in the journal entry above that she also tried to focus attention the Good News, too. This is a pattern you can observe in the Psalms, where the writer often expresses his fear in one stanza and his hope in the next.
Katie managed the pressure she felt to write by writing ... in her journal.
Anytime you write something for others to read, there’s a bit of felt pressure that sneaks in with it. Katie’s journals, of course, were her private prayers and meditations. She also kept up a blog for many years on Caring Bridge. Many of you probably kept up with her life story there. In fact, I encourage you to visit her Caring Bridge page to read her writings for yourself.
What you’ll discover is that Katie was an amazing writer with depth of soul and keen wit. Almost every time she posted an entry, people would say to her, “You should write a book!" I told her that so many times, I lost count. Every time, she would unfailingly look at me and say, "I have four children. When am I supposed to find time to write a book?”
Even so, she was often thinking about it and making notes about her book, which she provisionally titled, “Good Things Here”. What I didn’t know is that she was also inwardly processing the pressure she felt to write. In short, she concluded that she would only write for the glory of God. She never published a book, but she left behind 50 journals that reveal even more of her soul than her public posts did.
This was one of Katie's final journal entries, written about two weeks before she passed away.
When Katie wrote the journal entry featured in today's podcast, she was dying from cancer but growing in faith. You can actually see the toll cancer was taking by observing her unsteady handwriting. With about two weeks to live, however, she was steadying her heart by expressing her trust in her Savior and Lord, Jesus.
Katie used to say—and believe with all her heart—that There Are Good Things Here. She often said that would be the title of her book, if she ever wrote one. No matter how difficult the season with cancer or how barren her soul seemed, she believed that there was goodness to be found in God, his word and his world right here, right now. Only the person whose mind was steadied by faith-filled surrender could find such goodness in the midst of such hardship, though. That's what you see in this journal entry.