When Waters Rise
Finding hope in deep waters
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.” — Isaiah 43:2
“When the waters rise, it is not about how prepared you are. It is about who you know.”
Just months after welcoming my fourth child, I heard the words,
“You have cancer.”
I was 36, with a newborn and three other little people who still needed snacks, carpool rides, and bedtime stories.
The future I assumed I had suddenly felt uncertain.
In the early days after my diagnosis, I searched everywhere for encouragement from someone who sounded like me — a mom in the thick of it, picking up Legos off the floor at night while scheduled for chemotherapy the next morning.
Most of what I found was written by women decades further down the road. Their words were helpful, but I longed to hear from someone who understood the strange paradox of putting Band-Aids on skinned knees while carrying the weight of a life-altering diagnosis.
Before cancer, I thought I was preparing myself for suffering by imagining worst-case scenarios. I mistook anxiety for readiness. But when the waters actually rose, I discovered something surprising:
None of that prepared me for this kind of storm.
I’m writing this for you — not because I have it all figured out, and not because I’m looking back on cancer from a safe distance in tidy triumph. I’m still in it. I finished infusions only months ago. My port is still in. Some days I’m still waiting on scan results and praying that I’ll get to watch my little people grow up.
I’m writing this because I desperately need encouragement — and I know many of you do too. Sometimes I write simply to remind myself to keep holding on.
This space exists for people walking through suffering while still showing up for ordinary life. For the mothers making dinner after oncology appointments. For the people carrying fear no one else can fully see. For anyone trying to hold onto faith when life no longer feels controllable.
When suffering enters your story, it can feel like everything is slipping beneath you. But Scripture reminds us that storms are never the end of the story.
My prayer is that this space would remind you that you are not alone — and that even here, in the middle of deep waters, hope can still be found.
When the waters rise, it is not about how prepared you are.
It is about who you know.
You can’t out-think suffering.
You can’t out-plan mortality.
You can’t anxiety-proof your life.
And there is a cost to trying.
The cost is presence.
The cost is joy.
The cost is peace in ordinary Tuesdays.
If you live braced for disaster, you are always partially absent from your own life.
