In God’s Hands, Live or Die

July 10, 2025 · by Peter Lundell · in Entries

Cancer was always been something other people had. Until it happened to us.

Kim has pancreatic cancer, stage 4, widely metastasized. We only discovered it after the fact.
After prolonged and stressful struggles with the insurance middle-man company, she started chemotherapy. But that is having complications too. At every test, assessment, or next step everything is worse than we thought.

Yet from the very beginning God has spoken to us and sent people to show us that we are in his hands.

Though pancreatic cancer has a 1 percent survival rate, and that’s with those who catch it early, we still do due diligence and by faith have sought a miraculous healing. Many are praying for her. But if God takes her, we will accept that. We are not our own. We’ve been bought with a price, we are under God’s authority, and we serve his kingdom. To be fair, both of us have long prayed that we wanted to go after our task on earth was done. Her church planting ministry essentially finished around the same time as the diagnosis became clear.

Her main reason to stay, she says, is to not leave me alone. She’s ready either for a miracle to stay and minister with me in my next assignment—or go to heaven and receive her crown and eternal reward.

She’s at peace, but her physical pain is increasingly hard. We have no anger or “why God?” She has lived a full life. And I’ll be there soon enough. Whether we live or die, we’re in God’s hands.

Every day is difficult. All our wonderful plans are canceled. Things I thought we could still do are one by one trampled by the rampaging cancer cells. And my tears are always there to wash it all away.

I’m at a loss to feel how much pain she’s enduring each day, but we’re thankful for medicine. And every day also brings blessings of family, friends, and church people, even doctors and nurses, who have pulled together in massive support that is endlessly beautiful and amazing.

Week after week after week, the endless and rapidly hitting bad news, stress, and anxiety are like being in a hurricane. Yet simultaneously, my spirit is in the eye of that hurricane, at peace with God. It’s strange and beautiful in a brutal way.

When I look into the near future, I see an abyss. It’s dark and scary, and I hate it. But God is in the abyss. He meets me there. And I trust him. Live or die, Kim and I are eternally his, and we’re in his hands. We let go of what we must let go, and we hold fast to the Lover of our souls.

You may have your own hardship, your own hurricane, your own abyss.

But if you are a true follower of Christ, you are not your own; you were bought with a price. And you are in God’s hands. No matter how many tears you shed, no matter how much pain you bear, no matter how traumatic your hurricane, no matter how dark your abyss—God is there in it. Let everything go into his hands. He’s got you.