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...

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...

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...

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...