I am staring at a small cut image that reads:
“Nothing is impossible with God.” Gospel of Luke 1:37
The words feel different now, it is heavier. My sister had her biopsies. The diagnosis is confirmed: Stage 3 cancer. There are moments when reality arrives not with noise but with weight. You don’t hear it crash. You feel it settle. And yet, almost immediately, another Scripture rose in my mind Gospel of Matthew 8:6-13. The centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant. And Jesus said:
“Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.
When I think about that, it no longer feels like just a miracle story I once read. It feels personal and it feels close. That moment in Matthew now breathes inside Luke 1:37 for me “Nothing is impossible with God.”
But I’ve come to realize something: belief is not passive. It’s not sitting still and hoping something changes. It’s not closing your eyes and pretending you’re not afraid. Belief is a posture. It’s how you stand when everything in you wants to collapse. It’s the quiet decision to trust, even while your hands are shaking. Sometimes, belief looks like a war but not one fought loudly. It’s the kind fought on your knees, in private, where no one sees the tears. That’s what I saw in my sister.
She Did not Collapse into Despair
She didn’t stay in the question, “Why me?” Instead, almost immediately, her mind shifted to, “What do I need to do?” And then she moved. She started securing resources for additional laboratory tests, for consultations with doctors, for mapping out treatment plans. She made calls, inquired, followed up, she gathered information. She began preparing, step by step.
It struck me deeply: her faith did not make her passive. It made her purposeful.
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She Trusted God but She also Showed Up
Thirty-three radiation sessions, six chemotherapy cycles, and blood transfusions because her hemoglobin dropped dangerously low. She went back and forth, seeking assistance, exhausting every possible source. Government agencies, private foundations, and to people who might help. She did not sit still. At the end of one long day, she said:
“I have exhausted everything. And I thanked God that my package plan was lowered to less than 80,000 pesos.” Then she added, quietly but firmly: “I am in the good hands of the Lord who created heaven and earth. I don’t have to worry about a thing.”
Life is truly something. The Big C did not knock on her door politely. It crept in silent, almost like a thief ready to steal her strength, her peace, maybe even her future. But she answered, No.
“My God is bigger than my fear. Clearer than my doubt.”
There is something powerful about watching faith refuse humiliation. She said with conviction:
“I will not humiliate my God by begging in despair. My God will provide what I need to finish this journey triumphantly so that I may one day testify how trustworthy He is, how loyal He remains to every promise.” This is not pretending cancer is small.
Stage 3 is Not Small.
Radiation burns are not small.
Chemotherapy is not small.
Fatigue, nausea, low blood counts these are not small.
"…And the servant was healed at that very moment"."
When I sit with that line, it no longer feels like a distant miracle story tucked inside Scripture. It feels personal and present. That moment in Matthew now breathes inside Luke 1:37 for me“Nothing is impossible with God.”
But I’ve come to understand something: belief is not passive. It isn’t sitting still, waiting for the sky to split open. It isn’t pretending you’re not afraid. Belief is a posture. It’s how you stand when everything in you wants to fold. It’s the quiet decision to trust while your hands are still trembling.
Sometimes belief looks like a battle but not the loud kind. It’s a war fought on your knees, in private, where no one sees the tears. That’s what I saw in my sister. She did not collapse into despair. She didn’t linger in the question, “Why me?” Almost immediately, her mind shifted to something else: “What do I need to do?”
And then she moved. She began securing resources for additional laboratory tests, for consultations, for treatment plans. She made calls. She inquired about costs. She searched for support. She mapped out what needed to happen next. Thirty-three sessions of radiation. Six cycles of chemotherapy. Blood transfusions because her hemoglobin had dropped so low. She didn’t deny the weight of it but she refused to freeze under it.
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It struck me deeply: her faith did not make her passive. It made her purposeful.
And I’ve also come to see that when faith is rooted deeply, it isn’t small either. What moves me most is not the bravery people might see in public. It’s her discipline in private. The way she manages her thoughts. The way she chooses what to magnify.
She does not magnify the diagnosis. She magnifies God. Watching her, I realized something that felt almost like a quiet revelation: faith is not the absence of treatment. It is the refusal to let fear dictate the story. She isn’t ignoring medical science. She respects it. She follows it. She shows up for every appointment. But she does not bow to it as the final authority.
In one hand, she holds her resources budgets, schedules, laboratory results, doctor consultations. In the other hand, she holds Scripture. And somehow, she walks forward carrying both. And here I am again, staring at that small printed verse “Nothing is impossible with God.” It feels like an instruction, like stance, but steady, anchored trust.
And I am learning from her that sometimes the miracle begins long before the outcome changes. It begins in how we stand.
Nothing is Impossible
Not because we are unusually strong nor outcomes automatically bend in our favor. But because belief changes where we stand inside the storm. The centurion did not ask for proof. He did not negotiate terms. He did not demand visible evidence, he simply trusted authority, he believed that a word spoken was enough. I see that same posture in my sister.
She moves, she asks difficult questions, schedules consultations, recalculates expenses, and searches for assistance. She shows up for treatment and negotiates costs. She prepares for radiation. She counts chemotherapy cycles not with dread, but with determination. And after all the movement, after the calls and the paperwork and the physical exhaustion, she settles into one sentence:
“I am in the good hands of the Lord who created heaven and earth.”
There is something profoundly humbling about that kind of surrender. It does not deny the diagnosis but simply refuses to let the diagnosis define the ending. Cancer may have entered quietly, almost like a thief in the night but it did not take ownership of her spirit.
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Fear may try to sit at the table but it does not get the head seat. This journey will not be gentle. It will stretch her body and her endurance. There will be days of fatigue, discomfort, and uncertainty. We are not naive about that. But what I am witnessing feels stronger than the word “Stage 3.”
What I See in Her is Conviction
The kind of conviction that stands when standing is difficult, the kind that kneels when pride would rather resist. The kind that keeps walking even when the road ahead is long, uncertain, and physically demanding. Watching her, I find something shifting in me too. Almost without realizing it, I begin praying the centurion’s prayer in the quiet of my own heart:
“Lord, speak the word only.” I repeat it slowly. “Lord, speak the word only.”
Not as a demand, not as a bargain . . .but as surrender. As trust in authority greater than diagnosis, greater than lab results, greater than medical projections. Because when I say “Nothing is impossible,” I am not speaking in abstraction.
I am thinking of healing.
I am thinking of provision.
I am thinking of strength for thirty-three radiation sessions.
Endurance for six cycles of chemotherapy.
Restoration after blood transfusions.
Nothing is impossible not because we ignore the weight of what lies ahead, but because we refuse to believe that what lies ahead is bigger than the One who walks with her through it. And so the prayer remains, simple and steady:
“Lord, speak the word only.”
And the real miracle already unfolding is this: Cancer entered silently. But faith answered aloud.
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