Fear at night during cancer is a particular kind of fear. It is quieter than the daytime kind, and it is harder to talk about in the morning. This is the episode I have been telling you about for three weeks, and I want to ask you for something before you start it.

If you can, sit down somewhere and actually listen to this one. Do not half-listen to it while you are doing something else. It is too important for that.

And if you have not heard the first two parts yet, I would genuinely go back and start with part one, and then part two. This one will land far harder if you do.

FIRST, SOMETHING I NEED TO SAY CLEARLY

What you are about to hear is Brittany's story. It is what happened to HER.

Brittany is not telling you — and I will never tell you — that if you pray hard enough, or believe the right way, or have enough faith, then you get what she got. That is not how He works and it is not what she said. There are people reading this right now who have prayed with everything they have and are still waiting. Some of you prayed for somebody you loved and did not get the answer you begged Him for.

You are not doing it wrong. Let me say that again, because I need you to actually hear it. You are NOT doing it wrong.

What this episode is really about is a woman who got to the absolute end of herself, and found out she was not alone in the room. That part is not just hers. That part belongs to you too.

WHERE SHE IS RIGHT NOW

Brittany opens by telling us plainly where things stand. She is in active treatment. She is honest that it has been hard, and honest that it is not a straight line. Her own line about it made me laugh out loud: some mornings she gets up thinking she could run a marathon, and the next day she thinks what a terrible idea that was.

She also talks about praying boldly. She asks God first and foremost for miraculous healing, and at the same time she holds it open — that His path and His timing are better than the ones she would choose. Both of those are true at once for her, and I think that is worth sitting with.

I'M LETTING THE WEEDS GROW

One of her students came to visit her, and the two of them ended up talking about the parable of the wheat and the weeds. If you do not know it, Jesus tells it in Matthew 13:24-30. An enemy sows weeds into a field of good wheat, and the workers want to rip the weeds out immediately. The owner tells them no — pull the weeds now and you tear up the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until the harvest.

Here is what Brittany does with that. She says, "I'm letting the weeds grow."

She is not being passive. She is saying she trusts Him with the timing of what gets pulled up and when. Consequently, that one sentence reframed the whole season for her.

THE TOOLS SHE ACTUALLY USES

She is very practical about this, and I want you to catch it because you can use every bit of it today.

She gets outside every single day, even if it is only laps around her own back yard, because that is where she feels closest to God. There is deliberate, slow breathing. She uses restorative yoga specifically because it forces her to lie down, breathe and stop, and those become minutes she can spend in prayer.

None of that is complicated. All of it is repeatable. Furthermore, she talks about Matthew 6:26 — the birds do not plan out their whole year, but they still go out and look for the worm. She is not sitting still waiting to be rescued, and she is not white-knuckling it either. She is doing her part and trusting Him with the rest.

FEAR AT NIGHT DURING CANCER, AND THE TWO NIGHTS SHE ALMOST DID NOT TELL ME ABOUT

Then we get to it.

After ten rounds of full brain radiation, Brittany found out something nobody had told her — the week AFTER is the worst one. That is when it all kicks in. So she came home into the most tired and most frightened stretch of her entire life.

And there was a night when she lay down genuinely not knowing whether she would wake up. She was too exhausted to stay awake. All she could get out was, please God, just be with me.

What happened next she stopped in the middle of telling me, more than once, to say, "I know this sounds crazy."

It is not crazy. She woke in the middle of the night with a peace she had nev.r experienced, and she believes God told her, in words, that He was going to heal her. And then He told her why — because, in her words, "you and I are going to heal others." A list of specific people went through her mind. Her students. Her family. The people she works with. Then she fell back asleep and slept straight through until morning.

A few nights later there was a second one, and I am not going to describe it here. She should be the one to tell you, in her own voice, with her own pauses in it. What I will tell you is where it ends: "I don't have any of those crazy things at night anymore."

DO NOT MISS WHAT WAS ATTACHED TO THAT PROMISE

Here is the part I think is the key to her whole story, and it would be easy to miss.

What she heard at two in the morning was not simply that she would be healed, the end, go back to sleep. It came with a reason. Because you and I are going to heal others.

Now think about what that means, sitting where you and I are sitting. Brittany is in active treatment. She is tired. She has hard days and she says so. And she still said yes to sitting down with a microphone and giving all of this away to people she has never met.

That promise she got in the dark? She is keeping her end of it right now, in your headphones.

And none of this came out of nowhere either. He spent the better part of a decade quietly getting her ready for it, and I wrote about those years separately.

And that is the part that does not depend on how any of this turns out. It is already done. She already did it. No scan can undo it.

YOU ARE NEVER ALONE

If something in you is saying I want what she has — that peace, that steadiness, somebody in the room at two in the morning — you can have it too. It is not reserved for the strong ones or the church people or the ones who have it figured out. Brittany did not have it figured out in 2018 and she will be the first to tell you so.

All of it comes from one thing. A relationship with Jesus. That is the whole secret, and it is not even a secret. You talk to Him. Right where you are, in whatever shape you are in, with whatever words you have. He is not waiting for you to clean up first.

If you do not have that relationship — or if yours has gone stale, or weak, or you are just plain angry right now — please visit our Accepting Jesus page. It will walk you through it and give you a prayer you can pray tonight.

WOULD YOU PRAY FOR HER THIS WEEK?

Brittany, thank you. For your honesty, for your courage, and for giving this away while you are still in the middle of it. Would you pray for her, and for her husband and her daughter, this week?

And if these three episodes did something for you, send them to somebody. That is how He reaches the person you and I will never meet.

No matter what you are facing on your journey with cancer or in life, remember this. You are NEVER ALONE. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are always with you and ready to help. All you have to do is ask, give it all to Jesus, and let Him go to work.

May God bless you, and thank you so much for listening.