When doctors give you a timeline, something inside you goes very quiet. However, what my friend Brittany Plourde said back to a room full of doctors is something I have not been able to stop thinking about since the day we recorded this conversation.
This is part two of Brittany's story. It holds the hardest moment in the whole thing. It also holds one of the most encouraging.
THIS IS PART TWO OF THREE, AND I WOULD START AT THE BEGINNING
If you are just finding us, I would gently encourage you to go back and hear Brittany's story, part one first. You will get far more out of this one. Above all, you need to meet the woman she was before you can appreciate the woman she is now.
In that first episode, you meet Brittany in 2018, in her very first year of teaching, carrying a cancer diagnosis almost entirely on her own back. Her words for that whole season were simple. She said, "I took the burden of it."
Then seven years go by. And that gap is not empty space, as you are about to hear.
SEVEN YEARS, AND THEN A HEADACHE
Brittany kept teaching. She kept an eye on things. Meanwhile, life did what life does, and the years went by.
Then she started praying about some symptoms she could not explain. And in the middle of praying, she felt God telling her to have her implants removed. So she scheduled that surgery. While she was recovering from it, the headaches started — bad enough that she finally went to the emergency room, fully expecting them to hand her something for the pain and send her home.
Listen to how she describes what happened next, because it is one of the most human moments anyone has ever shared on this podcast. The nurses around her were crying. And Brittany, watching them cry, thought: well, if they are crying, I suppose I am meant to be crying too.
Then the doctor came in. In her words, he told her, "We found 40 tumors in your brain."
WHEN DOCTORS GIVE YOU A TIMELINE, REMEMBER WHOSE BOOK IT IS WRITTEN IN
Here is where this episode turns, and it turns hard.
Over the hours that followed, doctor after doctor came through her room. Furthermore, every one of them carried a different number. Two weeks. Two years. Seven years. Each number arrived attached to a story about somebody else entirely.
And at some point in all of that, Brittany stopped and thought this: "You can't put a timestamp on my life. That's not for you to do."
Then she said something I would like you to carry around with you this week. She said, "I'm not a statistic."
Now please hear what she is and is not saying. Brittany is not dismissing her doctors, and she is certainly not pretending the numbers do not exist. She is refusing to let somebody else's average become her ending. Because that timeline was never theirs to hand out in the first place.
Scripture puts it more beautifully than any of us could as we see in Psalm 139:16 NIV
"All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalm 139:16 NIV
THIS TIME, SHE LET PEOPLE IN
There is one more difference between 2018 and that hospital room, and it is worth stopping on.
The first time around, Brittany told everybody not to come. No meals, no visitors, nothing. She climbed into a cave to heal by herself. This time, she and her husband messaged their closest friends — and those friends came. They prayed together right there in the room.
Her own summary of it is lovely. She said, "There was so much room for God to be present in all of that."
Consequently, if you have been keeping people at arm's length lately, that single line may be the most practical thing in this entire episode.
WHAT HE WAS QUIETLY BUILDING FOR SEVEN YEARS
And now the part I love most, which lands at the end of this episode.
Those seven years were never a gap. Brittany was teaching at a Christian school, surrounded by people who prayed together on Friday mornings. She was standing in front of students she had to stay strong for. In her own words, "I have to continue to fill my bucket for it to pour out onto them."
Furthermore, two years before any of this happened, she was asked to give the convocation speech at her school. Now, Brittany is an introvert with stage fright who does not speak in public. Nevertheless, she prayed about it and said yes.
The speech she wrote was about how God asks us to do hard things. And about how it is in the hard that we grow.
She wrote every word of that for her students. Two years later, she understood who it was really for.
That was not a coincidence. That was a God who knew exactly what was coming, and who spent the better part of a decade getting her ready for it. If you think He was being cruel with those years, I would say He was being kind — just way out ahead of time.
ONE MORE THING, ABOUT OUR NEXT EPISODE
In part three, Brittany takes us into two nights. Two nights in the middle of the very worst weeks of her life, when she was more tired and more frightened than she has ever been.
She almost did not tell me about them. She stopped in the middle of telling it and said, "I know this sounds crazy."
It is not crazy. I have been doing this a while, and I have never heard anything like it. I would not spoil one second of it for you — but if you have somebody in your life who is in a dark place right now, cancer or not, that is the episode you are going to want to send them.
YOU ARE NEVER ALONE
When doctors give you a timeline, it can feel as though the whole story has already been written for you by somebody in a white coat. It has not. Your days were written somewhere else entirely, by Someone who loves you.
So 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.
And if you do not have a relationship with Jesus — or if yours has grown stale, or weak, or you are just plain angry right now — I would strongly encourage you to visit our Accepting Jesus page. It will walk you through it and give you a prayer you can pray tonight, right where you are.
Part three of Brittany's story comes next Monday, and I truly hope you will join us for it. May God bless you, and thank you so much for listening.