How Cancer Changed the Way I Pray and Deepened My Faith

Before cancer, I prayed.

I believed in God, spoke to Him and asked for His help. But when I look back now, I think many of my prayers were connected to needing something – guidance, comfort, reassurance or an answer.

There is nothing wrong with bringing those things to God. He wants us to come to Him with our needs.

But I don’t think I had fully understood prayer as an ongoing conversation.

Cancer changed that.

Suddenly, there were so many things I couldn’t control.

There were appointments, treatment decisions, scans, surgery and long stretches of waiting.

I often didn’t know what was going to happen next, and there was very little I could do except place it into God’s hands.

My prayers were not always beautifully worded or full of confidence.

Sometimes they were simply:

God, I’m scared.

Please help me.

Stay close to me.

At other times, I had no words at all.

There were also moments when other people prayed for me because I couldn’t carry everything on my own.

My mum prayed Psalm 91 over me every day.

People from church prayed before my surgery.

A hospital administrator prayed beside me in intensive care, and a chaplain prayed while I was being taken for an ultrasound.

My small group and ministry team have continued to pray with me through scans, uncertainty and what Nicole and I call “scanxiety.”

Sometimes other people’s prayers carried me when my own words felt too difficult to find.

But although cancer drew me closer to God, there was another moment later that completely changed the way I understood prayer.

Our small group completed a course about how to pray, and the person leading it asked us to think about the way we communicated with God.

He said that if he told us he and his wife hardly ever spoke, we would immediately think that was strange. Something would clearly be missing from their relationship.

Then he asked a question I have never forgotten:

If you’re not praying, what are your conversations with God?

I remember sitting there and thinking:

Wow.

Until then, I think I had often viewed prayer as a particular activity. It was something I stopped to do. It had a beginning, usually had an amen at the end, and often involved asking God for something.

That question helped me realise that prayer could also be the small conversations woven throughout an ordinary day.

Since then, I’ve tried to intentionally make room for those conversations.

I thank God when something makes me smile.

I tell Him when work has been difficult.

I speak to Him while I’m driving, getting ready in the morning or lying awake at night.

I tell Him when I’m excited, when I’m worried and when I don’t know what to do.

Sometimes I ask for help.

Sometimes I worship.

Sometimes I just tell Him about my day.

I still believe it’s important to set aside focused time with God. The little conversations throughout the day don’t replace the moments when I stop, become still and give Him my full attention.

But prayer no longer feels limited to those moments.

It’s become part of the rhythm of my life.

Another important change came when someone from our ministry team asked me how much time I spent with God.

At first, I thought I understood what she meant. I prayed often. I spoke to Jesus, and I regularly asked the Holy Spirit to guide me.

But as we continued talking, I realised that I hadn’t spent much time intentionally speaking with the Father.

Around the same time, our course was teaching us about the Trinity – one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I had always believed in the Trinity, but I began to think more deeply about what that meant for my own relationship with God.

I knew Jesus as my Saviour. I spoke to Him often, trusted Him and spent time sitting with Him in prayer. I also regularly looked to the Holy Spirit for guidance and help.

But I realised I wanted to know the Father more deeply too – to understand His heart and what it meant to come to Him as His daughter.

So I began intentionally spending time with the Father.

Sometimes, when I’m deep in prayer or worship and close my eyes, I see myself as a little girl running into the Father’s arms.

It’s difficult to explain, but it has become one of the clearest ways I understand what it means to be His child.

I don’t have to approach Him with perfect words or pretend that I have everything together. I can simply run to Him, knowing that I am loved, welcomed and safe in His arms.

Not only asking Him to fix something.

Not only coming to Him when I’m frightened.

Just talking to Him.

Thanking Him.

Telling Him what’s happening.

Allowing myself to be still in His presence.

Our first devotional for the course was based on Psalm 1.

In my response, I wrote that it reflected a relationship with God that was constant, not occasional. I wrote about wanting to become more intentional about creating space for Him each day, not because I felt obligated to, but because I genuinely wanted to grow deeper in my faith.

I think God was continuing to teach me something I had first begun to understand through the prayer course: that a relationship with Him is not confined to difficult moments or a set time of prayer. It’s something we carry with us throughout the day.

It has made my relationship with God feel more personal, but it has also taught me that prayer is not a performance.

God is not measuring the quality of my sentences.

I don’t need impressive words, a particular posture or a perfectly quiet mind before I can speak to Him.

Some days I pray while listening to worship music.

Sometimes I write down the thoughts distracting me so I can return my attention to God.

Sometimes I sit quietly.

Sometimes I talk to Him while doing something completely ordinary.

The form may change, but the heart of prayer remains the same.

It is relationship.

This journey has also taught me that prayer doesn’t guarantee that every situation will turn out the way I want it to.

Some of my prayers have been answered in ways that overwhelmed me with gratitude.

Others were answered differently from how I had hoped.

God did not prevent me from needing major surgery.

He did not restore my body to exactly what it had been before.

I still experienced grief, uncertainty and permanent change.

Prayer didn’t always change what I had to walk through.

But it changed the way I walked through it.

Sometimes God changed the situation.

Sometimes He gave me the strength to face something I couldn’t change.

And sometimes prayer simply reminded me that I wasn’t alone.

I still pray for healing, guidance and protection.

I still bring God the things that frighten me. I still ask Him to care for the people I love and to help me trust Him when I cannot see what lies ahead.

But now I also speak to Him about the ordinary moments.

The things that make me laugh.

The frustrations no one else knows about.

The unexpected blessings.

The people I love.

The things for which I am grateful.

Prayer is not only asking God to intervene in my life.

It’s inviting Him into every part of it.

It is no longer only something I stop to do.

It has become part of how I live.

And whenever life becomes busy or I realise that I have allowed myself to become distracted, I remind myself that prayer is not another task to complete.

It is time spent with the One who loves me.

Then I return to the question I heard that day:

What have my conversations with God been like lately?