Joy Ogeh-Hutfield was not the kind of woman who waited for things to happen. Born in Nigeria, raised in the UK since the age of sixteen, she had built a career that most people would envy. Multi-award-winning businesswoman. TEDx speaker. Named one of the top 100 businesswomen in Wales. Inspirational Woman of the Year. She was a force.
Then, in 2011, the force met something it could not push through.
The Diagnosis
Skin cancer. The word landed like a brick. Joy had been so focused on building, achieving, winning â that the idea of her own body turning against her was incomprehensible. She was not even forty. This was not supposed to happen yet. This was not supposed to happen at all.
The Fear
What came next was not the composed, dignified response you might expect from a woman who had addressed audiences across the country. What came was terror.
The raw, unfiltered kind. The kind where you lie in a hospital bed and your mind races through every worst-case scenario. The kind where you realise that all the awards on your shelf cannot protect you from the thing growing inside your skin.
Joy prayed the most honest prayer of her life: "God, I do not want to die."
It was not eloquent. It was not theological. It was the cry of a woman who had run out of everything except desperation.
The Encounter
And then â moments before surgery â something happened that Joy would spend the rest of her life talking about. She heard the voice of God. Not a metaphor. Not an impression. Not a vague feeling. The audible voice of the living God, speaking to a terrified woman on a hospital bed in Wales.
The fear did not just reduce. It left. In its place came a peace so tangible, so physical, that Joy knew â before the surgeon even picked up a scalpel â that she was going to be okay. Not because she understood what was happening medically. But because the God who made her had just spoken to her, and His voice was bigger than the cancer.
The Healing
The surgery was performed. The results came back. No trace of cancer remaining in her body. No chemotherapy needed. No radiotherapy needed. The cancer was gone â completely, cleanly, gone.
Joy spent the next four months in bed recovering, but this time with her Bible open. For the first time in her driven, ambitious life, she was still enough to ask the question she had been too busy to consider: "What do You actually want me to do, God?"
The answer changed everything. Joy left the corporate ladder behind and devoted her life to helping others transform â not through business strategy, but through the kind of encounter she had experienced on that hospital bed.
What This Means for You
If you are lying in a hospital bed right now, terrified of what the surgeon is going to find, Joy Ogeh-Hutfield wants you to know something. God is not waiting for you to compose the perfect prayer. He is not looking for theological precision. He is looking for honesty.
"I do not want to die" is a prayer. And it is enough.
The God who spoke to a frightened businesswoman in Swansea is the same God who is in your room right now. The fear feels enormous. But His voice is closer than the fear. And when He speaks, everything changes.
