MaryJo was forty-five years old when she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin follicular lymphoma. Not early stage. Stage 4. Tumours in five different zones of her body. Close to death.
The treatment plan was immediate and aggressive: seven rounds of R-CHOP chemotherapy. If you have never heard of R-CHOP, it is one of the most common and most brutal chemotherapy regimens for lymphoma. Every twenty-one days, the drugs would tear her body apart and she would have to rebuild it from scratch. Tear down. Build up. Tear down. Build up. Seven times.
The Breakdown
Months of chemotherapy left MaryJo broken. Beaten down. Very sick. The treatment was saving her life in theory while destroying it in practice. Her body was a battlefield and both sides were winning and losing at the same time.
The fear during those months was constant. Not just the fear of dying — although that was there. The fear of another round. The fear of what the drugs were doing to her body. The fear that she was being destroyed by the very thing that was supposed to save her.
Anyone who has been through extended chemotherapy knows this particular torture: you survive the treatment wondering if you will survive the treatment.
The Night
One night, when MaryJo was at her lowest — physically wrecked, emotionally spent, spiritually hanging by a thread — the deacons and elders of her church came to her.
They did not come with medical advice. They did not come with platitudes. They came with oil and with hands and with the ancient instruction from the book of James: "Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord."
They gathered around her. They laid hands on her broken body. They anointed her with oil. And they prayed.
MaryJo described what happened with the kind of simplicity that only comes from someone who experienced it: God healed her sick body that night.
The After
MaryJo re-committed her life to Jesus Christ. She experienced what she calls an awesome miracle of healing. She is now cancer-free. She lives to tell others what God can do for those who trust Him.
But the healing she emphasises is not just the physical one. The fear broke that night too. When the elders prayed and God showed up, the fear that had been her constant companion through months of chemotherapy lost its power. Not because the circumstances changed — though they did. Because she encountered a love that was bigger than the fear.
What This Means for You
The instruction in James 5 is two thousand years old. It is also one of the most underused tools in the church. Call the elders. Let them pray. Let them anoint you with oil. It is not a magic formula. It is an act of surrender — letting other people carry you to God when you are too weak to get there yourself.
If you are in the middle of chemotherapy and the fear is eating you alive, you do not need to fight it alone. You need people. Specific people. People who will come to your house, put their hands on you, and refuse to leave until God shows up.
MaryJo was broken, beaten, and close to death. And on the night when she had nothing left, God met her through the hands of ordinary church elders who did what the Bible told them to do.
That night is available to you too. All you have to do is ask.
