Rachel Barkey was thirty-seven years old. She was a wife. A mother of two small children. And she was dying.
Breast cancer had been in her body for four and a half years. She had fought it with everything available — surgery, treatment, prayer, hope. But the cancer had won the medical battle. It was terminal. The doctors had said the words that no young mother ever wants to hear: there is nothing more we can do.
And then Rachel Barkey did something extraordinary.
The Talk
Weeks before she died, Rachel stood before nearly 600 women at the River Rock Show Theatre in Vancouver. She was invited by Westside Church. She was thin. She was visibly ill. And she gave an hour-long talk called "Death Is Not Dying: A Faith That Saves."
She did not talk about cancer. She talked about Jesus. She did not talk about treatment. She talked about relationship. She did not talk about fear — or rather, she talked about what had replaced it.
The Fear
Rachel was honest about the journey to that stage. Fear had been there. The diagnosis, the progression, the terminal verdict — each one carried its own weight of terror. The fear of leaving her children without a mother. The fear of the physical process of dying. The fear of the unknown.
But somewhere in the valley — in the long, dark, honest middle of a battle she was losing — fear met something it could not defeat.
The Encounter
Rachel found that her relationship with Jesus was not just comforting. It was defining. She said: "Cancer does not define me. Neither does being a wife or a mother. All these things are part of who I am but they do not define me. What defines me is my relationship with Jesus."
That sentence carries the weight of a lifetime distilled into a moment of clarity. When you are dying, you discover very quickly what actually defines you. Most things fall away. What remains is what matters. And for Rachel, what remained was Jesus.
The fear of death did not disappear through positive thinking or theological arguments. It was displaced by love. The same love described in 1 John 4:18 — perfect love that drives out fear. Not gradually. Not partially. Drives it out. Rachel experienced that verse as lived reality, not Sunday school theory.
Death Is Not Dying
The title of her talk became her legacy. Death is not dying — because dying implies an ending, and for someone who knows Jesus, death is a beginning. Not a poetic metaphor. A reality that Rachel Barkey believed with enough conviction to stand before 600 women, weeks from death, and say it with a smile.
The video of her talk went viral. It was shared in churches across North America and the United Kingdom. In a world obsessed with cancer-free announcements and miracle healing testimonies, Rachel offered something different: the testimony of a woman who was not healed — and who was not afraid.
Rachel Barkey went home to Jesus on 2 July 2009.
What This Means for You
If you are facing a terminal diagnosis — if the doctors have used the word "palliative" and the treatment options have narrowed to management — Rachel Barkey has a word for you.
Death is not dying. Not because cancer is not real. Not because the prognosis is wrong. But because perfect love has cast out fear, and the God who loves you does not stop loving you at death. He meets you there. He walks you through.
You do not need to be healed to be free from fear. You need to be loved. And you are. More than any diagnosis can diminish. More than any scan can measure. More than fear can contain.
Rachel stood up. Weeks from the end. And she was not afraid. That is what love does.