God is Good

Breast Cancer January Twenty

January 20, 2024 KimHarms

8 years ago today I was diagnosed with breast cancer. 1 year ago today, I had to call Corey at work (in the middle of what is arguably the most awful project he’s been involved in during his 20+ years with his employer) and say, “I found a lump in my armpit, and Dr. Harishand wants me to come in today.’” We all know how that turned out. This world and this body of mine just suck sometimes. But I still believe God is good. No one will ever be able to convince me otherwise. He never promised that ugly…

Breast Cancer Always and In All Things

January 20, 2022 KimHarms 2Comment

Many mornings over the past six years, the first ink to flow through my pen into my prayer journal comes out, “God, you are good.” There is a depth of the goodness of Jesus that I did not understand until he took my hand and walked through the fire with me. And because of that I am thankful for a diagnosis six years ago today that left me crushed and collapsed in Corey’s arms. Jesus taught me things through cancer that I could not have learned any other way. He brought me to a place where I believed in my…

Life Can We Truly Know Peace Without Also Knowing Fear?

June 19, 2018 KimHarms 2Comment

Thursday, June 14, 7:15 a.m. The storm has turned the highway into a river. White-knuckled and blinded by the pounding rain on my windshield, I want to be anywhere but here. I pray for the rain to stop. This is what fear feels like. Friday, June 15, 8:15 a.m. My stagnant little creek bed has turned into a soothing babbling brook. I sit on the makeshift wooden bridge, my feet dangling above the sand and rocks. This is exactly where I want to be. I thank God for the beauty. This is what peace feels like. I have a million…

Breast Cancer Cancer Gave Me The Gift of Knowing Human Frailty

May 22, 2018 KimHarms 4Comment

I was 40 and already had a head of prematurely gray hair (I hide it well) when Dr. Testroet called with the crappy cancer news, but the following words from Jen Wilkin’s 27-year-old experience ring true inside of me. Once you hear a cancer diagnosis, you can’t unhear it. Even with successful treatment, it changes the way you number your days. I had been given an opportunity not many 27-year-olds could claim: the opportunity to count each of my days as precious. Any illusions I might have had that this life would last forever were effectively removed. I learned a…

Breast Cancer How American Idol Cracked Open the Cancer Wound

March 21, 2018 KimHarms

You never know when it’s gonna hit. I haven’t even given cancer much thought recently. I just live and write and buy groceries and do boy mom things and complain about the nine inches of mid-March snow that the weatherman did not forecast. And it’s good. I like this life God has given me. I’m happy. I’m content. I’m blessed. But this guy named Brandon Elder walked into our living room via the American Idol try-out stage the other night and he opened up wounds I wasn’t prepared to revisit. This sweet 22-year-old guy started talking about his mom while…