by Alyssa Chea
As the reality of my recent breast cancer diagnosis settles in, the anxiety of the situation starts to amplify. What a great reminder it is for me to revisit where I was in life just nine months ago. The Lord reached down and grabbed ahold of my heart on June 25, 2023. At the time, this felt like the darkest time in my life. Little did I know, it would get darker—but God has been guiding me through some trials since then, preparing my heart, and growing spiritual fruit in me that I need to fight this new battle I’m facing.
Let’s revisit June 25, 2023. My husband and I attended a wedding the night before, and my parents kept our son for a special sleepover so we could enjoy the night. My mom asked if we could pick our son up from their house the next morning by 10:00 am so my parents could attend the 10:30 church service. To be completely transparent, when I arrived to pick up my son, I was embarrassingly hungover from the night before. I wasn’t looking forward to coming home and having to be a parent with how I was feeling. When I told our son Kannon, “It’s time to go home, Mimi and Papa have to go to church,” he immediately begged to go to church too. Hey, that’s not a bad idea, I thought. Drop him off at Sunday School and I get another hour to try and get some functionality back. So off to church we all went!
Running on Empty
I started off 2023 by achieving one of my greatest accomplishments. I ran a marathon. I’m a runner, and at that time, everything I did was only to promote and encourage my “runner” identity. What an accomplishment to finally add 26.2 miles to my distances. When I say that my identity was a runner, I’m talking to the extreme. I trained like a runner, I ate like a runner, I looked like a runner, I only would wear running clothes, I maintained a strict sleeping schedule to make sure my planned workouts and runs wouldn’t be missed.
So how was I struggling with identity if I was so sure of who I was and what brought me joy? Because I was the center of my own world. My body, my performance, my workouts were all idols that stole my focus from everything else in my life—especially God.
I developed plantar fasciitis (in addition to some other challenges concerning my foot) that caused me to have to stop running. If you’re a runner, or you know a runner, you know the tragedy that this is. Telling me I couldn’t run felt like telling me I couldn’t be myself. I had structured my life and my habits so hard around my running lifestyle, that when it was taken away, I felt so lost and empty. I truly didn’t know who I was or what brought me joy. I resented my body for being hurt; I resented myself for having the desire to run. I grew depressed, I hated myself more and more every day. I just wanted to run. I was going to doctors’ appointments, massage appointments, physical therapy appointments, I was doing all the stretches, taking all the steroids, getting all the injections to try and fix my foot. Nothing was working—in fact, it kept getting worse. I felt hopeless, without purpose, and desperate.
Finding My Purpose
Christ’s Church at Mason has been my church home since I was six months old. I was at the new building groundbreaking. I can walk you to the spot in the auditorium where my family and I signed our names on the concrete floors before the carpet was laid. I used to sing with the worship team. I attended many church camps and CIY events with the high school youth group. My friend Lilly and I used to meet up at church over the summers to help the children’s minister make copies and organize lesson plan materials for the upcoming week’s lesson. Even my sister served as the children’s minister at the church for a time.
So, when I walked back into Christ’s Church (after not regularly attending for about ten years), I thought it was going to feel like I was coming home. Being back in church though, I felt like a stranger. Walking through the halls that morning, I don’t recall seeing more than two familiar faces. I felt like I was the one that people were looking at and thinking, Who’s the new girl? I was sad, yet almost comforted in the fact that no one here knew me. No one had any expectations of who I was, and I felt determined to use that as an opportunity to create a new identity and feel at home again within these church walls.
As I had been struggling for a few months with my identity, that first Sunday back I truly was feeling hopeful that I might find some encouragement from the sermon. During the service that Sunday, it was announced that they were collecting copies of the book, The Purpose Driven Life, from members of the church to be donated to a prison for the inmates. If I were to describe my faith at this point, I’d compare it to a nine-year-old little girl who wanted so badly to believe in Santa Claus. She grew up having a gift under the tree from him every year, but this year all her friends at school had told her that Santa wasn’t real. She anxiously waited to see if there would be a gift under the tree on Christmas morning labeled, “From: Santa.”
I grew up going to church every Sunday, I knew all the famous Bible stories, I could recite John 3:16. But on this day, I found myself with doubts as strong as my hopes in Jesus. I believed in Jesus, but I wasn’t sure if he was going to deliver. Would there be a gift for me labeled, “From: Jesus”? When I heard the mention of The Purpose Driven Life book, I knew this was something I needed. I felt lost, and it was clear that I wasn’t going to find purpose on my own again. I told my mom that I would like a copy to read for myself, and just as any other mother would, she got me a copy.
Hungering for Him
Between that day at church, and getting the book from my mom, I was on a walk with my family in our neighborhood. Kannon and my husband Chhayly were up ahead; Kannon likes to ride his scooter and Chhayly walks faster to keep up with him, while I’m a little slower given my foot injury. I remember looking up and seeing clear blue skies, and the sun was starting to set. I was feeling sad that I wasn’t able to keep up with them. I just wanted to be able to run. I was pondering why I just couldn’t get my foot injury to heal. It was a defining moment—all of a sudden my sins were revealed to me.
I was chasing the idols of running and keeping my body in shape so hard that it was literally destroying by body. I had endured injury after injury, I was very thin, I was tired all the time, cold all the time, my hair and skin were in bad condition, my digestion and gut health were a mess, my hormones were out of balance, the list goes on and on. But still, all I wanted to do was to keep running. Chasing a false idol only left me physically and emotionally empty—yet I just kept pursuing it, hoping that at some point it would deliver the promise of success, joy, and contentment that my soul was seeking.
“If you will pursue a life with me, the way you pursue a running lifestyle, I will give you the joy and satisfaction you’ve been looking for and more,” God said to me. “Your desires come from me, but if they replace me, I will take them away. Seek me first, and you will run again. It’s just not time yet.”
In pastor Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, he describes his book as “A personal 40-day spiritual journey that will transform your answer to life’s most important question: What on earth am I here for?” July 31 was my day 1. I made the commitment to read this book every single day for the next 40 days. (In full disclosure, I missed one day.) Instead of starting my day with my workout, I began each day with the day’s chapter in this book, and then did my physical workout. I took the book with me almost everywhere I went so I could look back to see if there was something that really spoke to me that day that I needed to be reminded of. I journaled every day after reading the text. This book gave me so much clarifying hope. I didn’t know what I was hoping for, but I had hope. I was resistant to give up my own pursuit; while I knew I was miserable, misery was familiar. Seeking God was the farthest thing away from familiarity. But I knew I had no choice.
Here’s a prayer I wrote in my journal on July 31, 2023:
“My prayer today, Jesus, is that you continue to meet me where I am and guide me, lead me out of this storm. Give me peace, give me love for my body. My body is your temple. Remind me to honor my body. Let me see myself through your eyes. My body is just a shell for my soul. It is not defining my worth or beauty. Do not let the world’s standards consume my thoughts. Please, Lord, satiate my hunger. Replace my desires with the desire to seek you and embrace your love. Replace my desires with the desire to honor my body. Replace my desires with the desire to live a healthy blessed life. Give me healthy, realistic expectations and goals. Allow my passion for fitness to honor you. Show me how I can use fitness to benefit and build your kingdom.”
At the bottom of the page that day I wrote down Proverbs 11:28, “A life devoted to things is a dead life, a stump; a God-shaped life is a flourishing tree” (The Message).
My hunger to glorify my body and seek worldly satisfaction has been transformed to a hunger for the Lord. A hunger to make a difference for his kingdom. A hunger to share the peace, joy, and salvation that is only possible through Christ our Savior. Jesus delivered. I now carry with me the gift of the Holy Spirit: “From: Jesus.”
I could not be more grateful for what God has done in my life the last nine months. God knew where I needed to be to face this battle of cancer that has become my journey now. My foot injury is now the least of my worries, but God used it to reveal my sins and show me that complete devotion through constant dependence on Christ is all I need. He brought me back to church where I feel more at home than ever. He placed me where I am surrounded by new friends, brothers, and sisters in Christ. What a blessing it is!
Alyssa Chea and her husband have been married for eight years, and they have a five-year-old son. Alyssa loves cooking, coffee, and all things Disney! She has a passion for running and fitness and wants to use that to help build God’s kingdom on Earth.