He Stayed

By Robin Caldwell

I offer you my solemn vow to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, and in joy as well as in sorrow …

It was hard averting my eyes away from the peach fuzz on the woman’s head. She refused to conceal the fact that she had undergone chemotherapy. Sitting beside her was an equally bald man, her husband, who adoringly stared at her face. She said that she was cancer-free.

For about five minutes or so, she talked about the grueling effects of the chemo and cancer treatments. “Couldn’t stand the nausea,” she said, grimacing. Her husband nodded his head in agreement.

The talk show host asked, “How do you keep your spirits up?”

“My faith in Christ,” she responded without hesitation. “And him,” she noted, patting her husband’s hand.

“Most men leave in the face of breast cancer,” she added. “He stayed.”

I could hear the lump in the interviewer’s throat as he digested, “He stayed.” It made me wonder if he was one who had left or if his compassion made him feel the intensity of that statement.

I felt the intensity.

Some years back, I had a friend who experienced a mastectomy, chemo, the whole, painful nine. She expressed a serious concern: Who would love or want a woman with one breast? I certainly didn’t have an answer—at least not one that soothed or comforted.

“I didn’t marry a breast; I married the woman,” offered the woman’s husband. He provided the answer, the only answer, to my friend’s question. If he were sitting in front of me, I would have thanked him.

This time, the wife stared at her husband adoringly. Her eyes watered, as did mine. The devotion, it seemed to her, was incredulous and hard to believe. Maybe she thought, in the recesses of her mind, it was undeserved.

The husband quietly returned to his position of support as she continued giving testimony to this man, their love and the strength of their marriage.

“When I couldn’t feed myself, he fed me. He would work all day and come home to take care of me during the night. He functioned on very little sleep,” she said.

By the time the host cut to a commercial, I was spent. These people gave me a lot to think about, namely the choice of a mate. It seemed like the dumbest thing to focus on at the time; self-examinations and mammograms should have been the priority, but they weren’t—that would come later.

The entire scope of my prayers for a mate shifted that day. If for some reason, I had to have a breast or toe or whatever removed, then I needed to know he’d stick around. It would be lovely if he fed me or shaved his head, but I just needed to know he’ll be there to hold my hand, pray even. God knows I wanted someone who would stay, too.

Couples stand at the altar and vow to remain faithful “in sickness and in health.” Bliss precludes them from thinking about the “in sickness” part. Bliss prevents them from thinking about illness as a challenge to the health of a marriage.

God bless women who fight breast cancer with the support of a godly, loving husband. And God bless women who fight without that support.

And by His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53: 5)