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I am 24 years old, happily married, and have three children. That I am who I am and in the state of my life I am in is anything but a given. In the following, I want to share with you a period of my life in which I was privileged to experience God's guiding hand in a special way. To the Lord alone be the glory!
From dark valleys
In August 2016, at the age of 19, I met my now-husband, Vadim, who is from Ukraine. Shortly afterward, in October 2016, after several doctor's visits, I was diagnosed with lymphoma due to noticeable lumps above my collarbone. This diagnosis came as a complete shock to my life.
At first, I didn't want to believe it: "Something like that can't happen to me, it'll happen to other people," I thought. For a while, I had great emotional difficulty coping with everything. I often just burst into tears. My oncologist, to whom I was immediately referred, explained the side effects of the already planned chemotherapy: "You're still so young. You need to think about whether you want to have children later, because the chemotherapy will make you infertile and you won't be able to have children anymore."
Following this, I was informed at a specialized fertility clinic about potential methods to circumvent the problem of infertility resulting from chemotherapy. These methods involved surgically removing and freezing a portion of the female reproductive organs, which would then be reimplanted after the chemotherapy was completed. Without this procedure, there would still be a 50% chance of remaining fertile after two cycles of chemotherapy. However, this probability would decrease rapidly with each additional chemotherapy cycle, so that with six planned cycles – as in my case – there would be virtually no hope of preserving my fertility. That's what we were told.
But all the suggestions from conventional medicine were out of the question for me and my mother, who accompanied me. We were clear: "We have a living God in whom we trust." That thought was going through my head at the time.
Like mother's comfort
As so often happens, I was completely distraught after this doctor's appointment. News about how my life was about to change came thick and fast: my hair would fall out, I would no longer be able to have children, my future as I had envisioned it would shatter, my life plans would fail.
I simply knelt down in my room and poured my heart out to God, weeping – after all, I was still so young and, like most of my peers, had certain ideas about life, the future, and a family. And a family, of course, includes children: "If I survive this illness and if you will one day give me a husband and I will get married, then I also want to receive this gift from heaven and have children."
I uttered this sentence to God as a plea, because obviously the therapeutic possibilities of medicine offered me not the slightest glimmer of hope. After this prayer, an inner peace from God washed over me, and an unshakable calm settled within me, as I would later realize. I could now speak freely about my life situation without constantly bursting into tears. I had been comforted by God.
Hope is budding
Parallel to my illness and its treatment, my relationship with my now-husband also developed increasingly. I informed him of the diagnosis immediately at the beginning of my illness, and shortly after the start of chemotherapy – at the end of November – I received a marriage proposal from him while he was in Germany, as his permanent residence at that time was still in Ukraine.
The chemotherapy caused severe side effects, and I lost 10 kilograms after the first cycle. It was difficult for me to think about the future during that time because I could barely eat anything, and the side effects of the therapy were very hard on me. I simply needed more time. Vadim was experiencing some interesting events with God at that time.
During his stay in Germany, he remembered the verses of a sermon that had been preached in a church service in Bielefeld: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you” (Jeremiah 29:11-12).
These words stayed with us. And although here and there people offered advice that, had we followed it, would have led to a different outcome than today, God repeatedly gave him a positive outlook and the inner affirmation to trust in Him in all things. Not long after those days, Vadim heard an inner voice earnestly calling him to prayer. He felt it very tangibly, that God was calling him: “If you do this, you will experience My grace.”
In this prayer, Vadim experienced what it means to have a prayerful dialogue with the Heavenly Father—it was a special prayer. After these events, Vadim decided to begin fasting. For several months, he dedicated himself to fasting every day until five o'clock in the afternoon. Not for our own boasting, but as a testimony to others!
Greening bone
Throughout this time, the church, my family, and certainly many other believers prayed for my well-being. After the third round of chemotherapy, the cancer had, thank God, already receded significantly. Just like the third round, I tolerated the two subsequent treatments relatively well. However, my health deteriorated considerably around the last, sixth cycle in March 2017: my blood counts dropped sharply, I suffered from inflammation of the mucous membranes in my mouth, and I had a fever.
Eventually, I received a blood transfusion and also had to be fed intravenously for a few days in the hospital because eating was simply too difficult for me. After my discharge, my condition continued to improve. In May 2017, following the follow-up examinations from the previous month, my doctors finally confirmed that the cancer was completely gone and that the imaging studies showed nothing but scarring.
Today I am absolutely convinced that Jesus healed me. Even though many would say, "No, he didn't, you had chemotherapy!", I can say with a clear conscience that God healed me through all the treatments. And it was solely through the many prayers of my brothers and sisters that I was able to regain my strength so quickly. It happened so fast that I was able to return to work as early as June 2017. Shortly afterward, in July 2017, we were able to celebrate our engagement, and in November of the same year, we were married.
Vadim and Brigitte got married in November 2017.
"A true miracle!"
A few months after our wedding, I became pregnant, and in October 2018, our son Jeremiah was born healthy. During one of my follow-up appointments, I told my oncologist that I was pregnant. "So you did have the surgery at the fertility clinic after all?" he asked. "No, I didn't," I replied. He looked at me and said, "Then it's a real miracle that you became pregnant!"
All examinations of the child during pregnancy revealed no health or developmental defects, despite the gynecologist's meticulous examination – I was, after all, a patient who had recently undergone chemotherapy. Thank God our son was born healthy.
In December 2019, God enriched our family with another child: Rahel was born. Finally, in May 2021, our third child, our daughter Emilia, was born. All our children have been blessed with God's grace and are healthy, and when I reflect on this time in my life, there is only one thing left for me to say: "Lord, I thank you for your grace."
“Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord God is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2).
A testimony by Brigitte Noll
Written by Daniel Asmus
Municipality of Bielefeld