Two days before Christmas I was sitting in a large reclining chair, watching the dark rust color of the liquid iron drip into my IV line. To receive iron infusions, I visit the hospital’s chemotherapy unit, where I am significantly the healthiest patient on the floor and am constantly reminded of the blessing of my good health. This day was a bit dreary, and overwhelmed nurses and exhausted cancer patients roamed the floor trying to squeeze in rounds of therapy before the holiday. It was the end of the day, too, which meant there were no adorable therapy dogs giving cuddles or cheerful volunteers offering homemade cookies.

My chair was directly across from another patient, about 60 years old, who was finishing a round of chemotherapy. I saw the neon medicine racing down the tubes and into her chest port, filling her body with the drugs that will hopefully save her life, but not without first wreaking havoc. During my time on the floor, I saw first-hand the brutal effects of the medicine—frequent vomiting, intense fatigue, and hair loss, to name a few. My neighbor’s doctor came in to check on her, and he asked her if she had experienced any of these side effects today. She mentioned that was not feeling well and had extreme lightheadedness. A few minutes later, she got a call from what seemed to be a close friend or family member checking in on how the treatment was going. Instead of the response I would have expected, though, expressing (rightly so!) how difficult chemotherapy was and how unwell she felt, my neighbor said, “You know, I look down and I see these tubes inserted into my body and the medicine entering it, and I just think, ‘God, what a blessing You have given me that I have access to these technologies, these medicines, these materials, and that I have been given the gift of doctors who know how to use them to help me nourish the body You have given me.’ What a blessing it is. I can’t stop being reminded of the blessings that surround me.”

In the busyness of the season and in the desolation of my surroundings, there was God: stopping me in my tracks and inspiring me through the brave witness of my neighbor. In her frailty and vulnerability to the harsh realities of chemotherapy and what I’m sure is just the start of a long journey to healing, my neighbor was using her breath to rejoice in the goodness of God. She offered Him all that she had, modeling radical trust in His plan.

I hear her in the words of today’s psalmist, exclaiming, “Keep my life, for I am devoted to You; save Your servant who trusts in You. You are my God!” She is in Levi, who follows Christ without hesitation. And she lives in conviction of Isaiah’s beautiful words: “The light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday; then the Lord will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land. He will renew your strength, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails.”

As we begin our Lenten journey, I pray that God may continue to grab our attention in unexpected places, fixing our eyes upon Him. In the crosses we bear, may we be witnesses to His goodness, abound in gratitude, and praise Him each step of the way.