There Are Good Things Here

Katie Hubbard had come to the end of chemotherapy options, but she was grateful (and sad!) to have an alternative cancer treatment option available. In early July 2015, we were planning to board a plane for Mexico to pursue another course of therapy. For some people, alternative therapy is a first choice. For Katie, it was a last resort. Her body simply couldn't tolerate any more chemo treatments....

As Katie looked back on an unconventional life that was rapidly headed toward an untimely death, she had no regrets. This blog post, written in 2015 for other women in vocational ministry, makes two things clear: she was grateful for her years in ministry, and she remained single-minded about her goal. As she put it, "I don’t want recognition, fame. I don’t want the big selling book, I don’t want...

Katie Hubbard was running out of cancer treatment options but not faith that God could heal her if He wanted to. As she contemplated the prospect of alternative treatment in Mexico and meditated on Namaan's story from 2 Kings 5, she sincerely asked God again to heal her from cancer. She knew the road of right thinking was getting harder, the longer she lived with metastatic disease. She also felt...

At the halfway point of this first season of "There Are Good Things Here", Katie Hubbard reminds us all that God is the source of all the goodness we seek. This episode in not a re-broadcast—but it is a re-reading—of Katie's journal entry from June 18, 2015. The podcast began (actually, it was episode 2) with this entry because it represents Katie's perspective so well. She didn't hope to become f...

Katie Hubbard peppers the pages of her June journal with pithy questions like this, "What does God want to do with this life he bought?" She gives credit where it's due, to our friend and mentor Vic Black who said this in his book, Speak Lord. Katie also records her own proverbial observation, "The tradeoff to losing your youth is that (hopefully) you gain perspective." She certainly had lost the...

In characteristic fashion, Katie Hubbard explained the ups and downs of a "cancer straightaway" by saying, "I focus on what I have not what I have lost". This was her secret when the currents of life were tumultuous and when they were relatively calm. You and I can experience the same kind of life with God in Christ, but we can't simply will it into existence. We have to practice the same kind of...

In this episode, Katie Hubbard signs off her final journal entry for May 2015 with the words "after we have suffered, things will be made right." That conviction didn't come from observing her circumstances, but from observing the ways of God in the book of Genesis. Joseph suffered many things through his life, but God exalted him in time. If I can nudge a very powerful statement from Dr. King in...

If you read the journals of Katie Hubbard without reference to the dates, you would think she was always seeing astonishing things from God's word. As was often the case, though, there had been a lapse of more than two weeks since Katie had last journaled. When she took up her pen again, it was to remark on her sorrow for a young man who had committed suicide and to marvel at the astonishing thing...

This week's episode features guest host, Rachel Hubbard, reading a letter that Katie wrote, encouraging her to smile at the future. Rachel, our third-born child, received this letter on her 8th grade retreat in 2015. Katie wrote to affirm and encourage her. There are some priceless memories from Rachel's early years, plus characteristic Katie-wisdom about life. Rachel also reads a letter that I wr...

Katie Hubbard knew that her cancer was progressing, but she was able to face eternity with excitement. She also knew a thing or two about parenting through the ups and downs of life. This podcast will take you through two journal entries, one email update, and a blog entry that Katie wrote for moms in ministry. You'll find loads of Solomon-like wisdom from a well-seasoned mom living with cancer, a...

Katie Hubbard knew how to spot God's providential care, not because her life was easy but because she kept looking toward him not her circumstances or herself. The title of this podcast, There Are Good Things Here, doesn't imply that life is easy but that God is good. God's providential care surrounds those who love him and have been called into his eternal, saving purposes. Katie asked for a huge...

Through her journey with cancer, Katie Hubbard had to learn an art of stillness that deepened her faith in God. She believed that God himself was a strong rock that remained stable when all else was shifting or uncertain. From that place of stability, she offered one of her deepest prayers in her final year: "not my will but yours be done". Join Katie as she reflects on this prayer of Jesus: it's...

What would you do with more time and mental space on your hands? Katie Hubbard lets you know where her heart was inclined when time was on her hands. She kept juggling many of the demands of life (Easter preparations, speaking at church, prom dress shopping), but when cancer forced her to slow down, she turned to Jesus. May this brief episode bless and challenge you. What would you do with more ti...

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Peter 1:3) On Easter Sunday 2015, Katie Hubbard knew that she was dying. She also knew she had to stand in front of Twin City Bible Church (our home church in Illinois) and describe what it meant for he...

In this episode, Katie Hubbard talks about living life as a mom in ministry with no regrets. When you say 'yes' to Jesus, you often walk an unconventional road. However, as Katie makes clear in a journal entry and email, the way is filled with blessing. You will appreciate Katie's characteristic humor in this podcast, along with her down to earth account about the challenges of motherhood. More th...

In this episode, Katie Hubbard simply ponders examples from Scripture where people express faith or disbelief in the face of fear and pain. “Where is your faith?” It was a question Jesus asked many people in his day, and Katie heard the divine challenge in her own.  Her subsequent journal entry ends with an epigram, the kind she was known for: “I am trading my physical symptoms for mental ones. I...

In this episode, Katie Hubbard writes about the fruit of faith and the frustration of missed expectations in the struggle with cancer. “The fruit of faith. Hope. Courage. God is pleased. Fortitude. Stepping out. Encouragement for others.” She had no idea what kind of impact she was leaving behind when she wrote the words, “Without faith and belief, what do we have to offer others?” Her words are r...

Katie Hubbard was coming to grips with the extent of pain and suffering in the world as she waited for her own miracle. She also knew that the trials recorded in the Bible far outnumbered the miracles recorded. What is more, you can't minister to people in pain unless you've experienced it yourself. That was a lesson Katie learned well. She was waiting on a miracle herself in the face of her own p...

Katie Hubbard had struggled through the final week of February 2015, but she surged into a new season of faith and hope in the face of cancer when March rolled around. She identifies the source of the change in her first journal entry for the month. The first was practical, or circumstantial. We rearranged our bedroom to make it beautiful and functional for her when she didn't have the energy to g...

In this special episode, I want to give you a chance to hear Katie Hubbard in prayer … not just her voice coming through as I read her journal entries … but her actual voice. I recorded a handful of prayer times we shared together in 2014 and 2015. There were not remarkable occasions, but I wanted to capture her heart and voice for the Lord so that others could hear her. (By this point in our live...

When Katie wrote the two entries featured on today's podcast, cancer treatment and pain medication had combined to leave her so low you can actually see it in her handwriting. If you only had her journal entries, you would assume that she was simply sitting in her bedroom trying to get over her fatigue and nausea. Far from it! Though she was not letting on to anyone (not even me!) how bad she felt...

The presence of cancer and the threat of paralysis cannot overwhelm a soul that trusts in God. This week’s podcast features Katie at her best in the worst of times. She opens her heart in a journal entry (below), email, and Caring Bridge post with striking vulnerability, spirituality, and wit. She was passing through a deep place of uncertainty in her soul, faced with the reality that cancer was n...

How do you keep living forward day after day with a Stage IV cancer diagnosis? If you're Katie, you just open your Bible up and read the next passage. Then, you open your journal up and write out the verse(s) that meant the most to you, underlining the words that matter most. That's what you find in her journal entry from Feb 6, 2015. It's obvious that she wanted to see the salvation of the Lord,...

Katie was living with Stage IV cancer and didn't often wake up feeling happy or hopeful. Her journal entry from January 31 was uncharacteristically upbeat for this season of life. She sets a good example for all of us going through hard times. It's OK to feel happy and even better to express it to God! In this entry, Katie's lighter side really comes through as she recounts a visit we made to Elkh...

"I would rather be disappointed ...""... tomorrow we will trust you again."Journal entries for January 24 and 28, 2015 In her entries for January 24 and 28, 2015, Katie reflected on lessons she was learning from fellow-travelers as she walked her own road with cancer. In particular, she was processing the tension she felt over parenting (when you never feel good) and trusting in God for a miracle...