Blog History

I started this blog when I was first diagnosed with cancer in 2011. At the time, these were my thoughts about a blog title:

You might think I chose a pretty strange name for this blog: "Just a Closer Walk." I was struggling to come up with something that felt meaningful and fresh as I "begin this cancer journey." As much as I love the concept of "journey" (I even named my dog Journey), it feels overused in reference to cancer. I thought and thought about what to call this blog - naming is important to me - and finally a song popped into my head: "Just a Closer Walk with Thee." This has been my prayer from the beginning, that God would use this unexpected difficulty to refine me, to show me more of Himself, and to bring great glory to Him. Having breast cancer, especially at such a young age, seems to most people to be a tragedy, not to mention the genetic mutation that will cause me to live in the shadow of cancer the rest of my life. But what this really is is just an opportunity to walk closer to God. So this song resonated with me and the lyrics have become my prayer: "Just a closer walk with Thee...Grant it, Jesus, is my plea. Daily walking close to Thee...Let it be, dear Lord, let it be."

In 2015, I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, but my prayer is still the same, that God would use everything I go through to draw me closer to Him.