Strength Renewed: Meditations for Your Journey Through Breast Cancer by Shirley Corder

Title: Strength Renewed: Meditations for Your Journey Through Breast Cancer

Author: Shirley Corder

Pages: 206

Year: 2012

Publisher: Revell

About the book:

     Comfort and hope to sustain you.

     Nothing saps your physical, emotional, and spiritual strength quite like a cancer diagnosis – unless it is the energy-stealing treatments you may face in your fight against cancer. But you can find hope and renewal in the pages of Scripture and in the experience of someone who has been there.

     In Strength Renewed, breast cancer survivor and registered nurse Shirley Corder combines encouraging personal stories with life-giving passages from the Bible to help you process your diagnosis and find encouragement along the way. These devotions can be read in order as you move through your cancer journey, but each devotion also stands on its own, so you can go directly to the entry that speaks to your need – right now.

     You have a partner and a cheerleader in Shirley – and in God – on the rough road ahead. Let Strength Renewed lift you up as you travel.

My review:

     On September 8, 2014 I had a biopsy done on a lump that had been found in my right breast. Two days later on the 10^th I got a phone call from my doctor. She told me, “It is cancer.” After feeling the lump and then seeing it on the ultrasound in the doctor’s office before having the biopsy done this was not unexpected. I had seen for myself how odd the shape of the lump was. It still hit me very hard and I had a lot of emotions that I had to work through. I reached out to friends telling them the diagnosis and asking for prayer. The very next day one of them connected me with another one of her friends, Rita, who is a breast cancer survivor. Rita sent me a Kindle copy of this wonderful devotional and told me how much it helped her through her journey through breast cancer. She then told me that she prefers the term “overcomer” to “survivor”. That gift from Rita has been an incredible blessing to me.

     Since that phone call I have had a lumpectomy with sentinel node biopsy. At the same time as that surgery I had an area of suspicious tissue removed from the other breast. Not quite 4 weeks later I had a total hysterectomy to resolve post-menopausal bleeding that had been going on for a year. The doctors were concerned that with that blood loss my blood counts would drop too much during chemotherapy. Then 3 ½ weeks after that surgery, I started the chemo treatments, which lasted almost 4 months. I was given 4 weeks off to recover from the last chemo treatment before I started radiation treatments. Today I am going for my final treatment and will then be starting on the road of follow-up appointments and tests. I have read this book throughout this period and been extremely encouraged by it.

Now for my actual review of this wonderful gift:

     This is an extremely encouraging book for a hard time.

     When I was diagnosed as having breast cancer a friend of mine connected me with a breast cancer survivor, Rita, she is friends with. Rita immediately sent me an eBook copy of this wonderful book. It was an incredible blessing to me.

     Shirley is so open and honest about what she went through during her treatment. She even shares a number of times when she had lapses in good judgment and the lessons that God taught her through them. I found each short meditation to be extremely encouraging as I went through my treatments.

     There is only one thing that I wish were different about this book. That is the layout of the meditations. I wish that they had been grouped together based on what period of treatment Shirley was going through. If all of the surgery entries were together, all of the chemo entries were together, and so on it would have been much easier to go to what fit my needs for where I was at on my journey.

     I hope to be able to buy copies of this fantastic book to gift to other women when they are diagnosed with this dreadful disease. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I am giving it 5 stars as my rating.