On Fighting for Life and For What Matters

In 2021, during Jon’s fight with brain cancer, we printed shirts for the shop that read: “Fight for What Matters.”
He wore those words not just across his chest, but in his spirit, every day. This photo was almost a year into living with brain cancer/fighting against a life-limiting disease. He just finished an intense few days of radiation. Let’s not talk about how that can crush your spirit. That phrase wasn’t about defiance. It was about love. About showing up. About staying in the garden, like Christ did. And to this day, it reminds me: we didn’t fight against suffering—we fought for what mattered most…love and God’s will for our lives.

Every time I see that shirt in a photo or in a drawer, I remember Jon didn’t wear those words as a slogan. He wore them in his spirit. He fought with sorrow, perseverance, with joy and hope, not because it was easy, but because love asked him to.

Now, when I hear someone question the language of “fighting” in the face of suffering, that familiar ache rises in me. Because we didn’t fight against God. We fought with Him—alongside Him—in the garden, where tears were shed and hope was held tightly, even in the dark.

Which brings to me to this reflection.

I read something this past week that left me both aching and angry. Maybe even wanting to fight a little for the truth. Not because it challenged my theology, but because it dismissed my reality—AND the reality of anyone who has fought cancer (or battled any disease), or supported someone through it, or loved someone who died despite their fight.

What I read suggested that suffering shouldn’t be “fought”—that words like “I fought cancer” somehow cheapen what we’re really called to battle. I felt called to share some thoughts for those who understand and know the reality of fighting cancer or a life-limiting disease.

I write this from a place and heart deeply rooted in faith, anchored in Christ, and grounded in the truths of the Catholic Church. Suffering is not foreign to our faith—it’s woven into the very heart of it.

St. Teresa of Avila once said, “We always find that those who walked closest to Christ were those who had to bear the greatest trials.”

And as St. Paul reminds us in Romans 5:3–5: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”

We fought with faith, hope and love.

We don’t fight because we reject suffering—we fight because love calls us to remain present in it. We fight not as those without faith, but as those who believe every act of love, every breath, every heartbeat is sacred. The Catholic faith doesn’t ask us to bypass suffering, but to walk through it, with Christ beside us—and sometimes, that takes everything we’ve got.

One of the most challenging realities I’ve faced—first while my husband fought brain cancer, and now as I live in the wake of his death as a widow—is how easily people dismiss or “spiritually bypass” suffering. It often comes in subtle and well-meaning attempts to offer theological answers to questions they’ve never had to live through.

But here’s the truth: unless you’ve stood in a hospital hallway outside a radiation room or an operating room, holding your breath and praying your spouse survives brain surgery…unless you’ve wept through the night begging God for more time…you can’t fully understand the fight. Just think if you were looking down the barrel of a gun or being chased by a raging animal, you’d fight with all you’d have to survive, right?

Personally, I’ve never loved the phrase “fighting cancer” either It’s messy and imperfect.

Mostly I don’t like it because some people fight and “beat” it. Others fight with every ounce of strength and still “lose” their earthly life. But that doesn’t mean they lost the fight.

Make no mistake—living with cancer IS. A. FIGHT.

It’s not just a medical battle; it’s spiritual, emotional, and deeply human battle.

Biologically, the healthy cells—supported by many interventions—fight to destroy the unhealthy ones.

Spiritually, it becomes a battle of wills: hope against despair, trust against fear, faith in the face of the unknown.

Sometimes it means questioning God, wondering if we’ve been forgotten or abandoned in the dark.

But we know, deep down, that God does not abandon us.

He doesn’t will our suffering, but He does meet us in it.

He enters the ache. He walks beside us—even when we can’t feel it.

And that quiet, constant presence becomes part of the fight too—

A fight to believe we are still held, still seen, still loved, in the midst of it all.

Emotionally, it’s a fight to stay grounded while carrying the weight of anxiety, grief, and uncertainty.

It’s the daily battle to hold both love and loss… to make room for joy even when sorrow lingers…to show up with tenderness even when your heart is breaking.

This fight isn’t just for survival—it’s for meaning, for connection, for the dignity to live and love well in the midst of it all.

I’ve noticed how often, when people are uncomfortable with someone else’s pain, they rush to focus on the positive or seeing the silver lining or saying God gives you what you can handle. Ooof…

During Jon’s battle with the beast known as glioblastoma, we were often told to “just stay positive.” And of course—we tried. That’s what you do. You hope. You pray. You fight with love.

But we also had to face the brutal truth of a life-limiting diagnosis.

Pretending it away wasn’t faith—it was denial. We chose to face the truth while also fighting. It’s a battle to know we are not made for this world and yet, we don’t want our loved ones to leave this world.

And now, in grief, when I share what it’s like to be a widow navigating both the beautiful and the excruciating days, I sometimes sense that same discomfort. “God gives you what you can handle.” Sure He does. That is saying…He chose my husband to die younger than others…imagine receiving those words. We’ll leave that there.

As if my naming my sorrow somehow means I am letting go of hope.

But the opposite is true.

Naming the pain makes space for a more profound, more grounded hope—a hope that doesn’t bypass suffering, but enters it, like Christ did. Like he did in the garden.

A hope that isn’t afraid of the dark—because it knows the light will come.

While I understand the desire to unite suffering to Christ—and we did our best to do precisely that in the midst of our health crisis (my dying husband did too)—I can say this with certainty:

After walking this road with him and watching my children grieve their dad, I’ve learned that the belief we must always passively accept suffering isn’t just naïve, it can feel deeply unkind.

It risks reducing the raw, brutal agony of suffering into a tidy theological idea, detached from the real, human experience of pain. Remember Jesus wept, too.

That’s spiritual bypassing.

Some may point to St. Ignatius of Loyola’s teaching on “holy indifference” as a reason to reject the language of fighting. But I challenge holy indifference in this situation may be misunderstood.

It’s not apathy or passivity—it’s the spiritual freedom to desire only God’s will, in all circumstances. That includes suffering, yes—but not in a way that prohibits action, advocacy, or hope.

As St. Ignatius writes in his Spiritual Exercises, holy indifference means that we “should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short one.” What matters is that “we desire and choose only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created.”

In other words, we can fight for healing, pray for miracles, and hope for life, while still surrendering the outcome to God’s loving will. I think my husband did that, he fought and he surrendered. Read For All You Give or Are you Afraid to Die?

That’s not a contradiction.

That’s holy freedom.

Christ showed us how to approach suffering. He didn’t run from sorrow. He felt it fully. And He offered it fully for our redemption.

He didn’t sidestep grief with spiritual phrases.

He wept at the tomb of His friend (John 11:35).

He begged the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane:

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly—and His sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:44).

Jesus didn’t avoid pain.

He entered it.

He allowed Himself to feel it—fully.

We’re not called to glorify suffering itself, but to glorify God through it.

Heather lebano

We’re not called to glorify suffering itself, but to glorify God through it.

And part of that means fighting—not because we cling to this world as our forever home, but because every life, every breath, every heartbeat is sacred.

Fighting for life doesn’t mean rejecting heaven.

It means loving well, right here and now, with the time we’re given.

You can trust God and still pray for a miracle.

You can surrender and still struggle.

You can believe in heaven and still grieve the loss of this life.

If you ever find yourself tempted to dismiss someone’s suffering with theological platitudes, I beg you, please pause before you do.

Pause and listen.

Hold space for the reality that suffering is both holy and horrific.

We don’t need easy answers or platitudes.

We need presence.

We need mercy.

We need to stand in the fight with one another.

We need to love.

May we be present.
May we offer mercy.
May we stay—like Christ in the garden—with those who suffer in their fight.

Heather Lebano

This photo of us below was taken on May 26, 2021—right in the middle of the fight as we started a trial to fight an aggressive disease. This was just five days after we buried my mom, and we still deep in Jon’s battle with brain cancer.

We were “fighting” so many things—grief, uncertainty, exhaustion, judgment, and the slow ache of letting go. Somehow, God was with us in all of it. He was in the pain, the prayer, in the surrender. We were clinging to the cross and praying “Thy Will Be Done.”

We didn’t fight against Him.
We surrendered with Him—trusting that even in the suffering, He was near.

In honor of the 28th…27 months too long, 1 day closer Jon.

Postscript:

As I’ve been turning these words over in my heart since publishing this reflection—sitting with the message, the memories, and that sacred season—I realized something that stopped me in my tracks. I had to come back and add this here.

For Jon’s Funeral Mass, we chose 2 Timothy 4:7 as the second reading:
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

I remember selecting it with certainty—with Jon, with the kids, with our priests. It felt right. Fitting. Holy. But today, I see it with new eyes.

Jon did fight the good fight. Not in resistance to God’s will, but in faithful surrender to it. He showed up in the pain. He remained in the garden. He held onto hope. He gave everything for what mattered most—faith, love, life, and the people he cherished.

That verse wasn’t just a fitting tribute—it was a reflection of how he lived and how he fought brain cancer.

And maybe that’s what this whole reflection has been circling all along and all week since I read those words.
Not a rejection of suffering, but a witness to the sacredness of fighting with love, with faith, and with Christ beside you.

If these words spoke to something deep in your heart—if you’ve found yourself in the fight, or walking beside someone who is—I invite you to stay connected. I write regularly about faith, grief, caregiving, motherhood, widowhood, and the presence of Christ in the quiet, hidden corners of suffering and hope. You can sign up [here] for my weekly newsletter, A Few Lovely Things.