Deep Breathing: Finding Calm Amid Cancer Anxiety

A cancer diagnosis is upsetting to anyone, but

life-threatening illness can be navigated without terror.

When pastor Mary Holder Naegeli was told she had lung cancer, her world shifted into slow motion. Prone to anxiety and worry, she learned how to stay calm, curious, and courageous through her aggressive treatments--by accepting her illness as a test of faith and surrendering to God her life and death. With realism and humor she chronicled her growing discovery of God's safety and security.

In Deep Breathing: Finding Calm amid Cancer Anxiety, Mary guides those facing dangerous illness toward calming faith in God's might and mercy. Deep Breathing is structured around the church year and its hopeful rhythms. The author grapples with life's basic questions of Why me? and What does this mean? through

- ADVENT--welcoming the waiting room

- CHRISTMAS--treasuring the gifts we're given

- EPIPHANY--opening our eyes to God in action

- LENT--examining our soul condition to pursue healing

- EASTER--celebrating resurrection hope

Mary's style is reflective, grounded, and encouraging. She helps readers embrace faith that survives life's upheavals. Discover how to slow down, discern right thinking, and loosen anxiety's grip as you hold fast to the One who holds you. Deep Breathing is also an excellent resource for pastors, caregivers, and medical professionals seeking insight into the patient's experience.

What are you full of? The answer to that question becomes evident when life squeezes you. When something or someone beyond your control seeks to rob you of your hope or your joy. When Mary Naegeli was squeezed by cancer, what she's full of became evident. Grace and truth and honest pleading are what you will find in the raw and radically faithful writing of this gracious saint. If you've ever wondered how a person of faith can experience pain and find purpose, or give glory to God at the cellular and granular level, or if you just need to know the anchor really holds, these reflections are for you.

--Carmen LaBerge, radio host and author of Speak the Truth: How to Bring God Back into Every Conversation

This highly personal and radically transparent memoir of Rev. Mary's physical and spiritual journey through "the valley of the shadow of death" with advanced lung cancer is informative, moving, and ultimately a call to discipleship through intimacy with Christ. Her honest realism and insightful biblical reflections provide encouragement and hope both for those suffering threatening illness and for those who walk alongside them as companions on the Way. I highly recommend this, both for its insight and for the gems of wisdom to help us on our own daily pilgrimage of life in the love of Christ. I was blessed and challenged in reading it.

--The Rev. Dr. Roberta Hestenes, pastor, former professor at Fuller Seminary, and President of Eastern University

Breath is our life and our moment-by-moment hope: the breath of our lungs, the breath of others whom we love and who love us, the breath of living creatures. All this breath is derived from the ultimate source of all breath, the very ruach or breath of God. Mary Naegeli's story of lung cancer draws us into the particularities of this especially insidious cancer, and its physical, emotional, and spiritual taunts and tyrannies. It is a tale of the very stuff of life. Read it. Breathe deeply. You will be glad you did.

--Mark Labberton, President, Fuller Theological Seminary

How does one write a book that is both very personal and very helpful for others? With great care, and the Rev. Dr. Mary Holder Naegeli has done just that. Mary's writing is clear, compelling, insightful, personal, faithful.

Deep Breathing journeys deeply through her lung cancer diagnosis and treatment, her feelings and insights, some fundamentals of Christian faith, and even the seasons of the church calendar. She manages capably to weave all of these strands together into a delightful and hopeful whole.

Whether one is staring down personal cancer, supporting a loved one in the journey, wondering what God is up to, or supplying spiritual care, this is an insightful resource.

--The Rev. James D. Berkley, pastor, writer, editor