She stood on Folly Beach, listening to the waves and watching the dark clouds roll in. “A storm is coming,” she thought. She reached for her phone and texted a friend who was going through a hard time.
“… My sweet friend, although the waves are crashing and foaming, the sand washing out from beneath your feet, the wind blowing, God is there and He will hold you up even though you can’t see or feel Him. You are deeply loved … .”
She didn’t realize that the truth she texted her friend back in February 2024 would apply to her own life roughly nine months later in November 2024 when her cancer journey began.
Cathy Blalock, who’s been a member of First Baptist Charleston for 28 years, and is married to former South Carolina Baptist Convention President Marshall Blalock, overcame cancer with four words:
Do not be afraid.
It all began in November 2024 when Cathy got an MRI to check on the excruciating pain she had in her shoulder. The doctor looked at the results from the MRI and saw lesions in her bone and suspected cancer. The doctor called the Blalocks with the news. It was early December, and that’s when Cathy’s world stopped.
She cried for hours. But in the midst of her dismay, she looked up at the manger scene resting on the mantle of their fireplace. She saw Mary and Joseph, and the angels made of olive wood, and recalled the story of an angel telling Mary and Joseph at separate times:
Do not be afraid.
“Those four words got me through nine months of cancer,” she said.
Though the doctor suspected cancer, he couldn’t know the details without further imaging. So, the day after Christmas, Cathy underwent a PET scan.
“That [the PET scan] was our Christmas present,” said Marshall, chuckling.
On Jan. 2, Marshall and Cathy drove to the doctor’s office to see the results of the scan.
It showed cancer not just in her shoulder, but in her lungs, spine, and ribs. She had stage 4 lung cancer.
The news was overwhelming, said her husband, Marshall. But the word of the Lord was more overwhelming:
Do not be afraid.
Cathy said she didn’t know the outcome — whether God would heal her or not. So, instead of pursuing an answer as to whether she’d be healed; she pursued God instead.
“What I learned from not knowing the outcome was to learn who God was,” said Cathy.
She said the biggest truth she learned from cancer was that she can trust God when she knows God. She said all our lives we check the box for Bible study, prayer, and tithing, “but if you know God first, [then] you do all of those things organically,” she said.
Psalm 23, a psalm that her father recited as he died, was her fight song. One aspect of God that Cathy said she didn’t understand was how God was both almighty — the one who parted the Red Sea and set the Egyptians free from slavery — but also a tender Shepherd. One day, as she was studying the Bible, Marshall walked by and said, “You’re trying to figure God out, aren’t you?”
But knowing God more deeply didn’t mean she didn’t receive any more bad news. After she was diagnosed with lung cancer, she got another MRI that revealed cancer in her brain. She sat across from the neurologist who had tears in his eyes. And Cathy heard the words: “I can’t help you; you have too much cancer.”
Cathy had 30 brain tumors.
Do not be afraid, she thought.
But there was hope. Her oncologist, Dr. Greenwell, who walked with her through her cancer journey from the beginning, knew of a medicine that could potentially cure her. Cathy said Greenwell did his fellowship under a lung specialist who performed the clinical trials for the very medicine that she needed.
Cathy said, “God, in His sovereignty, saw to it that I was placed in the care of the exact oncologist who knew about the targeted therapy for the version of [my cancer].”
Cathy continued undergoing treatment through the spring. She said her lowest moment was Easter weekend when she had seizures and stayed in the hospital four days. Cathy cried and told her friend Amy that she was so tired and afraid.
Amy just held her hand and told her they’d walk through it together.
Amy wasn’t the only one who walked with Cathy. Her church, First Baptist Charleston, delivered her meals and prayed for her healing. And the pastor of her church, Marshall — her husband — loved her sacrificially.
“Marshall really did put me first in his life — not over Christ, of course — but over his own life,” said Cathy.
And Marshall didn’t see it as a burden. “It was an honor to love my wife through cancer,” he said.
That August, Marshall took his wife to Ireland, a place she’d always wanted to visit. And it was there she came to know God more fully, as both tender Shepherd and Almighty God. As she sat on the green pastures that ran right up to the shore of the Atlantic, she heard the sound of sheep and cattle against the backdrop of the mighty roaring of the ocean’s waves. In that moment, she said, “For the first time I heard gentle shepherd and the power of almighty God altogether in one voice, saying, ‘Do not be afraid.’”
She said she felt like Moses hiding in the cleft of the rock, and that God was hovering over her. The world faded away and she felt like she might be going to heaven.
When she returned from Ireland, her cancer was gone. She looked at the MRI and the tumors were not there.
“I don’t think I would have known Him this way without the cancer,” said Cathy.