This is Everything Happens. I'm Kate Boehler. The first few hours after receiving my diagnosis

of stage 4 cancer were just total chaos. But in the midst of it, I remembered someone I'd

recently interviewed for a book, and weirdly, I found myself dialing her number. Her name

is Margaret Feinberg, and she's a popular Christian speaker at major evangelical conferences,

and the author of a book called Fight Back with Joy. The book is about her own experience with cancer,

and I'd love to talk about that in a minute, but I loved her on site. In an evangelical women's world

of ladies with long, flowing, glossy hair and promotional photos of laughing families, she has

this short, brown pixie cut and an author photo where she looks like she's sharing a joke with her

dog. Hours after receiving the news, I found myself dialing her number. I think I said something

like, Margaret, it's me, Kate, the girl from last month that interviewed you, and I just got

diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. And then I think I said something really unladylike.

Margaret is sitting with me here now, and we've never really talked about this. Do you remember that

moment? I do. I do. I think I said some rather unladylike words first, because I don't know. I just,

I think those are some of the best words that you can hear. Yeah. Because in saying unladylike

things, it just, I was trying to communicate to you. I'm on team Kate now and forever, no matter what.

And I, yeah, I still remember. Well, you did. I mean, that's exactly what you communicated.

You found a way to say something like, I'm on your side, I'm with you, and you said something like

that we were part of the fellowship of the afflicted. When did you figure out that suffering was a

kind of fellowship? Yeah. I think in, you know, in my own story of getting sick, and we talk about

this, like we both got sick in our 30s, which is not a normal time. No, right? Like, you just broke

the life script. Right? Yeah. I don't know how to interact with you. I don't know what to say to you.

I don't know. And at that point, everybody around you is young too. And so you become like the first

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