By Mark Ellis –
When cancer struck several family members, Stacie Hutchings felt like she was “in the jaws of the beast.” But God sent messengers all along the way and heavenly signs of his great love.
Before tragedy struck, she entertained certain pollyannish notions about her life. “I thought there was a bottom through which, as a Christian, at least in America, we wouldn’t fall through,” Stacie told God Reports. “We’re a godly nation and I’m a Christian girl, and so nothing too bad is ever going to happen. I always felt like a victor, like there was a charm on my life, and it couldn’t get too bad.”
Those feelings changed when she took Caden, her two-year-old, to the doctor. Caden was the youngest of their five children. “He was the sweetest, chubby, smiley, happy, perfectly healthy little angel. We were getting ready to go on a vacation and I took him to the doctor because he didn’t seem to be feeling well, and I thought maybe he had an ear infection or something, and it ended up being neuroblastoma.”
Neuroblastoma is a type of childhood cancer that develops from immature nerve cells called neuroblasts. These cells are part of the sympathetic nervous system — involved in things like heart rate, blood pressure, and digestion. In Caden’s case, the cancer started in nerve tissue in the abdomen.
Eight days later Caden died. “The bottom of my world fell out,” Stacie says.
She entered a deep grief. “I would pray, and I would feel nothing. The heavens felt like brass.”
She wrestled with God. “I judged God to not be good, because he let this happen, he let me down and I felt like nothing like this could ever happen.”
Christians told her she was in the refiner’s fire and at the end of this refining she would become a beautiful silver or gold vessel. Their attempts to lift her up fell flat. “I would have swear words in my head, and think, let me be styrofoam. I would rather be styrofoam and have my son.
“There aren’t even words to describe the pain and betrayal and anger — so much anger. I didn’t even realize I had so much anger until Caden died.”
Stacie’s husband Ken spoke at Caden’s memorial service. He said, “If someone rips your arm off and you’re bleeding, you might die. If you live, the bleeding eventually stops. But you never forget that you’re missing an arm. You never, never forget.”
Another well-meaning friend told Stacie it was God’s will for Caden to die, but Stacie vehemently disagreed. “I reject that it was God’s will. God isn’t the one who hurts. He doesn’t send disease, he allows it…he didn’t orchestrate it, but he can redeem it.”
Ken was having trouble processing the loss of Caden, the youngest of their five children. One day Stacie and Ken and their children were sitting together when Ken uttered an ominous warning: “The devil’s coming after our family,” he said. “He just took Caden, and he’s gonna not stop till he destroys our family.”
The next dozen years were calm and uneventful. But thirteen years later (on what happened to be the anniversary of Caden’s death), Stacie went to the doctor for an annual checkup. “The doctor is a friend of mine here in Sandpoint (Idaho), and I thought I was in menopause. She said, ‘Stacy, I think you have cancer’…she could see the tumor.”
“My son died of cancer, and now you’re telling me I have cancer?” she exclaimed.
“It never even occurred to me, because we were (eating) organic and healthy.”
After further testing in Spokane, doctors confirmed Stacie had stage four cancer that had already metastasized. “It was all through my abdomen, like Caden’s, and wrapped around my aorta. It was in my lymph (system). It was so far gone that they told me to get my affairs in order. They said, ‘We’ll do the best we can, but you’re probably not going to make it.’”
“It was like an out-of-body experience.” Listening to some John Eldredge podcasts, Ken realized he had been holding anger and resentment toward God, going all the way back to Caden’s death. “No matter what happens,” he said, “I will not be angry at God again.”
Stacie began cancer treatments, but nobody held out any hope. Yet a shift began when Stacie noticed God began to bring encouraging signs of his presence. “Suddenly the heavens weren’t brass anymore. In a million tiny ways, God showed up,” she recalls.
“After my biopsy, I hemorrhaged and almost died. They took me to the big hospital in Spokane, and I don’t even really remember it, because I was very out of it. But someone came and pushed me to the radiation room, and I’m on a gurney because I couldn’t even sit.”
“And the person pushing me said, ‘The Lord wants you to know you are going to make it and be okay. You’re going to live.’
“I never saw that person again,” Stacie says.
Stacie and Ken decided to move back to New York, in close proximity to their family, because they would be 10 minutes from a large hospital where she could receive treatment.
The cancer oncologist in New York asked Stacie, “What do you think is going to happen?”
“Well, you’re gonna do your thing, and God’s gonna heal me, and I’m gonna go on with my life,” Stacie replied.
“That is probably not going to happen. You are too far gone,” the woman doctor told her.
“Well, I know my God.”
“We will do the best we can, but this is so far progressed that you need to get your affairs in order. We’ll try to hold it at bay, but you’re not going to make it.’”
Stacie did not appreciate the doctor’s attitude. “She gave me about six months…I was in the jaw of the beast.”
A friend recommended an alternative treatment, bitter apricot seeds. “I had been praying, ‘Lord, I don’t know what to do. There’s so much information, so much conflicting stuff. I never thought I would be doing chemo and radiation. And I was kind of stunned, kind of in shock, and so sick I couldn’t think clearly. Ken went to a health food store, and got the bitter apricot seeds, and they have some compound that will supposedly attack the tumors and put holes in them and dissolve them.”
Stacie’s treatment unfortunately coincided with covid lockdowns. “Ken couldn’t even come with me to appointments. Nobody could sit with me in the chemo room. It was just me and God.”
In a follow-up appointment her radiation oncologist, Dr. Paul Aridgides, told Stacie, “This doesn’t happen, but it’s almost like there’s holes in the tumors,” pointing specifically to the one that had been wrapped around a vein in her heart.
Because of the lockdowns, Stacie and Ken talked about moving to Florida, where they could find less expensive housing. “We got wiped out in 2008, when the economy went sideways, and we were still recovering from that. The cancer treatment was expensive no matter how good your insurance is. So we said maybe we’ll go to Florida.”
A few days later she was in a small room waiting for her next round of radiation. Usually she waited alone but was surprised when another cancer patient entered the room.
“In walks this little black lady. She looked at me and said, ‘The Lord wants you to know you are gonna live and not die…You are going to make it to Florida.’”
There was no way for the woman to know about the private conversation she had with Ken about a possible move to Florida.
In response, Stacie began to recite her favorite verse, and the woman began reciting it along with her, word for word.
“Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed;
save me, and I shall be saved,
for you are my praise.” (Jeremiah 17:14)
The woman said, “That’s what we have to do. We have to give praise when he brings the healing, and you are going to be healed!”
At that moment, a comfort blanket of assurance wrapped around Stacie. “I knew it was going to be okay. I knew I was going to live.”
A short time later, Dr. Aridgides delivered the wonderful news: Stacie was in remission.
He told Stacie he had called the other oncologist and told her, “I know you don’t like to give false hope, but this is a miracle. Let’s take this as a win.”
In Stacie’s last chemo treatment, the nurses told her she was a rock star.
“Well, this wasn’t a super toxic chemo, was it?” she asked.
“No, this was Cisplatin, a heavy metal chemo. People don’t usually make it through the treatments because they either die or get too toxic from the chemo and have to go off of it,” they told her.
Cisplatin is generally considered a more toxic form of chemotherapy compared to some other cancer drugs. It is effective, but it carries a higher risk of significant side effects—especially involving the kidneys, hearing, and nerves.
Stacie marveled at the way God protected her. “God has been so real and so close, and I know that for some reason, he’s chosen to spare me,” she says.
After they moved to Florida, Stacie had a recurrence of the cancer in the lymph nodes in her neck. She began medical treatment, along with a nutritional regimen recommended by a health food store owner, who happened to be a Christian.
One day she was sitting in the backyard doing her devotions. She read the passage about Jesus sending out the disciples two-by-two, and some of the healings that took place as a result.
I wish Jesus would send some healing people to me, she thought.
An hour later, a husband and wife came to the door because Stacie was selling something on marketplace.
She didn’t tell them she was going through cancer treatment, but out of the blue, the husband says, “We have a healing ministry, and we’d like to pray for you.” The man said he is a pastor.
“I almost fell down,” Stacie recounts.
A few days later, a nurse told Stacie and her husband, “I could get in trouble for saying this, but I just feel like the Lord wants you to know you’re going to make it.”
In 2023, around Christmas time, their son Conner was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “He had his own cancer journey and he’s great, he’s clean. He just had CT scan two days ago, and he’s considered cured, but it’s like the enemy has come after us hard.”
Ken’s warnings about the spiritual warfare their family would endure became more than real, yet Stacie emerged from their battles with gratitude.
“I could share with anybody who’s going through something awful that God’s plan is always beautiful, it’s always Jeremiah, 29:11.
“I don’t know why he allows the difficult things that he does, but he can and will redeem it. We just have to receive it. He already won the victory. And whether we live or not, there is some redemptive work that he’s performing.
“He’s good always, even when the things that happen aren’t good, I wish I could tell that to everybody.”
