Zoe: “When did your first cancer show up?”
Charna: “My first Breast Cancer diagnoses was in 2015 when Marcellus was 9 months old.
Zoe: “That must have been hard”
Charna: “We prayed forever for him, and after 5 miscarriages we got him and nine months into his life I got the diagnoses of stage 3 breast cancer. God gave me a such a good consolation to get married after 40 and find a good husband which was a good consolation. And then it was hard, at that time when we were trying to have a baby, and then when we got Marcellus. It was such a blessing. And then cancer hit, but even that has been a blessing when you look retrospect at all the good it has done for myself and my soul, and my husband and even our son, family and friends. So, there has been blessing all throughout.”
Zoe: “When my mom had cancer her motto was ‘Eat desert first’. Do you have a motto you live by?”
Charna: “My motto would be, ‘Begin with the end in mind’! Like I think earth is wonderful and our life on it could be blessed, and filled with hardships too, but if we begin where we really want to end, it determines how we want to live. And so, for me ultimately, I want the salvation of my own soul, but really the salvation of my spouse, my son, my family. So even in my cancer, I would take any suffering that God wanted to give me for my family, my friends and my love ones.”
She starts to cry. “So, that they would spend eternity in heaven. And so, when I look at this, I look at it as an opportunity in that way. I feel I know my final destination, but my work on earth… is most importantly to lead souls to God in heaven. And that is my ultimate work. I think as a young person you think it’s to get a great education or to be great at sports, or to get a financially big job. I have been blessed to have all those experiences, but at the top of every one of those ladders that I climbed, I found a void! And I thank God, I got to climb to the top of all of them because I found out really that is not where it is at. This latter part of my life has been a focus on what really matters, but it took a lot of going off.” She shrugs, “you know, the straight and narrow path to realize really the blessings of this simple life. The straight and narrow and the peace that is associated with that. I feel I am at a good place now, mentally and spiritually.”
“I think too God is so good, in two ways, well really in a million ways, but in two ways that I’m thinking about right now. That he gives us the ability to create, the all mighty creator, that created everything allows us to partake in creation not only with children, but with everything we do with our lives. The second is free will that we have to make choices. And when we start out that creation is taken for granted but the miracle of life is fascinating.”
Her son came in and asked her a question, but she remembered what she was saying and continued. “What a gift it is to have free will. To make decisions about what to do with our time, our love, our finances. Initially all those decisions are selfish, just by our nature, and then if we really allow God to come inside us then we get filled with his sense of creation and his sense of what is good and how we want to spend our time and how we accept suffering and how we choose blessing for others.”
“I think honestly God created me, every person. He creates you with a purpose and a plan, and I think for the longest time I was searching for the purpose and that plan, but I feel like really all my life is a preparation for a ministry at the end of my life and even when I got diagnosis I remember standing there thinking ‘So God this is it, I’m dying and that is it.’ But there are these seeds of desire way in my heart to really partake in the harvest of souls,” said Seibert.
“You know ‘the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.’ (Luke 10:2)’ and I felt that was my calling. Although to a degree I’ve got to participate, I feel like I haven’t completed that calling, and through a series of events and people I feel that calling is not over, that part of my life is just beginning. It’s exciting. I feel God has given me my final mission, a final assignment.”
Charna will go to Germany with a start date of October 8 for a 4-week holistic treatment. The highlight of that treatment is where they will take her own stem-cells and her cancers cells out so they can activate her good cells to fight the cancer. It puts your own body on the offensive. The treatment is not in the US because it is not fully FDA approved, but it is in Germany. Where they are having good results, but it is up to the individual. Some are having good results and some have no reaction at all. So, it is still a matter of how well she does on the treatment. The treatment will cost $45,000. Charna said, “I feel the tremendous support, I feel that prayer. I feel
I understand what it is called to be covered in grace. Things are kind of tough, but they don’t seem that bad. God has given me the grace to go through things with a sense of ease almost.”
She talked openly about how the support she is receiving is humbling. And she is so thankful. She wanted to thank Gwen Ophus for her beautiful idea of a fund raiser and her beautiful talent in making this quilt. Charna said, “I feel really blessed to see so many friends and family. I think I took Big Sandy for granted. There was a time when I didn’t see what a blessing there is here!
As we watched her four-year-old son play, she smiled and said, “Marcuelles name means a soldier of Jesus.” She is very appreciative that God has given her time to instill in her son a love for nature. She smiles, “God has spoken very concretely and very individually, and very directly.
I appreciate your writing this, it is most important to capture the ‘feature story’ behind the journey that I am on. “So many people let their circumstance define them. Instead of realizing everybody is going to have good and bad in their life, but that is not their defining moment, their defining moment is really how you react back to that, and I really believe what Jesus said in the bible. It says ‘I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world’. (John 16:33) We are all going to have trouble in different ways.
To know that and accept that so right at the front so when it comes it isn’t a shock or a surprise to you. It is going to be tricky and challenging, and hard, but we need to embrace that because it gives us an opportunity to grow in virtue.”
