Keeping Hope and Faith During Childhood Cancer

You've read accounts in the Bible of how Christ impacted so many people, but we really know very little about the lives of those early followers of Jesus. The Chosen, I Have Called You By Name, imagines what life was like for those who followed Christ. Based on the widely acclaimed TV series The Chosen, this Focus on the Family book by bestselling author Jerry Jenkins brings color and depth to the people surrounding Christ. You can find out more at focusonthefamily.com slash chosen. Four years of hospitals and treatments, three relapses, two faith-filled parents, one brave boy and one God, our God, who does what the world says is impossible. That's the story that you're going to hear today, the story of Brennan Simpkins.

His parents are here, Turner and Tara, and your host for this Focus on the Family broadcast is Jim Daly. John, perseverance is referenced several times in the New Testament. In Hebrews, Christians are told that we need endurance. In Philippians, Paul mentions pressing on to the heavenly prize through Christ Jesus. And in James, being Jim, I like that book, we're told that the crown of life is waiting for those who persevere under trial. And as an orphan, man, I know when life feels like you're trudging uphill in four feet of snow and it doesn't seem to be getting easier. And in that context, perseverance can be hard. It can be so difficult to find the courage to take even one more step forward. But what I think is really interesting is that the verb perseverance, as it was originally written in the Greek, didn't simply mean to patiently stay in a difficult situation, but it implies action on our part. In other words, as Christians, we're not called to simply keep going.

We're called to be active participants in the stories God has called us to be a part of, trusting him with the results. And our guests today are a very inspiring couple and their son as well. I would agree, Jim. Turner and Tara Simpkins are co-founders of the Press On Fund, which is a nonprofit established to identify groundbreaking alternative therapies for children with cancer. And they have three teenage boys. Turner and Tara, welcome to Focus on the Family. Thank you for having us. Thank you.

Let's jump right in. From the time your middle son, Brennan, was a baby, you had a feeling, and I thought this was interesting in the book, but you said you had a feeling that God had something special in mind for him. Describe that feeling and what was your reaction to it?

It's difficult to articulate. I mean, from the first moment that I held him and there was something about, he just, there was a glow or an energy. You could just tell. And then from the point that he could interact with us, he was always reaching out. I mean, he was always wanted a hug. He was always happy. And he was always, he was sort of the glue between once his little brother Christopher came along between the three of them.

And then he had had these prodigious hand-eye coordination and just about everything he did. And I don't know, it was just a feeling. I don't really know how else to say. Just something caught your attention. There was something about the kid. You actually had a friend that also said something to you about him.

Yeah. I read this, you know, every now and then you remember a conversation that was relatively, it was late later in the evenings. I'm glad that I recall it. But, you know, when someone says that, you know, he was looking at him in a photo of him and having seen him early in the day.

I remember it was his godfather, Frank. And he said, you know, there's something about this kid. I think he's going to do something special. Wow.

That's amazing that the Lord would give you that because that, I'm sure, became a strength for you as you began to unfold what happens. And we're going to get to that. But tell us about Brennan as a child. I understand he was showing major promise in his golf game. Dad was proud of that, I'm sure. Yeah, we all were. I mean, he was, people were talking about him at, you know, five years old. I mean, he was even entering these junior events.

So he was good. We live in the Augusta, Georgia area. Kids play golf relatively young and competitive.

I mean, I know they do everywhere. But, yeah, I mean, he could chip and putt, which is very difficult for most of the younger kids out there. I mean, usually, and he had a beautiful swing.

And, you know, I remember looking at the video of Tiger Woods when he was about that age on the Johnny Carson show. And thinking, I said, well, Brennan can do that, too, you know. Like a good dad, you're saying.

He's even better. I think any dad, you know, I mean, you know, it was, but yeah. And then, of course, you know, Tara, you had, as a little kid, I mean, you saw a lot of that in him as well.

I did. He's very special. A little mom's insight there.

Yeah, they're all special. So he gets to his seventh birthday, or almost to his seventh birthday, and he suddenly started showing some signs of illness. Tell us about the night that he was diagnosed and what were the two of you, his mom and dad, feeling and thinking.

And this is where people that are going through hard stuff right now with their own children, a diagnosis that somebody may have just gotten for their child. This is where we're all going to lean into the story. So tell us about that day. What was unique about it? What caught your attention, and why did you take him to the doctor? Well, he had started, as Turner said, he was this very active kid. And his brother was in the third grade, and he was in the first. And he was so fatigued over the Christmas holiday, and we thought that it was just he was trying to stay... Stay up with his brother.

Yeah, stay up with his brother and all the third graders. And he was complaining about his leg hurting. And he was complaining about leg pain, and the grandmothers had said he was pale. So when he was complaining about his leg pain, I took him to a pediatric orthopedic surgeon. He was a friend of ours, and he did x-rays and all of this.

And he said, he's absolutely fine, but the next time you go to your pediatrician, you might want to ask for some blood work. So I just kind of put that in the back of my brain, and we had taken all of the kids up to the mountains to see snow. And all the kids were out there playing, and Brennan was just too tired.

And then all three children... All the kids are making snowmen, snowball fights, and he's in the bed. Really? And so we had a walk with Tara's sister that day, and we had just this heaviness. We sort of knew then, and we didn't know specifically... You knew something was probably not right. We knew something was not right.

I mean, it was ominous. I mean, there was... And then they all had a fever. So we cut the trip short, and we went to our pediatrician.

The two boys had ear infections, and Brennan did not. And thankfully, I had the doctor's instruction in the back of my brain, and I said, would you mind doing some blood work? And he said, no problem. So I went to go to my law office.

The kids went with the babysitter. Turner went to work, and I kept waiting for that phone to ring. And lunch went by, and no phone call. And after about three o'clock, I knew, like, this is a phone call a doctor's gonna make. And at five o'clock, I got the call from the doctor. Because usually a nurse will make that call. Yes.

Right? Nothing wrong. When the doctor calls, it's... It's not a good sign. It's not a good sign. He said, there's something suspicious in the blood work. Go get Brennan. Come back to the hospital. And we were...

I remember thinking driving to go pick him up to meet Turner. I'm like, leukemia? It just was on my heart. I thought it.

And I even called his godmother and said it. Yeah. But remember, we had to go to the fifth floor of the children's hospital. And that's the oncology floor. So, okay, now the pieces are coming together. As soon as you get off the elevator, and there was this really sweet kid who we became close with, who actually... It's a whole other story. But that's just when you knew. I mean, you saw the kid with no hair and the bag of blood and all these other things hanging off an IV.

All the devastation of that. So what... I mean, what did they say to you, the doctors, when you got the news?

What was said? Your child has cancer. Your child has leukemia. It took a little while.

It took them several days to pinpoint exactly what it was. At first, they thought he had ALL, which is the more common form of childhood leukemia. And then they thought it was aplastic anemia, which is another terminal blood disease. And then finally, it was AML.

And AML is? Acute myeloidal leukemia. And he had a weird subtype of it. It was a chromosomal deficiency called 7q deletion. But that's a very aggressive cancer, correct? Yeah.

It's one of the most difficult of the childhood cancers to cure. And fortunately, we had our head in the sands a little bit at that time. So we didn't take on the, you know, the fear that we would have had, you know, in retrospect. So at that point, we're thinking, okay, we can do this.

He's going to beat it. We're in a good place. And then we're positive. We're in a good place. But, you know, that was short-lived, obviously.

That was short-lived. But I want to hear your hearts on this as mom and dad. Talk to me as mom and dad when doctors say that. And people listening, they may have heard it or they're going to hear it. And I want you to connect with them because that's a moment where you can go a lot of different directions in your faith, in your anger. Yeah.

What happened to you guys? I mean, it's almost like a cyclone of emotions and thoughts at that point. I think that to answer your question, there's a process that just human nature, right? You start to, first you approach this as a business problem or something that, you know, we can handle this, right? We can handle it.

And I remember I'd had a friend who was a pediatric oncology nurse and she says it takes family seven times to hear your child has cancer before the full effect of that actually falls in on them. And I remember that night we were so naive, we taken him to the hospital and we are, you know, it's like nine o'clock at night. We go, we've got two other kids at home. We got to get them to bed like you're not going anywhere. Operation. There's a, there's a cut for y'all, but you're not going anywhere tonight.

So you're not going anywhere. So like things, it takes it a while to sink in. And then I remember the next day when the oncologist walked into the room who was on call that day and she happened to be an acquaintance and she hugged me and she sobbed.

Wow. And she said, I am so sorry. And at that moment I thought, oh my gosh, we have this is no, this is a big idea what the depth of this is. And then I remember you're kind of caught between two worlds, right? You're trying to go through, you still have all the daily duties, laundry, getting the other kids to school, their lunch is prepared. And at that point we didn't even know what we were doing with our jobs or any of that stuff.

I mean, you know, again, it just. Are you in a fog? Are you trying to say, okay, what do we got to do today? You're almost hyper focused in the sense that like, I think military. You know, when you're we're on a mission, there's the fear that focuses you, that allows you to focus on things, also distracts you from the depth of what's going on with your heart. But I remember that as the days went by, the fear that that understanding grew that what we were getting ready to go through. And Turner's sitting there reading. We were in the hospital room.

We were able to stay there as a family and sleep. And so he's going through the protocol with all the side effects and it's terrifying. And then I just hear this voice and it says in the midst of fear, fall deeper into love in the midst of fear, fall deeper into love. And I knew that we were being told to trust, to trust in something gives me chills, trust in something bigger. I will hold you through this right. You will be held through this. You will not go through this alone. And so that is phenomenal encouragement. And that had be God speaking to you.

Right. And if you're tracking along with any aspect of this story, please know that we have caring Christian counselors that you can talk to here. Call and schedule a consultation with them.

We have resources and our phone number is 800 the letter A in the word family. So Brennan goes through his first bone marrow transplant. The doctor sits you down and says what? Well, he had sailed through transplant.

So it was almost a little too easy. So you thought things were going in a great direction. We were also told that, you know, post transplant, there needs to be some signs of friction, fevers, rashes, certain things to show that this new immune system is effectively taking over. And we'll hopefully see the cancer is something bad and foreign is fighting something. And none of that happened that, you know, that day is the one where you're the cyclone really kicks in. Tara and I actually got physically lost driving home in the car on a road that we traveled.

You know, all of a sudden I took an exit and I didn't even know because my mind was just everywhere. Well, because you heard there's no more hope. Well, he said there's no curative option.

Yeah. They gave him two months. He said call hospice, go to Disney World.

There's no curative option. I mean, it was very just black and white. I mean, he was sympathetic.

I mean, this is a tough thing for doctors to do. Right. It's so kind. But in part of that kindness is the directness. Right. Right.

But but the difference was you did not react in a way that said, OK, I guess this is over. Lord, you have our son. Thank you for the time we had. We had a little kick in the pants in that regard. Talk about that. What happened? One of our close friends who I went to college with and actually from Augusta, his son had neuroblastoma and his son, Patrick, had relapsed, which is not a good spot to be.

And that's a very difficult disease to survive at relapse. They were in Philadelphia at Children's of Philadelphia. We're driving home. We called Steven and tell him what's going on. And, you know, we're talking about this gloomy.

Sure. And he said, you know, screw that. I mean, they just forget that because, man, no. And so we kind of looked at each other and it was kind of what we needed. And it's like the football coach said, get back in the game, guys, you know. And we knew that, you know, we were certainly behind, but we came home and we we got everybody that we knew who had a connection.

We rounded up the troops and we started making phone calls. Yeah. And, Tara, you kind of had that mama bear thing, right? You were like, kick it into gear.

Let's go. Right. It's a bit of defiance, I think.

What did that sound like in your mind? I mean, some people will say, OK, it's over. Well, that part. Yes, you're right. And that's what worries me. I think that one of the places of grace that we had was we weren't alone.

Right. We knew we were not alone. We knew we'd been promised that we would be walked through this, not by ourselves. Our friends were so important. The fact that we had a community, another family who was going through it.

But we saw all kinds of families, single moms, children that never were able to come to the hospital. And there was always what is it that we can do? How can we serve? How can we be of use? What is a better question that we can ask instead of why us? How might I be used?

How might I be of service? So as we work through this, though, I mean, we have about 10 minutes and I want to make sure we grab all of this. It's a long story. No, no, no. But it paints an incredible picture. The second transplant didn't take the third. Well, they did take again. You know, there's a difference in the transplant took. But then the cancer came back in each of those situations. Right.

So, I mean, we defied all the others. He's the second when he survived. The third one is a parent is a donor. And think about that as a half a match. You know, the child is half Terry.

I mean, he's half me. And you were the donor for that third one. I was the donor for the third one. And it took and then things went haywire. And we he was given last rights and we brought his brothers in to tell him goodbye.

He was on a ventilator. And you hear about it, but you could feel it. I mean, it was a physical energy of peace, knowing that you have peeled off the things that don't matter. You've done everything that you could do.

You've done everything that you could. And it was I mean, it's hard to describe it. So emotionally, you're saying goodbye to Brennan at this point. Yeah, we had we had never done inside that day. Yeah, I mean, because we had almost all of the doctors and nurses and, you know, child life specialists all were in the room.

They're all weeping, thinking. And I remember a doctor in Philadelphia saying, I tried a second transplant on a kid in less than a year. And he died a pretty gruesome death on a ventilator. And so I've never left my mind. And so here's this kid, third transplant.

And he's on a ventilator. And then the decision to try for it. But then he came back, you know, and then, yeah.

So Tara, did you still have that sense of we can get through this? I always had the sense that we could get through this without being hopeful of what the outcome could be, but without having to need the outcome to prove it and to define it that we were held. Right?

Yeah, describe that a bit more. There's such a difference that we didn't have to say, God, you're going to prove it to us by saving our son. Right. Like we're going to have faith and that we need this outcome to happen. It was this, you know, in the midst of fear, fall deeper into love was we always had this moment. And the question was, how can we feel love and be channels for that love in this moment and allow it to be enough?

And that was our human struggle, which I do think Turner does such a beautiful job in the book because the science is one thing. But we're talking about a daily living in the practice of some hopeful expectancy and trust and believe. And some kind of mixture of all of that with some type of confidence. And I remember during this time at the root of confidence is confito. Right.

Walking in faith. So we knew that this was all of that. And at the point Turner describes is the ultimate letting go that piece that passes all understanding that we read about. Right.

That's the ultimate letting go. It doesn't mean that we didn't have any of those feelings, that we didn't have any of that doubt, that we didn't struggle. But that became an active part of that. What she's talking about is really the one thing that we were taught through that because you're in this cocoon submarine. I mean, whatever you want to call it, the rest of the world's going on outside. And I realize if I'm afraid of the outcome or worried about the outcome or angry about why we're here, I'm going to lose this moment that I have with this kid with me right now.

Wow. And his brothers. And if I lose in that moment may not be here 15 minutes from now. And in his case, I mean, because then it's all the fine. I mean, when you're going through the mundane things of life, I mean, it's easy to kind of have that smothered up a little bit. And so this situation peeled off all that mundanity. And when you're in an environment, once you get to St. Jude Children's Hospital, I mean, these are – a lot of these kids don't come out.

Right. They're in trouble. And you see lots of reactions. You see divorce. It was an extremely high rate of divorce in pediatric cancer. Well, and that's part of it.

You guys were able to hold together, I mean, even through this very stressful time. And the good news is Brennan received that fourth transplant and it did work. And he's now doing great. He's 17.

Yeah. He's no longer that seven-year-old, eight-year-old fighting for life in the way he had to. He's doing much better, right? He is. He's remarkable.

Yes, he's 17. He has a lot of side effects from his treatment. But again, we're just so grateful. And if we can remember to stay in that place of gratefulness that this is what we prayed for, even the days I want to strangle him.

No, the normal stuff. I prayed for this. We prayed for this.

Normal is good. I remember. We got it. Here we go.

I remember that we did this. But when talking about that specialness of Brennan, and I do, I think for parents who are out there, that child never doubted that he was loved. He was a fighter. He was a fighter. He never felt abandoned. That was the thing that we saw. He never felt abandoned by God.

He never felt abandoned. I mean, I had people write letters that said this child is paying for the sin of you and your ancestors and blah, blah, blah. And I was just like, oh, my gosh, it's so harmful. Or that we were being Frankensteinian in some way and making this kid endure things that he shouldn't endure. But he wanted it. All right, he was seven. Remember, we were trying to cocoon them. Well, once you're out of transplant relapse, you're at St. Jude, kids start dying.

I mean, the gigs, I mean, the cat's out of the bag, right? And our kids would go to funerals of other children. I mean, that's not something, when you could do that on a semi-routine basis at the age of seven on, it had an impact on them.

But you know what was good? This is the quote out of the book that really got a hold of me. You said, the interim nature of childhood itself should be sufficient to hold every one of our kids tight for every possible second. We should not need cancer for this.

Man, that is powerful. I mean, you guys went through a traumatic experience where your son almost died, not once, not twice, not three times, but almost many times. And that fourth bone marrow transplant.

And if you don't know anyone who's done a bone marrow transplant, I have a good friend, Chuck Bulte, who just went through that. And it is horrific. It's brutal. It's brutal. It takes about a year to recover. If everything goes well.

And I've just been watching that from a distance. And to hear when your son went through four of those in a short period of time, it caught my attention. It was like, this is not, this isn't even normal for someone who's going through that.

The other aspect of it is your attitude to fight. And I just so appreciate that you didn't give up after the first situation where it didn't work and you didn't give up as parents. That's a good lesson for all of us when it comes to medical issues that we may encounter at some point. I hope the people listening will take that as a declarion way forward if they're given a poor diagnosis. You're not going to hurt anybody's feelings if you get a second opinion. Keep trying.

I mean, you may be on the right track, but you need to make sure that you got all the cards on the table. Yeah, and I so appreciate that. The last question, which is really perhaps the most difficult, and my own brother and his wife went through this cancer with their son, and he was doing well, but then it got him again and he didn't make it at a young age. And so I think the question is a tough one, but it's for those families that did fight the good fight, but they lost their loved one, they lost their child, their son or daughter.

What word would you have for them? I have enough. This understanding that every human's life is enough, that whatever it is that they were meant to be, to love, whomever they were born to touch, they did. They touched them and that it was enough. And to find some peace in that, right, to find something in that. We can spend our entire rest of our lives what-if-ing, second-guessing, and if we're doing that, we aren't living the lives that we've been called to do. Yeah, and you're really saying contentment has to be your goal, that you can't control these outcomes, and that you have to find contentment. Everything has a consequence, every little seed in the ground, every little pebble in the pond. And we may be a long ways off before that matures, and we may never know what it is, but it's something. And each of those children who've been in the hospital have touched someone, they've touched another family, they've touched another doctor, and there is meaning there.

It may not be the one that was written up in the handbook when the child was born, but certainly I do think that we know that if we push the doubt aside, then faith is there and then you can hang on. But that doesn't mean you don't have the anger. You don't have all of those human emotions to process. Process them, learn from them, get help. Don't bottle it up. Don't bottle it up. All of that is very human. Talk about it with your friends.

Those are all seeds that are being planted. Talk about it with other families who've gone through the same thing. You guys, I'm so grateful for you to be able to share your pain points with the audience and to be able to hear your wrestling through this and the fact that, you know, thus far, Brennan's in a good place. Maybe not a perfect place, but he's in a much better place than he was 10 years ago. And God has been faithful. Absolutely. And the point is, he's faithful always, no matter the circumstances.

Yeah, the circumstances are what they are. And John, as you said before, I can only imagine some of the pain in the people who are listening and things that they're encountering. And focus is here for you.

That's the whole point. We have so many generous donors who equip us to have, you know, counselors in place to hear where your heart is, to help you, to give you some idea and direction, to give you biblical wisdom on what you can do to stay in the fight, the human fight of doing better in this life and leaning into him. And we've got lots of resources to help you do that.

We do. We're a phone call away and that number is 800, the letter A and the word family. And online you can find help and we'll have the links in the episode show notes. And perhaps you'd like to pass this encouraging message along to someone who's going through a tough time similar to this.

We'd love to send you a CD of this broadcast so you can do that. That'll be yours for a gift of any amount to help us continue giving families hope. And you'll find details at our website along with information about Turner's book, Possibilities, Perseverance, Grace and the Story of One Family's Life with Leukemia.

Turner and Tara, what an amazing story. Bless you guys as you continue this journey of family and life. Thank you for being with us. We really am grateful. We're really grateful. And for all the families out there. And when you come back from something like this, you don't understand that there's still a lot of fight ahead of you.

Like families, you know, you hear the military members that are coming back and trying to reintegrate. Please, I just urge all of your listeners to use the resources that you have available for them and use that. I love your cry, which is hug your kid tonight. Hug your kid tonight. That's good. Well, on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here at Focus on the Family, thanks so much for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Use your resources to help families thrive for generations to come. Find out more at focuslegacycommunity.com. That's focuslegacycommunity.com.