This article appeared in the Chattanooga paper last Friday

Skogen, fiancee show faith despite cancer - Stephen Hargis Commentary The church pews will be packed this Sunday with little kids holding baskets, men sporting bright ties and pretty ladies wearing bonnets. But for me, the greatest symbol of Easter has always been hope. And that is what this story is about. Only because both Lindsey Wegrzyn and Jacob Skogen are athletes does it fall onto the sports pages. Otherwise it’s difficult to say what section of the newspaper should tell their story of how faith can turn the most ominous outlook into optimism. You may remember Skogen as the first in a line of four athletic brothers to guide Tennessee Temple Academy into state prominence. A two-time state basketball tournament MVP, leading the Crusaders to back-to-back Class A championships in 2002 and ’03, Jacob played for Mercer University before returning home to finish his college career at Covenant. Lindsey, who received a full scholarship to play soccer at Clemson University, started eight of 11 games as a freshman in the nation’s toughest conference. But as a new Christian, she wanted a smaller, faith-based educational experience closer to her home in Fayetteville, Ga., so she transferred to Mercer. That’s where she and Jacob met, through mutual friends and blind luck. Following the worst game of his college career, Jacob was invited to a party by his roommate, who wanted to cheer him up and tried to lure him there with the promise, “My girlfriend is bringing a friend.” “I have a theory that every pretty girl has an ugly friend,” Jacob said. “I knew his girlfriend was pretty, which meant she was probably bringing her ugly friend with her to set us up. As soon as I saw Lindsey, my jaw dropped and I knew my theory was shot.” The two hit it off immediately, blocking out everyone else at the party as they spoke almost exclusively to each other. They continued their conversation into the wee hours of the morning on the Internet. A few months later they were steady dating, and by the following year there was talk of marriage. A back injury led Lindsey to have a routine chest X-ray, where doctors discovered a mass near her collarbone so large that it caused her left lung to collapse. By the time she was told it was Hodgkin’s lymphoma, there was no time to digest the situation before she became all too familiar with needles, pills and the inside of the cancer treatment ward at Atlanta’s Northside Hospital. “I always thought of cancer as something someone else gets and you pray for them,” Jacob said. “It doesn’t happen to someone you love, and especially not when they’re 20 years old.” After enduring eight months of chemotherapy and another four months of radiation treatment, Lindsey was told there was a 95 percent chance she would recover completely. She and Jacob were engaged in November of 2005, and both began cementing plans to teach and coach. Then last October, after more than a year of being cancer free, Lindsey saw her parents’ car parked outside her apartment. “I had had a scan and the doctors called their house to say they had found a point of concern,” Lindsey said, pausing and closing her eyes. “I knew immediately that the cancer had come back. When you’re 22, and an athlete, you think you’re invincible, but that was really the first time I thought I might die. “So many things went through my mind so quickly. I remember thinking, ‘I don’t want to walk down the aisle bald.’ A lot of the things I had wanted took a back seat to just wanting to live.” The thought of seeing his fiancee go through another grueling series of hospital visits devastated Jacob, who admitted crumpling to the floor immediately after hanging up with Lindsey. “I can tell you it was the most miserable time in my life,” Jacob said. “The initial feeling for both of us was hopelessness. We wondered if we had just gotten through all of that for nothing. But then we started talking about it and realized instead of saying ‘Why us?’ you have to think ‘Why not us?’ Why do any of us think God owes us certain things in life? Just because we’re both Christians doesn’t mean we’re going to be spared of a trial which may actually bring us closer to him. “I don’t think you can put enough emphasis on what the Lord means to us.” The second set of treatments were much more aggressive, with a stronger round of chemotherapy that caused all the hair on Lindsey’s body — including her eyebrows and eyelashes — to fall out. She then underwent a stem cell transplant and 12 days of total isolation, during which each visitor had to wear a sterile gown and mask. She lost nearly 20 pounds in the process, and she has the immune system of an infant. Eventually she will have to have all of her immunization shots again. She has been told the treatment has roughly a 50 percent chance of success and there is an overwhelming possibility she will not be able to have children. Just mentioning children causes her light brown eyes to well up as she whispers, “I’ve always wanted a big family.” Three weeks ago, just getting out of bed and walking down the hall and back to her room fatigued Lindsey to the point of nausea. This week she has walked more than a mile per day and even played nine holes of golf with Jacob. She continues working online to finish her final classes and should graduate in May. Jacob recently was hired as an assistant coach at Ringgold High School, and their wedding date, which was postponed once, is now set for July 13. “I’ve learned that hope is not what God is going to do for you, it’s in God himself,” Jacob said. “The doctors have given us all kinds of stats about the success rate for the procedures she has undergone. For us, Jesus’ resurrection is not a stat, it’s a miracle. That’s the power we’re putting our faith in. Christ conquered death. Knowing that and that he is in control, that’s the greatest hope for us.” E-mail Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com This story was published Friday, April 06, 2007