Westside Stories: Kelly Ingram

In the fall of 2022, Kelly Ingram was 32 years old, mom to a nearly two-year-old daughter, and living a life she describes as quietly preoccupied with the wrong things. Climbing the ladder. Chasing the American dream. Walking with the Lord, but in a distracted way. Then an ordinary trip to the doctor for abdominal pain turned into an ovarian cyst, then surgery, then a diagnosis nobody expected: stage four appendix cancer.

Kelly's story, shared this week on Westside Stories, is about what happens when the life you were planning gets interrupted by the one you didn't choose.

She describes the month after her diagnosis, before doctors even confirmed what type of cancer she had, as a season that taught her and her husband Jonathan what it means to wait. For six months, she couldn't bring herself to say the words "stage four" out loud. She woke up every morning shocked by her own reality, imagining a future where she wasn't there to watch her daughter grow up.

But Kelly's story doesn't stop at the diagnosis. Through a difficult recovery, a recurrence, and a second twelve-hour surgery, she found herself in hospital rooms surrounded, unexpectedly, by other believers. A woman down the hall who dreamed of holding a heart. A man named Joseph, employed specifically to deliver meals and quietly pray for patients. Kelly describes it simply: she went into that hospital stay kicking and screaming, and came out having watched God use her suffering for something redemptive.

The verse she returns to again and again is Psalm 138:7-8, that the Lord will fulfill His purpose for her. Not a promise of healing, not a guarantee of tomorrow, but something Kelly calls the most trustworthy thing she knows. She quotes it to people weekly, she says, followed by the same honest admission: I trust it today. I pray I will trust it tomorrow.

Kelly is honest about what this journey has cost her. The plans she had for a bigger family. The version of life she expected to live. But she's equally honest about what she's gained: a deepened marriage, a church that has shown up for her family again and again, and a perspective she says she could only have gained by being put through the fire.

As you listen, we want to invite you to sit with one question: what is preoccupying your mind? Where is your treasure today, the American dream, or the things of the Lord?

And a challenge, if you're willing: reach out to someone you know who's experiencing physical illness, by text, phone call, or email. Let them know you care for them and that they're not alone, and take a moment to bring their suffering before God.

Listen now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or find the full episode on our website.