Westside Stories: Valerie Stafford

Valerie Stafford has spent more than two decades of her life inside hospitals, doctor's offices, and dialysis chairs. In this week's episode of Westside Stories, she shares what it's meant to keep believing God is good through a story most people would call relentless.

It started in 1997 with a rare, hereditary kidney cancer nobody in her family could explain. A great aunt eventually recalled that Valerie's grandmother had suffered something similar decades earlier in Alabama, mysterious enough that it had once been the subject of a magazine article. From there, Valerie's story became one diagnosis after another. Kidney cancer. Pancreatic cancer in 2010, followed by a complex surgery called the Whipple that left her in the ICU multiple times, fighting sepsis, needing blood transfusions, and, at one point, not expected to survive. Breast cancer in 2024. And now, kidney failure that has her on dialysis three times a week while she waits for a transplant.

What makes Valerie's story remarkable isn't the absence of suffering. It's what she refused to let that suffering become. She's clear that she doesn't want illness to be her whole story, even after twenty years of it. Instead, she describes each season as something God used to draw her closer to Him, to teach her patience, and to give her a peace that surpasses understanding, one she admits she's still trying to fully grasp.

Valerie talks openly about the harder parts too: praying and fasting for answers that didn't come quickly, the fear of facing a surgery she wasn't sure she'd survive, and the difficult task of explaining her illness to her children without hiding the truth from them. Before her pancreatic surgery, she asked her oncologist to draw a diagram and walk her through exactly what would happen, not because she wasn't afraid, but because she wanted to face that fear instead of running from it.

Her encouragement to anyone walking through suffering is simple and hard-won: don't lose hope. She describes hope and faith growing together, a little at a time, even when you can't see what God is doing in the moment. She's currently seeking a kidney donor and has shared more of her story in a book called Grace to Triumph, available now on Amazon.

As you listen, we want to invite you to sit with one question: if you knew that suffering was on its way, what would you do now to store up truth for when you need it most?

And a challenge, if you're willing: go to the Lord with a prayer of thanksgiving and petition, and let Him know the area of your life that needs healing, whether that's physically, mentally, or spiritually.

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