Meet Charna Seibert, Apostle of Joy

MEET CHARNA SEIBERT

by Genevieve Kineke

Charna Ophus Seibert was born and raised on a small farm in northern Montana. She is the middle child of 11 children—and points to her saintly mother as the wellspring of her Catholic faith. Her basketball career included winning championships at the state level in high school, and a 1993 NAIA national championship. She worked in sales, marketing and banking before retiring to care for her son. When her son was nine months old, she was diagnosed with Stage 3a breast cancer, which metastasized to Stage 4 in 2018. For the past decade, she has leaned on her strong faith to witness to the power of Jesus Christ to preserve her life, even from the effects of cancer.

Charna, her son Marcellus, and her husband Jordan Seibert.

Genevieve: Charna, I want to talk about how you coped after your breast cancer diagnosis. What was the hardest?

Charna: I think the beginning is the hardest. That shock factor is really, really difficult. And I was a very independent person. I didn’t want to rely on anyone. And in the cancer situation, my husband was actually away at a mandatory pilot school for the Air Force.

So I was alone when I was going through treatment, with a little baby. I was starting this crazy medical journey with the surgeries and the chemo and the radiation and all that. I had to accept help from friends and family.

Genevieve: Can you tell me what helped?

Charna: You know, I was blessed by them, but I also became a blessing to them by accepting their help.

At chemotherapy, you’re hooked up to an IV for a long time and it’s a sad place. It’s a clean environment that’s very sterile and kind of awful, really. And because I am a prayerful person and I was surrounded by prayerful people, we decided to start having rosaries at my chemotherapy.

And at first it was just a few people that would come, but more and more people would hear and ask to come. My chemotherapy sessions actually became a source of great joy, with ginormous groups of people praying the rosary.

And it was so good for all the other patients. They would look forward to my chemo days as well because it was a party in this place that was normally a very death-like environment. My priest was actually there praying the rosary with us. We had a giant party at my last chemotherapy session.

Genevieve: Did your son participate as well?

Charna: Oh, yes! I had a dear friend who would bring flowers, not for me, but for all the other patients. We would wheel my IV cart around and hand out flowers to all the patients that were there. My son learned to walk holding onto an IV cart inside the Cancer Center.

Genevieve: Have you talked to your mother about how she deals with this?

Charna: It affected my father more than my mother. To see his daughter in this pain brought out emotions that I had never seen in my father. And then he developed lung cancer. So we were both battling cancer, and he just said, “Promise me that I can go first. I can’t bear seeing you go first.” And I remember being happy at his funeral, saying, “Dad, you got that wish.”

My mom has such a strong faith! We lost my little sister, Laceen, when she was 19 years old in a very tragic horseback riding accident. She was number eleven of eleven kids. And my mom just accepted that it was God’s perfect will. Of course, my mom doesn’t want me to die and she will cry sometimes, and say, “I don’t know how I would deal with it.” We have a very close relationship.

Genevieve: What helps your mother trust in God’s will?

Charna: All things are providential. And what God allows in His permissible will is different than what He has in His divine will. But what He allows in His permissible will, will work to our good if we just keep on hanging on. All these things I can see in hindsight, how God uses them brilliantly in writing my story and in increasing my faith, increasing the faith of those around me. That helps my mother, and it helps me.

Genevieve: You’ve smiled for your friends, you’ve prayed, and you’ve handed out flowers, but when you’re brought to your knees with the suffering and you know that only God really understands the pain, what then? Can you just speak to that for a moment?

Charna: I’ve been given a tremendous grace to handle a lot of pain and suffering. So I can’t give myself any credit there whatsoever. God has covered me in grace. I’ve been able to understand that redemptive suffering is a grace and that I can accept it. The lives of the saints give testimony to this over and over again. God is giving you an opportunity to become a saint yourself.

When St. Padre Pio’s relics came to Montana, Charna had the opportunity to wear his cape in prayer.

And I do at times see all the horrible things happening in the world, and I feel strong enough to suffer. I might say, “God, give me more, give me more.” But then when the heat gets turned up on me, I say, “God, enough, I can’t take one more thing.”

Ups and downs in the spiritual life are there for everybody. But they seem to be really obvious in a cancer battle. You might get blasted with desolation, but then sure enough, God sends these consolations, and you know He’s walking the path with you, and you’re being graced to suffer alongside Him and offer it up, and you just keep putting one foot in front of the next.

Genevieve: In the throes of the pain and the desolation, redemptive suffering is a simple act of the will, “Lord, I give this to you.” It may be very quiet. Is that what it’s like?

Charna: I definitely think it’s a conscious choice. It’s an act of the will. It’s a grace to even want to do that. All the people I meet now who are going through struggles, I tell them, “Have you heard of redemptive suffering?” I don’t think a lot of people are familiar.

Suffering is not a curse but a blessing. God has given me that knowledge and wisdom, and I can witness so that people can see it and then apply it to their own lives.

My oldest brother recently had a string of bad health. And he had watched me go through suffering for 10 years. So he would say, “I’m offering it up for you.” And then later he would call me up and say, “I told God I’d had enough, it’s back to you.” And he could recognize that he wasn’t being picked on by God. It wasn’t a bad thing, because he could reduce my suffering. When my suffering was too great, just knowing that someone would offer up their suffering for me does reduce my suffering. It does! It physically, mentally, and emotionally reduces your suffering knowing that someone else is willing to walk beside you to carry the cross.

Genevieve: So, in addition to the childcare and the casseroles, lifting you up in your suffering is so important. That relationship with your brother is priceless!

Charna: I journaled a lot of my cancer journey through social media. I had people praying for me that I knew, but then friends of friends of friends would add more people to that prayer team. Someday if I get to heaven and see all the people that prayed for me, I won’t be able to take it.

And when you’re sick, stuck in bed, reading those comments gives you a strength that’s stronger than any immunity booster. There are people who are benefiting. Some people on social media said, “I wasn’t sure if I believed in God, but I do because of your walk.” That’s how I know God is doing a greater good by allowing this suffering in my life.