Faith, trust and ‘grace in sacrament of marriage’ guide couple in cancer journey
Leigh and Benjamin Sargeant and their five children—Rose in front with Peter (left), Dominic and Samuel behind her, and Isaiah, held by Leigh—pose in Memorial Plaza in Indianapolis on July 20 after worshipping the Blessed Sacrament with more than 50,000 people during the National Eucharistic Congress. The day marked the couple’s 11th wedding anniversary. (Photo by Natalie Hoefer)
By Natalie Hoefer
As far as memorable days go, they just didn’t get much more remarkable than July 20 this year for Benjamin “Ben” and Leigh Sargeant.
That day, Ben and the couple’s 8-year-old son Dominic walked among a group of first Communicants, leading a eucharistic procession of 50,000-plus participants in downtown Indianapolis during the National Eucharistic Congress.
“We got to wave to the rest of the family as we walked by, and then they followed along with the rest of the procession,” Ben says of Leigh and their four other children, ages 10 and younger.
Then came the experience of adoring Christ in the Blessed Sacrament together with tens of thousands of Catholics in the city’s outdoor Memorial Plaza.
Afterward, the family—members of St. Peter Parish in Huber Heights, Ohio, in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati—enjoyed a picnic in the grassy plaza, by then mostly emptied of the worshipping throng.
A warm, sunny day with a few lacy clouds above made for the whipped cream. And the cherry on top?
“Today is our 11th anniversary,” says Leigh, as Ben smiles and gives her a side hug. “Getting to celebrate it today is really a blessing.”
Part of that blessing is seen in the couple’s five healthy children playing nearby in the grass.
Part of that blessing is in a positive medical imaging scan Leigh recently received.
And a tremendous part of that blessing is the very existence of Leigh and the couple’s 1-year-old son Isaiah, with whom she was just nine weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“It can be hard to keep going,” Leigh admits. “We still have doctor’s appointments and lots of scans and side effects and everything.”
But through the suffering, the couple has learned much about faith, trust—and the powerful grace that comes through the sacrament of marriage.
‘Shouldn’t we invite the other girl?’
Leigh and Ben, both lifelong Catholics, met through a Catholic student ministry at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va., the summer before their senior year at the school.
The group dwindled down to “me, Ben and this one other girl,” says Leigh. “We went to movies, peach-picking and other random things.”
One day, Ben invited Leigh to dinner.
“Shouldn’t we invite the other girl?” Leigh recalls asking, clearly missing Ben’s intention.
The two dated during their senior year. Then they maintained a long-distance relationship after Ben accepted a job at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, while Leigh continued with two more years of education for her master’s degree in speech pathology.
The second year of the degree involved an internship. She applied for one in Colorado and one in Cincinnati, and by “divine intervention” was accepted for the Ohio internship. She later accepted a job in Dayton.
“Now we lived closer, but I didn’t think we were seeing each other as much,” Leigh recalls.
“By that, she means we only got together four nights instead of five, or five instead of six,” Ben jokes.
Leigh didn’t know he was already shopping for a ring. He proposed while on a backpacking trip he’d planned through the Red River Gorge in Kentucky.
The couple was married on July 20, 2013, in St. Thomas
Aquinas Church in Charlottsville.
‘It came down to a lot of trust’
After their wedding, Ben and Leigh wasted little time starting their family, naming each child for a saint or biblical figure: Samuel, 10; Dominic, 8; Peter, 6; Rose, who was 3 at the time of the congress but recently turned 4; and Isaiah, 1.
Their youngest child’s first name is in honor of the biblical prophet from whom “so many wonderful Scripture passages come,” says Ben.
His middle name is Raphael, in honor of the archangel. There is meaning behind the choice of that name, too.
“He is the patron of healing,” Leigh explains, a patron they “leaned a lot on in prayer” after she was diagnosed with cancer.
“I had this little cyst I noticed about two months” prior to her first obstetrics appointment, she says. “Everything I read online said if you’re young or pregnant or have kids, you don’t have to worry. But I just wasn’t sure. [The nurse practitioner] felt it and said, ‘I wouldn’t worry, but we’ll order an ultrasound just in case.’ ”
The ultrasound led to a biopsy. Leigh says the doctor was “just as shocked as we were” by the diagnosis of cancer.
“It was so scary,” says Ben. “We were balancing risks as we treated two patients. You can minimize risk, but not eliminate it.”
The couple and their doctors found a suitable chemotherapy treatment through a database built on studies of women with cancer while pregnant.
Still, says Ben, “I remember feeling, especially in the first few days, how fragile our lives are, and how we have this illusion of control. That all comes crashing down when suddenly you’re meeting a different doctor every day, reading lots of medical journals to understand what the optimal treatment might be or to ask the right questions.
“What it came down to was a lot of trust.”
‘The struggle really has helped us to be stronger’
The Sargeants found physical, emotional and spiritual support from their homeschool community and a Caring Bridge site the couple created.
There were other spiritual sources to help cope with the suffering as well. Ben recalls watching a video with a comforting message involving the story of Christ asleep in a boat with the Apostles, who feared for their lives as a storm churned the sea.
“The speaker said there are times when [Jesus] wakes up and he calms the storm in our lives,” Ben recalls. “And there are other times when he doesn’t calm the storm, but he’s still there with us in the boat.
“That’s something we’ve experienced the last couple of years going through the suffering of cancer treatment, especially times when we thought there was a setback.
“In the midst of that, we’ve felt his presence. No matter what, God is with us through all of this, teaching us to rely on him.”
Leigh agrees.
“The struggle really has helped us to be stronger in our faith, stronger as a family, stronger with our mission,” she says. “Because when you’re going through suffering, especially when you’re confronting your own mortality, it really just makes you think, ‘Do we believe our faith?’ And we decided we do.”
‘I love you even more now’
The words “we do” is a sign of the couple’s move from “I do” 11 years earlier in their nuptial Mass—another source of strength for the couple.
Ben recalls words the priest said during the homily of that Mass: “There’s enough grace in the sacrament of matrimony for everything life is going to bring, so continue going back to that grace. Don’t underestimate the grace of the sacrament.”
In their suffering, they’ve turned to that grace together in prayer as a couple, including completing a Marian consecration during 33 active days of radiation treatment.
The couple also prays every evening with their children. And more than once, Ben took “one or more of the children [to church] to light candles for Mommy and baby.”
“Our faith, this sacrament [of marriage] gave us the foundation of, ‘We’re in this together, no matter what,’ ” says Ben.
Leigh is overwhelmed by the sacrament’s power to increase love.
“It reminds me of [country singer] Brad Paisley’s song ‘Then,’ the words ‘I always thought I loved you then,’ ” she says before inserting her husband’s name into a summary of the lyrics: “Ben, I definitely loved you on the day we got married, but I love you even more now.
“Especially going through the births of all our children, being there through parenthood together, and now cancer together. It just makes me appreciate and love him even more.”
‘Jesus has always been there’
That love is obvious as Ben pauses at one point to hold Leigh when tears well in her eyes.
And it’s obvious again as Leigh scurries off in a scene every parent can appreciate: In the midst of serious talk about suffering and faith, 10-year-old Samuel politely interrupts to say, “Excuse me, but baby is taking off his diaper.”
“And that’s how life goes with five children,” Ben says with a hint of a grin.
The diaper debacle is all part of the day’s blessings.
So is Leigh’s current health: she finished her chemotherapy and radiation treatments in December and is in the midst of five years of hormone therapy.
“There was a worrying image in January, but on follow-up everything was OK,” says Ben. “We had another good scan recently, so we’re good for the next six months.”
The couple decided to “be more thankful and praise God for these [good] times and celebrate each positive result in a special way—take a trip, see family,” says Leigh.
Still, “It’s been a long journey,” Ben admits. “There are a lot of ups and downs.
“But whether in difficult moments or in times of celebration, Jesus has always been there.” †
See more stories in our Fall Marriage Supplement
