It was 1996. The doctor walked into Susanne Hanson’s hospital room and started crying. “Sit down. We need to talk,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry. I just don’t know how to tell you this.”

Su had ovarian cancer. She wasn’t even 50.

“It literally took my breath away,” says Su. “I was in the hospital for a routine procedure and was planning on going home. I had no idea there was cancer. I had no symptoms.”

A week later Su went back for another surgery where doctors completed more than 30 biopsies and removed any suspicious areas. They were so confident that they removed it all that they gave Su a five-year plan; she needed monthly check-ups, but no chemotherapy or radiation.

Though her initial healing was fast and seemed complete, she says that “at every visit you wonder if this is the time you find out the cancer is back.”

Through it all, her friends and family surrounded her with their love, support, and prayers. One friend from church gave her a gift—a quilted comforter. “That gift of love was of special comfort to me both physically and emotionally,” says Su. “Whenever I was wrapped in it, I felt as though I was wrapped in the love and arms of my Comforter, the source of all comfort, my loving God.”

Five years of check-ups passed, and Su was officially declared in remission. Not long after, a friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. That’s when the message of 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 kept running through Su’s mind: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.”

Su wanted to be a living fulfillment of those words—to comfort someone else with the comfort she received. “I received comfort from God through the comforter,” she says. “By giving the comforter to my friend, she would be wrapped in the love as I had been.”

Shortly after she put the comforter in the mail, another friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. “I felt heartsick. I didn’t have another comforter to send her so she too could enjoy this tangible comfort,” says Su.