By Dianna Hobbs // EEW Magazine Online // In Memoriam

On Sunday, June 27, Pastor Cassandra Elliott of Greensboro, NC, a beloved wife, friend, mentor, and worship leader, passed away at 53 after a courageous and faith-filled battle with kidney disease.

We know that according to 2 Corinthians 5:8, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And yet, the death of a loved one hurts deeply.

Pastor Cassandra, whom I affectionately called PC, was my true friend and a rare breed. When doctors told me I was going blind, and I was distraught, while I was crying in the parking lot, she is the first person I called. PC stopped everything, prayed Heaven down, decreed and declared a miracle. The next time I went to see the eye doctor, the prognosis had changed.

That’s the kind of friend she was to me.

She was my sister in faith and someone I could be vulnerable with through life’s hard times. We shared a bond that could not be broken by distance, sickness, or any life circumstance. Many times, we have sought God together, worshiped together, cried together, supported each other in ministry, and spoken into each other’s lives.

When I was sick and close to death in 2017, PC flew to Buffalo, NY to be at my side. As I was bedridden, she worshiped and sang over me then later led worship and interceded at my public healing service, where God miraculously healed me of two incurable autoimmune diseases.

When I hosted my very first ministry conference, again, my beautiful friend was right there, pouring into guests, playing the keyboard, worshiping, and lending support in whatever way she could.

Twice, I was blessed to minister at “The Gathering,” her signature worship conference which was a truly life-changing experience for me.

Though PC was sought after globally and an immensely gifted teacher, songstress, musician, songwriter, and a motivator extraordinaire, I loved that she was never ever too big to do the small things or too small to do the big things. She could fit anywhere and make any ministry moment more powerful.

When she was battling cancer in 2013, I boarded a flight and stayed at her home for a few days. Every morning, we woke up early, sang worship songs, prayed, and just hung out, laughed, and fellowshipped.

I will cherish those days forever.

When she first saw herself on the cover of EEW Magazine, she told me, “I didn’t know I was beautiful until I saw this.” It made me teary-eyed then and now. She framed and hung the cover on a wall in her home, and it was one of her proudest moments.

On May 18, God woke me up in the wee hours of the morning and put PC on my mind. I hadn’t spoken to her in a while since sustaining a traumatic brain injury in 2019 and going through my own difficult recovery process. I could not sleep after God put her on my heart, so I prayed for her and reached out.

At the time, she was recovering from a recent hospital stay and thanked me for praying for her. I told her I wished I could be there for her physically, but circumstances would not permit. I also shared song lyrics to one of her original melodies she taught me back in 2013 during our morning worship sessions. It’s special to both of us.

Her last words to me were, “That’s our song!”

That’s our song.

It is so fitting that we would last bond over a worship song, because she was a worshiper to her core.

When I received the call that she had transitioned, it was like a punch to the gut. It felt like someone had knocked the wind out of me, and I immediately broke down. Though I mourn, I know PC would not want me to be sad. And though it is natural for the hearts of those who love and cherish her to grieve this loss, we also understand that this giant in the Kingdom and warrior in faith is finally home in the bosom of Jesus, resting peacefully, pain-free, and no longer suffering.

For this reason, we rejoice.

I prayed today, wondering how I could honor her memory, and God gave me just the thing. He led me to republish a 2013 cover story I wrote while staying in PC’s home as she battled breast cancer. It perfectly captures the story of who Cassandra Elliott was, her fight, her resilience, and the personal pain she endured while serving God faithfully.

At the time of writing the story, the drugs doctors had been giving PC for the purpose of preserving the kidney she had received around a decade earlier were causing cancer to spread in her body, and she was going through the treatment process.

If you didn’t have the pleasure of knowing her like I and so many others did, I hope this story will give you a glimpse at the bright light she was in spite of all her health challenges. We understood each other and bonded over the shared pain of ministering while battling chronic illness.

Though PC beat me to Heaven, when I get there, she will be one of the first people I look for, and we will no doubt sing in Heaven’s choir together. Until that time, please keep her husband Bryant, her family, and everyone who loved her in prayer.

The story begins below.

EEW MAGAZINE ONLINE ARCHIVE, OCT. 2013 ISSUE

“From Fear and Shame to Strength and Courage: The Cassandra Elliott Story”

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At 4:30 in the morning, all is quiet in most houses, as families sleep snugly under warm blankets. But not at Cassandra Elliott’s home in Greensboro, NC that she shares with her husband Bryant.

Before the sun peeks its head through the clouds, the sound of Cassandra skillfully playing the keyboard and singing melodies to the Lord pierces through the silence. No matter what kind of night she’s had, her mornings always belong to Him.

The way the gifted musician, vocalist, songwriter, worship leader and founder of an annual worship conference called “The Gathering” starts her day, she says, gives her the strength to face and overcome whatever awaits her. And for a breast cancer patient going through chemotherapy, any number of unpleasant symptoms—particularly fatigue—can derail anyone’s best laid plans.

Not Cassandra.

If she must limp, grunt and tremble her way up the steps to the room where God has taken up residence and hovers over all who worship Him there, nothing gets in the way of her making it to her special spot.

Just steps away from that worship room in her home office is where she spoke at length with EEW Magazine on a warm and sunny October afternoon about all she has been through and how worship saved her life.

Fighting Fear and Shame

Though she is a bold and confident worshiper, she felt embarrassment about being sick, she told EEW Magazine.

“What would people think?” she questioned herself. “I felt that people would blame me and ask what did I do? How did I fail God? And I can honestly say now that I believe there was some shame," explained Cassandra.

If you are reading this and thinking, Wait! No one should ever feel ashamed or fearful of public perception when battling illness, you are absolutely right. Yet, Cassandra struggled with those very emotions after receiving news that she had the “Big C,” which was discovered in stage 3.

But why, exactly, did she battle fear and shame?

To answer that question, let’s travel back nearly two decades to New York, circa 1994. This is the prologue to Cassandra’s breast cancer story. Here is where the stage was set for a group of religious characters to write their own script about Cassandra’s life. When her health was challenged, they casted her as the guilty antagonist who in their minds was responsible for her own pain.

“I got blamed for kidney disease. Everybody was like, ‘What did you do?’” she recalled. “They literally came up to me and were like, ‘What did you do?’ They asked me what I did to get kidney disease.”

The insensitivity was sparked by an urgent message from doctors. “When they called to tell me, ‘If I didn’t come to the hospital right now, I would die,’ they called the church. They didn’t call my house,” said Cassandra, whose kidneys, over time, virtually shut down, operating only at 20 percent.

How sad that members of the local church body would suggest that she was in some way the culprit.

Nonetheless, attitudes like this are common and can in fact be traced back to the Bible. For instance, Job’s friends accused the man Scripture refers to as “perfect and upright” of causing his personal calamity through sinful acts. Cassandra, too, was on the receiving end of the accusatory speeches and looks.

 Like the disciples who asked Jesus in John 9, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” those who should have supported her at a difficult time instead made her the scapegoat.

At her worst, with a catheter in her belly, Cassandra performed self-dialysis four times daily while continuing to serve the worship ministry. For 12 long years this went on, as she waited patiently and believed God to receive a new kidney—a prayer that was answered in 2005.

During a conference, Bishop Neil C. Ellis, formerly of Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship International, publicly prayed the prayer of faith after being told that a woman in the audience who had served the Full Gospel organization faithfully needed a kidney. According to Cassandra, Bishop Ellis spoke a word by faith. Within an hour of that word being released, she was offered three kidneys from different attendees. The first offer turned out to be a perfect match.

The good news was received in May, and the transplant was completed in December. Finally, the worship leader was free! She rejoiced over her new lease on life and for the past eight years has been going strong, traveling, ministering, and sharing her inspiring testimony of God’s healing.

But after discovering a hard knot in her breast on June 23, 2013, a new battle was about to begin that would force her to mentally grapple with the judgmental critics of her past whose voices could still be heard inside her head.

Finding Out it was Cancer

Before being notified that cancer was present in her body and had spread over half her breast into her lymph nodes underneath her arm and down the side of her stomach, Cassandra was given false hope
that the gigantic malignant mass was merely an infection.

In late July, she said, “I started feeling pain in the breast, and my underarms were really kind of tender. It was hard to shower. It was hard to get dressed, and I told my husband about it.” Despite worrying signs, Cassandra said she was not particularly worried. She had been in contact with her doctors and was planning to get checked out soon. But soon, concern grew after the knot in her breast turned into painful heaviness.

When her gynecologist’s office recommended going to a local breast center, she went the following day and was told matter-of-factly, the condition was benign. “I have the paper to this day. It said, ‘No cancer. Benign. Infection.’ Doctors said, ‘We’re gonna put you on an antibiotic. You’ll be fine.’ I said, ‘Okay.’”

It was anything but okay.

Momentarily, however, it seemed she had dodged a bullet, until the persistent pain increased, and the symptoms failed to respond to the antibiotic. At that point, doctors determined it was best to perform a biopsy to see what was really going on.

That was on a Monday. The pathology report came back within 24 hours. By Tuesday, Cassandra received a medical blow that left her reeling.

“We’re so sorry. We wish we had better news,” were the words uttered that offered no consolation, as Cassandra was told that it was cancer and given instructions about her next steps.

“I turned to my husband, and I hollered in his chest in my little pink gown,” Cassandra remembers. “He held me. He said, ‘Come on baby. Get dressed so we can go. We need to call the family.’”

Always thinking of others, she did her best to hold it together publicly.

“When I walked out into the lobby area, I dried my tears for the sake of everybody else there,” she told EEW. “When I got into the hallway, I hollered again. In the elevator, I cried. On the way to the car, I cried.”

Once securely inside the vehicle, the weight of it all hit her. “I laid back. I felt like my life was over. I said, ‘Come on God. Are you kidding me? Cancer? I’m not getting this. Why couldn’t it just have been an infection?’”

She had no answers, only more questions. “‘What did I miss? God, what didn’t I pay attention to in all my moving and traveling and doing for everybody else? What did I miss? Was I not paying attention to myself?’ So I started to blame me,” she said.

Blame.

This time, before anyone else could wag a condemning finger, Cassandra did it herself.

Hearing her Negative Prognosis

On August 7, family and friends accompanied Cassandra and Bryant to the doctor to learn the details about the nature of the cancer that had invaded her body. They were completely unprepared for what
was to come. When the doctor pulled up her x-rays on the computer, there it was: a huge mass, covering a broad area internally.

How did this happen so quickly? She wondered. It was just a small knot only 4 weeks earlier.

“We’re all shocked,” Cassandra said, explaining the mood in the room at that moment. “Everybody’s shocked. So, I’m not crying. I’m looking, observing. I feel like the air in the room is gone. I can’t breathe. I can’t talk. I can’t speak. I have no emotions. This feels surreal. I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience.”

Stunned silent and numb, Cassandra sat stupefied, nearly catatonic from the devastation of it all. Those who had come to lend their support listened to the doctor’s explanation during the two-hour visit and took notes. When the doctor exited, they all gathered around Cassandra, and she wailed.

Though unable to formulate coherent words, she said “The wail was my way of saying, ‘Why me? Why is this happening to me? I don’t want to die.’”

The next doctor entered with more unfavorable news. “Ms. Elliott, it’s too large to operate, so we have to do chemo, so it can melt, so we can operate,” he informed her. The aggressive care plan involved removing her right breast, lymph nodes from her right arm, as well as chemo, radiation, and breast reconstruction.

“I was drained by all the information by the end of the day,” she said.

Though overwhelming, thankfully, this time, no one in her support group ridiculously asked her what she did wrong. They did not lay blame at her feet for the unwanted cancerous cells that had grown inside without her knowledge. But rather, they offered comfort and laughter.

“We all went home. We ate. We spent family time together. And we laughed and laughed and laughed. And it was so much joy, because I knew the next day was going to be a brand-new journey.”

Losing Her Hair

Cassandra knew she had breast cancer June 30, but she did not reveal it to anyone outside of her most intimate circle until October 15, well after her treatments had begun. It was her big secret.

“So, nobody knew. And I kept saying, I thought I could hide it with my hair. I said, ‘If my hair stays in, nobody will know.’”

But soon, they would.

“When the doctor told me I was going to lose my hair, I was like, ‘Who are you talking to? These braids aren’t going anywhere!’” she said defiantly. But Cassandra’s hair, her covering, her hiding place, began falling out, giving an outward sign of her internal health struggle—something she deeply resented.

Being hairless, for her, felt like nakedness. It left her feeling exposed against her will. Would head wraps be enough to keep her cancer under wraps, away from the prying eyes of those who might be waiting to pounce?

“I think it was more fear than shame. I felt like people would say, ‘Oh, here you go again,’” she said, referencing those misguided ones who might assume her own actions had caused her cancer just as they
suggested with her kidney disease almost 20 years ago.

“I was home alone when the hair came out and I freaked. I had a hard time. And I tried to put it back, and it wouldn’t go in. And I just left it alone. I figured if I leave it alone, nothing would happen. But then I started to see that in between the braids, the hair was going and that I was losing hair, and when I would touch it, it would come out in my hands.”

The time had come to allow her hairstylist to cut off the remaining blotches of her natural braids she loved so much. So, Cassandra reluctantly made plans to let go of the one remaining thing that kept her secret safe.

“I called together people that could be strong for me, that could hold my hand through it,” she said. “We prayed. We put music on, and I laid back and let them minister to me. They cut the braids, and the hair was just falling out. And I got up, and I looked at myself, and I didn’t know who I was without my hair.”

Though her beautiful locks of hair were gone, those who loved her stayed by her side. They prayed and fasted for Cassandra and poured out their love. Even with all the support, though, she wasn’t ready to let anyone else in just yet. Questions still lingered about what their reactions would be. But there was about to be a turning point.

“I got a phone call from a friend one night and he said, ‘Cassandra, I’m so sick and tired of you tip-toeing around this cancer thing! You’re selfish. I can’t believe you’re not letting anybody know. We love you. We want to help you.’

“He said, ‘You have walked with people to the ends of their processes to make sure that they got what they needed. I love you, but you need to share, and tell people what’s going on with you so we can love on you and help you.’”

Cassandra really didn’t know how to reveal her struggle, but deep down, she knew he was right.

“He was a catalyst in the change for me to speak my truth and to share with everybody I love,” she said. “So, here I am.”

A Miraculous Turnaround

Things looked bleak when doctors discovered how rapidly Cassandra’s extremely aggressive cancer was growing. However, this did not deter her from praying specific prayers and believing God for a breakthrough despite doctors not really knowing the best route for conquering her health challenges.

As a former kidney patient, her preexisting condition complicated their efforts to treat the cancer and save her breast without compromising the health of her kidney.

“Doctors said, ‘Ms. Elliott, we’ve never had a patient like you before, because we don’t know anything about transplants. We don’t know anything about Nephrology (The study of normal kidney function and treatment of kidney problems),” she said.

Their lack of understanding resulted in them going about her treatment the wrong way initially. “They had come up with a care plan based on it being Ductal Cancer,” Cassandra explained. “But it wasn’t.”

Well, what was it then?

One day, she got a call from one of her doctors who had been working to get a better grasp of what was manifesting in their complex patient’s body. Why was the cancer growing so fast and behaving abnormally?

“Dr. Rubin calls me. He says, ‘Hey Mrs. Elliott, how are you?’ I say, ‘I’m good.’ He says, ‘Listen, I’ve got some news for you. Something’s not right. So, we’re stopping everything. No more MRI’s. No more testing. We’re sending you back to the surgeon in Charlotte that did your kidney transplant. We need to ask some questions.”

Under doctors’ orders, Cassandra went back to her previous doctor, where they discovered that they had in fact made a discovery that would save her life.

“We know what it is,” she was told. “It’s called PTLD— Post-Transplant Lymphoproliferative Disorder. It usually shows up in the third year, but it showed up in the eighth year with you.”

Her care plan was modified by lessening some of the drugs she was given to preserve her kidney after the successful transplant, which, according to Cassandra, is something she had requested doctors do long ago.

“I had been asking them for years to pull back on some of the medication, because I’m maintaining a creatinine (a blood test that measures kidney function in transplant patients) where my kidney is like a normal kidney,” she explained. “The Lord was like, ‘Something’s not right.’ But I just trusted them because I was thinking they know better [than me].”

Dr. Rubin told Cassandra, “We almost went left, and we got it now." After that, "I was diagnosed with Lymphoma of the Breast and given a treatment plan, but if they would have treated me with the wrong type of chemotherapy, it would have done more damage than good. But, God saved me.”

Today, she is rejoicing over the detour that spared her life. Knowing that her cancer is something doctors call “curable” is comforting.

She said, “It was a conference in Heaven about me to send wisdom into the earth for doctors to come together over someone like me that they never encountered before, and God did it!”

Wouldn’t you know, after the second treatment, they could not find that huge mass?

“It had melted,” said Cassandra.

“So, the doctor told me, ‘Ms. Elliott, if you were a woman that walked in off the street, I would have told you, ‘Go home. There’s nothing wrong with you. He said, ‘It’s amazing!’”

Furthermore, he informed her that she was responding so well, she likely would not need surgery to remove her breast which was also an answered prayer.

Though Cassandra is still undergoing treatment, which makes for some difficult days, she is thankful and optimistic.

“I am excited about the miracle that I have not been able to share with everybody yet,” she said.

EEW Magazine is helping her get the word out.

Finding Love and Support

After Cassandra listened to her friend and came out of hiding by posting the news on her Facebook page October 15, she immediately saw that a new day had indeed come in her life.

“The Facebook inbox responses have been so favorable and so loving,” she said with a smile.  “I can feel the love.”

In 2013, unlike in 1994, she has been met with pure compassion, support, concern, prayer, and of course some sadness from others who wish she did not have to go through such a hard season of illness.

“I know it’s that they love me, and they don’t know how to embrace it,” she said. At first, neither did she, but as Cassandra always does, she worshiped her way through it.

“I didn’t expect this journey. I didn’t know what it was, but worship saved my life once again,” she told EEW Magazine. “I’m not afraid, because God is with me. And He’s been the same through it all, and His word will not fail me. By His stripes I am healed.”

Sharing Healing with Others

As Cassandra goes through her treatment, she welcomes everyone’s prayers but is not solely focused on herself.

“My life is to carry a healing message, to lay hands and to agree with people. So, I believe that this is the next leg of the journey, and I say yes Lord,” she said.