How a Leukemia Diagnosis Reframed Mary Sims’ Faith, Work, and Calling

After a leukemia diagnosis, a long recovery, and her sister’s life-saving stem cell match, Mary Sims says faith, work, and service all took on new meaning.

In December 2018, Mary Sims was preparing for a hair show, raising two sons, and working full time as a hairstylist in Georgia when her health began to change.

What first seemed manageable soon grew harder to ignore. Sims said doctors treated her for what looked like a sinus infection, tested her for the flu, then ordered chest X-rays when she still wasn’t improving. 

Through it all, she kept running a low-grade fever. Her chest pain worsened and her heart rate stayed elevated. “I just kept feeling so honestly so strong in my spirit, like something is just wrong,” she said.  

More bloodwork finally brought an answer. 

Sims said a doctor told her her white blood cell count was around 100,000, far above the normal range, while a D-dimer test suggested a blood clot. She was sent to the hospital immediately. Doctors later confirmed she had acute myeloid leukemia, or AML.

Everything about daily life changed after her diagnosis. 

Chemotherapy began immediately. Weeks in the hospital followed. She stopped working, could no longer drive, and eventually moved in with her mother while she went through treatment and recovery. “My whole life changed overnight,” she said.

By the time she was diagnosed, her faith had already been deepening. 

For about a year beforehand, Mondays had become days of prayer and fasting. As a hairstylist, Monday was usually her day off, and she used that time to sit with her Bible, pray, and seek God more intentionally. She said she did not fully understand then why she felt pulled into that rhythm. Looking back, she sees those quiet Mondays differently. “I had no idea that it was preparing me for one of the greatest battles that I was about to navigate,” she said.

During treatment, a private spiritual life became the structure that helped her endure.

“I really got to know Him as Jehovah Jireh, like He provides for me.” – Mary Sims, Cosmetologist & Acute Myeloid Leukemia Survivor

Sims said she filled her days with Scripture, worship, and prayer. She largely stepped away from regular television and tried to guard what she was taking in mentally and spiritually. Recovery after her stem cell transplant also brought long stretches of isolation, since even a common cold could pose serious danger. 

Some days, she said, encouragement came through texts, prayers, and voice notes from others. Other days brought anger, exhaustion, and difficult conversations with God. “Every day wasn’t okay,” she said. “But then he taught me that it was okay to not be okay.”

A stem cell transplant soon became part of the fight. Because of the mutation tied to her leukemia, doctors told Sims it would likely offer her best chance of survival. 

One of Sims’ sisters was tested first and turned out to be a 50 percent match. Another sister could not be tested at first because she was pregnant. After suffering a miscarriage, she told Sims to let doctors know she was ready to be tested. Results later showed she was a perfect 10 out of 10 match. 

But despite a strong donor match, recovery remained difficult. 

Sims said she later dealt with graft-versus-host disease, a serious complication that can happen when donor cells attack the recipient’s body. Even so, she still talks about her sister’s match as one of the clearest examples of God’s timing in her life. “It definitely encouraged my faith tremendously,” she said.

Her sister later became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter the family now calls their rainbow baby. In Sims’ account, grief and provision sit close together, each helping shape how she now sees suffering, survival, and grace.

Work changed, too.

Before her diagnosis, Sims said she had been focused on growth, goals, and building her business. Recovery reshaped how she thought about ambition, time, and presence. “It changed my priorities,” she said. “I saw God do so much without me.”

What had once looked like hustle started to look different. Sims said the experience pushed her away from constant striving and toward a deeper dependence on God. “I really got to know Him as Jehovah Jireh, like He provides for me,” she said.

Her work in the salon also took on new meaning. 

Sims said she had already served women living with alopecia before cancer. But, losing her own hair during treatment gave her a much more intimate understanding of what medical hair loss can do to a woman’s confidence and sense of self. “It’s a real thing,” she said. “You’re going through something, and you look in the mirror, and you don’t look like yourself.”

During recovery, she studied hair ventilation, a detailed process of attaching strands to lace by hand to create more natural-looking wigs. What had once been part of her beauty training became deeply personal. Sims said she now approaches that work with greater empathy because she understands firsthand what it feels like to no longer recognize yourself in the mirror.

Helping women through that process has become one of the clearest expressions of her post-cancer calling. Sims said some clients cry when they see what she has made for them, and at times she cries with them. “It’s very rewarding, because you know I’m able to be a part of something that I’m not emotionally detached from,” she said.

Food became another part of that calling. Sims said steroids during treatment led to major weight gain, which pushed her to think more seriously about health once doctors cleared her to begin exercising again. 

From that process came Eat Colorful, a faith-centered wellness initiative she described as a way to help women heal their relationship with food through biblical truth.

Eat Colorful began in her church and later grew into coaching, workouts, and a broader community, she said. Women involved in the program have shared stories of weight loss and improved health, including progress with diabetes, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea. 

Sims also said she completed a 21-day devotional connected to Eat Colorful and soft-launched it with women already involved in the group. “It’s not like another diet,” she said. “But it’s just beginning to eat God’s way and understanding the reverence behind it.”  

After battling AML for a little over five years, Sims says her life is defined not only by what she survived, but by what grew out of it, including the way she now approaches hair, health, and business as forms of ministry. 

Asked what she wants Christian women in business to take from her experience, Sims said she hopes they move beyond simply carrying the title of Christian and instead live in a way that reflects faith in their priorities, integrity, and daily choices. “Not just wear the title of Christian, but truly bear your cross,” she said.

When Sims looks back on that season, one belief rises above the rest. “There was no way that anybody could have told me I was in the prime of my business, and boom, hit with the cancer diagnosis,” she said. “If it had not been the relationship that I had become anchored in, I just don’t know how I would have sustained.”

More from Mary Sims, including updates on her work and ministry, can be found on her Instagram here.