“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful do not just happen.” – Elizabeth Ros
This isn’t an autobiography. It’s not a love story. It might not have a “happy ending”. This isn’t about sympathy. It isn’t a place for complaining. It isn’t something to cause controversy about. It might not even be something that anyone reads. So what is it? This is a blatantly authentic story about a girl and her walk with Jesus. It gets ugly. It definitely is messy. My life isn’t the least bit perfect. I just want to show people it’s ok to be wrong and be someone who has made mistakes. It ok to be someone who knows failure, and its ok to have moments of pure weakness. Because, get real… everyone has made mistakes, everyone has been wrong before, and everyone screws up every once in a while. This story isn’t about popularity. I don’t want it to be famous. Then what’s the point of posting it for anyone to read? I don’t want my story to go unheard. Not because I want attention, but because I want it to be life changing to someone beside myself. I want my story to benefit other people… or another person, even if it were just one, then posting this would be worth it. I believe that everyone’s story has a purpose. God didn't intend for us to live our lives and be quite about the things that have shaped and molded us. And that's not want I intend to do either. I don't want to be quite about the things God is doing and has done in my life, and this is my way of shouting it to anyone who wants to listen. So were does this part of my life start. Well, it starts the day that changed everything.
“Don’t shine so others can see you. Shine so that through you, other can see Him.” – C.S. Lewis
It was October, one of my favorite months of the year. The weather was a perfect combination of too hot in the sun and too cold in the shade. The leaves were changing colors and high school football was well underway. As a sophomore in high school, I didn’t have a care in the world besides working towards getting my license so that I wouldn’t have to rely on my mom to drive me around or bug my sister for rides anymore. In high school, it’s all about getting out and having freedom. Unfortunately, October was also the time of the year that I had to go to the dentist. Honestly, I never flossed so I predicted a few cavities in my near future. I was dreading it… I’m not sure that anyone likes to go to the dentist. And if there is someone out there that does, well, in my eyes, you’re crazy. It’s a place where people put their hands all up in your mouth and expect you to have a full on conversation with them while doing it. No. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s something I had to do every 6 months mainly because my mom told me to. Even though I hated the idea of the dentist at the time, I wouldn’t be able to repay my mom for the repercussions of this dentist appointment.
So, October 22, 2008 finally rolled around; the day of the dentist appointment that would forever change the course of my life. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time. I was just happy that I got to miss my first two classes of the day. That’s the trick with dentist appointments… they are totally worth it in the end if you get to miss school. Everything was going well at my appointment. To my surprise, I didn’t have any cavities, but my gums weren’t perfect. Really, I was just told to floss more, which is what they told me every time. You would think I would learn eventually, but honestly, I still suck at making sure I floss every day. I'll get it one of these days. At the end of the appointment, the dentist told me she was going to check my jawline and chin area for any lumps that might be related to mouth cancer. Her hands were freezing and I was getting a little bit annoyed when she moved a little bit more down my neck and kept touching the same spot over and over again on my neck. When she stopped, she didn’t immediately say “Everything looks great!” and I knew something was wrong. She did one of those sighs that people do when they don't want to be the one to tell you bad news, but she had no other choice. So, she told me that it felt like one of my lymph nodes on the left side of my neck was swollen, which could have meant a number of things like strep throat, mono, etc. Great. Getting sick already and its only October. The only thing I could really think was, “Well, at least it’s not mouth cancer”. I told my mom the bad news that I may possibly have strep. So the avalanche of doctor’s visit began.
“Prayer is powerful, but remember that God works in His timing, not yours. Have patience.”
That drowning feeling
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to have some part in the medical field. I really wanted to be a nurse, so going to the doctor’s office wasn’t really a big deal to me. I didn’t mind watching movies in the waiting room or playing with those toys that were wooden colored balls on wires. The only thing I didn’t like was the cold. It was always cold. I love winter, but the cold in doctor’s offices are a different kind of bitter cold. A cold that didn’t feel right. So with what I thought was a swollen lymph node, the tests started. I didn’t have strep. Didn’t have mono. Nothing was wrong with my tonsils. The list went on an on. Test after test, I was never so upset to not be sick. I just wanted it to end. So next came the CT scan; the test that finally gave me some answers. However, they weren’t the results I wanted to hear. I had a tumor. A tumor. My whole life was flipped upside down. I never thought something like this could happen to me. I was just a typical, sophomore girl who was involved with a wonderful youth group. I had a normal life. I had an easy life. Maybe that's why God planned it to happen like this. I was too comfortable in my faith.
My parents divorced when I was a freshman in high school. To be honest, it was something that I has seen coming because they hadn't been getting along for the longest time. They both had their flaws like everyone in this world does, but I could tell that love wasn’t strong enough for them to ignore those flaws. And that is fine. They weren’t meant to be together and that was their choice to make, but that didn’t make it an easier for me to deal with. Growing up, my father and I didn’t have the best relationship. It was always “yes sir” and ever time he came home from work he took control of the TV. Maybe we didn’t have a good relationship because he was always seen as the discipline. My mom was the good guy (or girl… you known what I mean). Maybe it was because he worked so much to provide. Or maybe it is just because we didn’t have much time to bond over common interests. I don’t know. But somewhere along the line, my dad and I drifted apart, and my parents’ divorce wasn’t clean. It was messy. Really messy. Some things happened that aren’t my place to say, but I can tell you that the events that led to my parents divorce created a bigger divide in the space between my dad and I. Maybe that’s why God planned my life to happen this way. It will make sense after I’m done, but in the end, my dad and I are closer than we have been in a long time, and my heart is full.
I also grew up in the church, but I might as well have never gone to church. I didn’t have a relationship with God. I just went because my parents wanted me to. It wasn’t until middle school that I went to church because I wanted to. Granted, I wanted to go for the wrong reasons. I wanted to go to hang out with my friends. To be honest, I don’t remember the exact day that I accepted Jesus as my savior. I should, but I don’t. My middle school years are really all a blur because I was in and out. I was lukewarm. Hot and then cold. And Jesus doesn’t want that. I didn’t know what I wanted either. It should have been simple. Jesus rose from the grave, and if that’s true, then nothing else matters. My life should have been His. All His. Because without that, what would this life be for? Nothing. And I believe life is for something, but I didn’t understand that when I was in middle school. I thought that if you had faith, life would fix itself. I thought that I would be set without doing anything to create a relationship with Jesus.
Well, that's enough background for now, but after the avalanche of MRI’s, PET scans, barium tests, X-rays and CT scans, it was decided that I was having surgery. I was terrified. Surgery? I had never even sprained an ankle before, and now life-threatening surgery. The location of the tumor made it so that a biopsy wasn’t possible without surgery. It was located in between my carotid arteries on the left side of my neck. The risky part of the surgery was that there was a chance that my artery could get cut if they were unable to remove the tumor from it. The doctor’s reassured me that I would be fine. I didn’t feel fine. I felt like I was drowning, but I didn’t have any choice but to fight as hard as I could and getting surgery was my only fighting chance.
July rolled around and on the 29 in 2009, I was getting prepped to go into the operating room. Never having had surgery before made me have a panic attack, which I don’t remember because they immediately sedated me as my mom told me. Apparently I also told my mom to take a picture of me – a really embarrassing picture of me – before I went into the operating room. So I went in. And I came out alive, barely.
"God sometimes take us into troubled waters not to drown us, but to cleanse us."
The Never-ending Complications
I woke up groggy. I had no idea where I was. All I remember were white walls and an uncomfortable bed. It took me a minute, but I finally figured out that I made it out of surgery and was still in the hospital. As soon as they started moving me to another room, I threw up. That was the first of my really long day – or month – of complications. The surgeon came in to the room and described what had just happened in surgery to me. I was supposed to be in surgery for 3 hours, which quickly turned into 9 hours. The surgeon told me that my tumor was “sticky” and she had to cut part of my artery in surgery in order to get it off. What? At this point I was trying to figure out how in the heck I was still alive. This is what happened. They cut part of the artery, and I lost a lot of blood, a lot. They ended up taking a vein from my upper leg and regraphing it into my neck, clipping off a bunch of nerves that they had to cut in the process. I still have the staples in my neck to this day. This seemed to be the only thing that went wrong, granted it was a big thing to go wrong, but it was supposed to be the only thing that went wrong. One positive thing that came of this was that I didn’t feel any pain in my neck. None. I didn’t need pain meds or anything because they had cut so many nerves in my neck that I couldn’t feel anything at all. I still can’t actually, but I’ve gotten used to it. Well, we thought that was it. I was supposed to be in the hospital for one night, but that quickly turned into a week. Because I was in surgery for 9 hours, there was stress on a muscle in my neck from the breathing tube. Of course, this muscle is the muscle that I used to swallow food. I tried and tried to eat food, but I couldn’t swallow it. Every time I tried to swallow, I felt like I was choking… because I was. All the doctors said it was in my head and that I was making it up until I got a live barium x-ray. This showed that I wasn’t lying and that there really was something wrong with a muscle in my neck. So how was I going to eat? An IV can only sustain you for so long, so I had to get a food tube put in through my nose that went down to my stomach and that is how I ate and drank. On top of all of this, in order to leave the hospital, I had to be up and walking around. Well, since I lost so much blood in surgery, ever time I tried to stand up, I passed out. The first time I tried to get up and walk two feet to a chair next to my hospital bed, I blacked out when I made it to the chair… the chair that was TWO feet away. I woke up to my mom slapping me in the face trying to get me to wake up, which is funny looking back on it now. I’ll spare you some of the other details, but I couldn’t get up and walk to the bathroom either. We’ll just leave it at that.
At this point, I really didn’t think I was going to make it home. I was exhausted from doing something as simple as standing up. I couldn’t help but feel bad for being so helpless. My mom had to do so much for me. I am so thankful for her. I have never broken down and cried so many times in one week before. I honestly didn’t think I would ever make it out of that hospital. My friends stopped by every once in a while, but the majority of the time I was alone. Alone, aggravated, and confused. I didn’t understand. I was healthy. What had I done to deserve this? This is when that drowning feeling got immensely worse. I was terrified because this wasn’t in my plan. I didn’t think this was how my life was supposed to pan out. I was selfish for thinking that. I took everything for granted. I took my active life for granted. I took my health for granted. I took being able to eat a meal for granted. I took all of the simple things for granted. I was only focused on how I wanted my life to be. I was only focused on what I thought I deserved. No one is entitled to anything. I hate the quote “it always rains the hardest on the people who deserve the sun”. Who deserved the sun? No one. Yes there are good people, but no one is exempt from suffering. The only reason we live is because Christ died for us. So what makes us think that we are entitled to a life without suffering, a perfect life, when we are so imperfect ourselves? I came to revelation in this hospital. No matter how much you want your life to go the way that you planned, God has a better plan for you. It may not seem like the it at the time, but God has a perfect plan for you in this imperfect world.
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light" - Buddha
The C Word
"The future is scary, but you can't just run back to the past because it's familiar. Yes, it's tempting, but it's a mistake."
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