Our Stories have Written us into the People we are Today.
My single super hero mom full of endless energy and strength had never taken anything so hard, and I had watched her take my father’s hot-tempered, unfaithful and irrational verbal abuse for almost 15 years. She had persevered with such grace as she gave daily care to my grandmother in her last months of cancer. Now the grief of her death was hitting heavy. Becoming a young woman myself at 18, I studied her closely learning life lessons; I never imagined needing quite so soon.
Just a short year and half later, a few weeks before Christmas, my mom went to the hospital with stomach cramps. Scans showed a growth in her ovaries. As the surgery to remove it concluded, we were summoned to the consult room. The moment seemed to hang in the air, time seemed to stand still, every thing and everyone paused, frozen by the weight of the doctor’s unexpected report. It was no small benign growth but a grapefruit sized malignant tumor in her colon that had spread to her ovaries. Months of chemotherapy shrank her without shrinking the cancer. Having just turned 20, I felt way too young and over my head in the responsibility of doctor’s visits, treatments, comfort and care, for hospice with oxygen tanks and IV’s, for death and funeral planning, for selling a home and caring for my brother.
During her treatment, the specialist had hypothesized her cancer to be caused by a gene mutation, so I got my first colonoscopy at 25. I ate a low fat diet, taught 6 fitness classes a week and prayed daily for God to keep the nightmare of cancer far from me. Dread filled my belly the night of my third baby’s 1st birthday when I found a lump in my breast. Over the next 3 months, 3 doctors who had no concern since I was only 30 dismissed me, but I lacked peace. I had a mammogram on my 31st birthday. I sat in the waiting room with my Bible opened to Psalms 91 praying each verse of protection over myself as I had my mom before me. The surgical biopsy was done a few weeks before Christmas. The timing felt eerily close to my mom’s journey just 10 years prior. How I feared a repeat of my past.
On December 17 as I prepared Christmas gifts for my 4, 3, and 1 year old I got a phone call that my biopsy showed a large and aggressive tumor. As I cried out to God in my fear that my story might not end the way my mother and grandmother’s had, He spoke to me a clear and powerful promise, “Do not dwell on the past. See I’m doing a new thing” (Is 43:18b-19aNIV). The enemy loves to torment and haunt us with the hopeless whisper that pain always repeats itself, taunting us that good dreams might come for a season but the nightmare always returns. Not only did God give me a promise, He gave me strategy to rise above the fear with faith: “If your instructions hadn't sustained me with joy, I would have died in my misery” (Ps 119:92 NLT). I carried a simple spiral of 3x5 cards filled with comforting scriptures with me everywhere during my treatment. I anchored my soul to the hope of God’s promises and in doing so, I did not drown in despair. I had no idea what was happening to the cancer inside of me during the 5 months of chemo to shrink the tumor before surgery, but God’s word quieted the turmoil of the unknown. I got the results of my mastectomy on my mom’s birthday, my story would not be a repeat of her story, they found less than 1 mm of cancer in what had been a 7x8 cm tumor.
“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way”(Deut. 8:2). The beginning of a new year is a time when we focus on setting goals for the future but when we also take time to remember our past, we can see how God led us all the way through our trial and through our healing into the person we are today. It builds our faith to realize that no matter what we may face in the coming year, God will be faithful to use it to shape us and grow us. It is the stories of the past that have written us into the people we are today. “I’m fully convinced that the One who began this glorious work in you will faithfully continue the process of maturing you and will put his finishing touches to it until the unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ!” (Phil 1:6 The Passion Trans). It’s been 10 years since my cancer battle and 20 years since my mom’s and as I reflect on my story, I can see it’s been my story that has written me into the woman I am today. I would not be as passionate about God’s word or as compassionate towards the hurting had it not been for my story. How has your story written you?
2018/01/18 at 10:40 pm