This weekend has been fairly active, yet throughout the midst of it I have felt closer to God than I have in a long time. God has been repeatedly telling me, “look how far I have brought you—I have so much more even still” and at first I wasn’t sure exactly what He was talking about. I mean yes, I know God has brought me through a heck of a lot, and I know that He has a lot more for me. Those are just facts. I didn’t think much about it. I just knew it. Therefore, I was extremely confused as to why He was telling me those things. After all I already knew those things—if there was anything about my faith that I knew it was that God has brought me incredibly far and will continue to take me farther.
I then got on Facebook today to message my family and saw that my mom had posted a link to her blog that she wrote while I was in the hospital my freshman year of college titled, “By Far, the Absolute Worst Day Ever…” in which I learned that January 13, 2018 also marks the six-year anniversary to when I was intubated.
Wow, reading her blog brought me to tears, mostly from missing my family, but also tears of healing and love. I spent a chunk of today reading my mom’s entire blog and learned that I went through a lot of crap.
But…
Honestly, I wouldn’t change any of it. Reading over all of this was like reading a bad novel—it didn’t feel real. Yet, I have the scars to prove that it was in fact real. And that just blows my mind.
I mean, six years ago I was eighteen years old, in the hospital leaking spinal fluid with bacterial meningitis, 80 pounds, screaming my head off, and my doctor’s best option was my parent’s worst-case scenario.
Well while reading this blog God again told me, “look how far I’ve brought you,” and that’s when it hit me that God has brought me from what I have been told was the brink of death six years ago and to a place of such abundant life.
So now, I am excited. God has placed me in such a richly abundant place and has grown me so much in the first half of the Race, that I cannot wait to see the person I will grow into during this second half. Sure, it’s probably not going to be easy—growth tends not to be easy, and also messy—but hey, God’s taken me from the brink of death and brought me this far, I cannot wait to see where I will be in 5.5 months from now, let alone in six years. God has promised me that He “has so much more even still” and so I am living expectantly, knowing that God will keep His promise.
In the hospital with my cousin Heather, on one of my “good days”
At the half-way point of the World Race – Mandalay, Myanmar
