Story from the Heart

I was asked to share at our church's Ladies Ministry Night, which took place last night. The theme was Stories from the Heart, so I basically just shared a chunk of my life experiences. I definitely couldn't sum it all up in 20 minutes, but I gave it a good shot. It went well, I think, but of course I was a teary mess. It doesn't matter, though. I know for a fact that God can take those tears, and take my story, and use it for His glory. I hope that's what happened... So, if you missed it, or just want to have a bit of a glimpse into my faith journey, here it is. Please feel free to comment or to ask questions.

When I was asked to share, I immediately knew that I wanted to. I feel like I've been through a lot in my life and I know that sharing our stories is so important to encourage one another. But, as I sat down to figure out exactly what to share, I found the task extremely difficult. How exactly do I sum up my faith journey in 20ish minutes? I’m still not sure I have the answer to that, but I’m going to try. And I have to start at the beginning. A lot of my story might sound like it’s about my Mom instead of me, but her story is my story, as our lives and souls have been interwoven forever through our journey.

My childhood was not exactly what I would call ‘typical.’ My Mom had many health problems, which I will not explain in great detail, for the sake of saving some time. I will briefly explain what happened, though, because it’s really important to know where I’m coming from. Her health issues began after my younger brother Greg was born. She had issues with her intestines. She had her first major intestinal surgery when I was 6. At some point, she was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which of course, affects the colon, but it also can attack any part of your body that is weakened.

From the time that I was 10 to 12 years old, my Mom had 5 major surgeries in two years. She had a hysterectomy because she had uterine cancer. The ulcerative colitis flared up and caused her not to heal. She ended up having all of these other surgeries to attempt to fix what was going wrong, including failed attempts at skin grafting. Eventually, by the grace of God, she did heal. It’s also worth noting that whenever my Mom had a surgery, my brother and I would move in with my maternal grandparents. It was a lot of back and forth for two kids to go through. Thankfully, we are blessed to have them still in our lives, as they spent a good chunk of time raising us.

In the time that we were at home, I began to learn to cook and clean because Mom couldn't. I really grew up very fast and sometimes had a lot of difficulty relating to the other kids my age. We were definitely in different places in our lives.

On May 18, 1995, Mom had a surgery that would change our lives forever. Breast cancer runs in our family and Mom had several precancerous lumps in her breasts. She elected to have a double radical mastectomy, to prevent us from having to deal with full-blown cancer at some point. We had already been through a lot and I believe she made that decision with the utmost love and concern for her kids, wanting to live a long and healthy life. Unfortunately, her surgeon recommended reconstructive surgery at the same time, and they performed a double tramflap. It was horrifically invasive and, of course, her healing issues resurfaced again. To make a long story short, in the next two years she had, I believe, 6 or 7 major surgeries to try to facilitate her healing. They ended up cutting away all of the reconstruction, did another round of unsuccessful skin grafting, and she was still left with open wounds that wouldn't heal, this time both across her chest, and her abdomen.

I've always loved my Mom with every fiber of my being, but it was during this time that I began to truly respect what she was made of. She was in a horrendous amount of pain, her life revolved around home care and dressing changes, and yet she didn't complain. In fact, she just carried on the best that she could and was active in our lives. She would volunteer in my high school in the office, just wanting to be near her kids. She even came on my grade 11 band trip to Chicago. I don’t think anyone had any idea what she was really going through. She always had a smile on her face and was always about taking care of others, rather than focusing on herself.

My life continued to change through this time. When I was 16, I began to do all of the grocery shopping in our house and took on more and more responsibility in general. I remember battling resentment at times as I was at home doing dishes and making supper as the other kids my age were out doing very typical teenager things, like working at camp and going on mission trips. God spoke to me very clearly during this time, however. He told me that we are not all called to do the same thing. My mission field was right there at home, looking after my Mom and my family. Every dish I washed was for Him, and every time I did something for my Mom, I was not only loving her, but loving Him, as well. It was very life changing and changed my whole perspective. It doesn't mean that it was suddenly easier, but it did mean that I had purpose, and that was very important to me.

In 1997, things began to become much more serious with her health. That summer, just before I was about to begin university to become a teacher, she had her first major stroke. This stroke changed a lot of things. It changed her ability to process language, both verbally and in written form, it diminished her short-term memory, it changed her voice completely, she was no longer able to sing, and her circulation became very poor, with her legs swelling greatly at times, reducing her mobility and causing her even more pain. She was on blood thinners to prevent another stroke and began to deal with major bleeding episodes, that resulted in us calling the ambulance multiple times. Her blood count became very unstable and she began to rely on regular blood transfusions.

Her health continued to decline and hit a new all time low in the summer of 2000. For months prior to this, she was having trouble keeping any food down. She lost a very unhealthy amount of weight and looked gaunt and grey. Her hair was even falling out. She was admitted to the hospital in September, as I was entering my last year of university. It was a very scary time and I ended up quitting my part time job so I could focus on my studies and still be there for her. We really thought we were going to lose her. All of the morphine that she’d been on for years had built up in her system and was causing her to hallucinate. In the midst of this, she had another major stroke. Again, to shorten the story, after a month in Steinbach, they transferred her to St. Boniface. Surrounded by specialists who were not going to give up on her, she made a big turn around. God definitely said it wasn't her time. She began to be able to eat again, gained strength, and came home after a month in Winnipeg.

That February she ended up in the hospital again, this time because a major blood clot had dislodged from her leg and had made its way to her lung, causing a pulmonary embolism. She sustained a lot of damage to her lungs and to her heart, and from this point on required oxygen constantly. She used a machine at home and tanks when we went out. It was a huge change in our life routine to constantly be prepared with enough oxygen tanks whenever we wanted to go out somewhere.

In 2004, she had another major stroke. I believe it was around this time when she began to have seizures. She didn't have many of them, but they were extremely scary when they happened. Praise God, he allowed me to be right beside her when she had the two that happened at home. His timing is so amazingly perfect.

Mom continued to have many ups and downs. She still continued to receive blood transfusions at this point. There were frequent trips to the emergency room with infections, and frequent stays in the hospital. In February of 2005, she was admitted again into the hospital under similar circumstances. Only this time the doctor made her sign a Do Not Resuscitate order. He really didn't think she was going to make it. When I got there after school that day, I was pretty scared myself. They tested her blood sugar and it was dangerously low. She was nearly unresponsive. Her picc line (the semi-permanent i.v. that she had in her arm broke and they couldn't get it fixed until the morning). I stayed with her a good chunk of the night and proceeded to try to shovel sugar into her in whatever form I could. Praise God he pulled her through that night and in a few days she came back home.

I believe that spring Mom fell in the house. I had asked her to come and close the door behind me as my hands were full and I was in a hurry to get to work. I didn't know it, but she fell down and broke her arm. I still feel bad about it. Her arm was essentially shattered just below her shoulder. Surgery would have risked her life, so that wasn't an option. By all accounts, she shouldn't have been able to have any use of that arm whatsoever. But somehow God allowed her to still be have full use of her hand, even though she always had to wear a sling from that point on and couldn't lift her arm up on her own.

Things were getting scarier and scarier, in general. We knew at this point that her kidneys were failing and that dialysis was imminent at some point. That point came very clearly on the August long weekend of that year. That Monday was one of those scary times when she became so weak and confused that she was just falling down and we rushed her to the emergency room. Tests confirmed that her creatin levels were dangerously high and her kidney function was nearly non-existent. After many hours in the Steinbach emergency room, they transferred us to St. Boniface where she and I spent all night in emerg. The sun was rising the next day when she was finally put into a room.

Wednesday, August 3^rd, 2005 I got to go with her to dialysis for the first time. It was very scary. Very little was explained to us. I held her hand while they put the line into her neck to be able to begin dialysis. We both couldn't help but just sit there and cry afterward as the machine began to run for hours. We knew that this would become our life. She would have to go three times a week, for four hours a day, in order to continue to live. Those first few months on dialysis were very frightening. Her health was very fragile and she ended up being admitted to the hospital a few times.

But as we moved into 2006, something truly amazing happened. God gave us what I like to call the ‘gift year.’ Her health stabilized significantly and we were able to enjoy some things that we hadn’t done for many years. We had always enjoyed camping, and it seemed that that was all of a sudden a possibility for that summer. God pretty literally plopped the perfect camper in my lap, so I purchased it. We got a seasonal site and built a deck so that she’d be able to easily get in and out. And we had a summer that was so incredibly perfect (with the exception of her dialysis schedule, of course). Those weekends were such a treasure. For the majority of the time, it was just Mom and myself, and we just sat and watched movies and spent time together. I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful, and I know that Mom couldn’t either. It was such a gift, I can’t even fully explain it. I like to think of it as our little preview of Heaven.

God had another big surprise for us later that year. Very, very out of the blue, God prompted us to buy a house in town, nothing spectacular, but the perfect house for us, and a virtual palace compared to the small, old farmhouse that we’d been cramped into for the past 19 years. It was a difficult move for Mom because change was uncomfortable for her at this point, but in many ways, it was what she and I had always dreamed of. And she did settle in. We made some wonderful memories together. We had a wonderful Christmas, and then as spring came, she heard the mourning doves, her favorite bird and felt right at home. We were also ‘gifted’ central air which made the house practically perfect in her eyes.

Mom’s health was in a steady decline in the spring of 2007. She was having more and more bleeding episodes again. She was having more and more pain, including scary chest pain. My great aunt passed away that May and Mom became very sad. Looking back, I realize how Homesick she was. She knew that her time was nearing the end. She spoke about it to a few people, including her parents. She did not, however, talk to us about it much. She was so scared of hurting us by leaving. We had this special routine that we had established after moving into our new house. Somehow everyone, at one point or another, would gather in her room before bed. One night, likely in June, she and I were alone together in her room before bed. She told me how very tired she was. I knew that she meant that she didn’t know how she was going to go on. I knew that she needed my permission to go, so I told her that I didn’t know how, but somehow we would be okay, so if she needed to go, she should just go. Those were some of the hardest words I ever had to say, but I know that they were the release that she needed.

Thankfully, as a teacher, I have summers off, so I got to spend some incredibly special moments with her in July. For some reason, I woke up every morning and thought, this is the summer she’s going to die. I can’t quite explain it, other than I believe God was trying to prepare me for what was to come. And yet I wasn’t prepared at all.

The morning of July 25^th, 2007 was just another crisis situation in all of our minds as we called the ambulance because she was having trouble breathing. She’d been through many scary situations and had always pulled through. But it wasn’t in our hands. My sweet Mom went home to be with Jesus that morning. That day is forever ingrained in my memory and it visits me often. In fact, I remember the entire week between when she died and her funeral very clearly. I actually remember asking God to preserve it in my mind. That might seem like a strange thing to ask for, but I want to be able to tell about it. I want to remember what it’s like to be in the pit of despair, because that’s what it was. I want to never forget, so that I will be able to relate to others who are also grieving.

In so many ways, it was like a bad dream. We were all in physical shock. I remember not knowing how I was going to take another breath without her. We couldn’t eat, sleep, and I could barely find the strength to brush my teeth and shower. God so clearly carried us through that time, however, through the support of our friends and family.

To get us through that first month, our coping mechanism of choice was to work ourselves to the bone. We repainted literally half the house, rearranged bedrooms, whatever we could do to be able to sleep at night. It was this almost compulsive need to gain some control over my surroundings in order to gain a feeling of control over what was going on in my heart. It’s amazing how when one person is the center of your house, your house can feel so incredibly empty.

When I went back to work in September, that’s when the real reality of grief hit. I was forced to slow down and establish some sort of routine, trying to find our ‘new normal.’ We actually all became really ill with pneumonia that September and I lost my voice for 6 weeks. As a teacher, that’s a bit of a problem.

Grief is so ugly. There’s just nothing fun or pretty about it. It feels like you take one step forward, and then two steps back. It’s so complicated, too. I wasn’t just grieving the loss of my Mom. I was grieving the loss of my best friend. I was grieving the loss of someone that I’d taken care of for years. I felt that she was my very purpose for living. God had given me to her so that I could take care of her, and now my purpose was just gone. I grieved all the things that we had lost along the way…all the things that we hadn’t been able to fully enjoy or do because she’d been too sick. I grieved all the things that she was going to miss in the future. Her greatest wish had been to become a Grandma and I wasn’t able to give that to her. It was crushing.

I really needed something to hang on to at this point. My aunt who had passed away two months before my Mom was very well versed in the Bible and she had read a book called Heaven by Randy Alcorn just before she passed away. She wrote about it in her journal, asking her husband to read it. He was the one who told me about it. I was a little skeptical, but I went and bought the book. It’s interesting, because of course, I believe in Heaven, but I realized that we just don’t talk a lot about it as Christians. I couldn’t believe that someone could have written this nearly 500 page book about it. I have to tell you, though, that it was absolutely what I needed and absolutely life-changing. It’s astounding how much scripture actually speaks of Heaven. I highly recommend this book to any Christian, not just to someone who is grieving. I truly believe that we need to reexamine where our focus is, and to not forget that we are already living an eternal life. We need to live our lives based on the fact that what we do here and now will affect eternity. (All right, that’s enough of my plug for the book, I promise).

But really, this whole grief journey has been extremely difficult. It just never leaves you. But somehow, along the way, God just pours on His mercy and grace. It seems at times like it will never get better, but He really does allow it to become somewhat easier. He allows me to reflect on the good things more often than the bad, at this point. My Mom taught me so much. She was all about living, not about dying, even though we lived under the constant shadow of death. We learned very quickly to treasure each day. That doesn’t mean that we never took a day for granted, but we worked so hard not to. She had this incredible gift to find joy in the little things of life. The smallest things would make her such great joy. She loved celebrating more than anyone I know. Birthdays, Christmas, Easter, all of the holidays just aren’t the same without her. But it didn’t have to be a special occasion. She loved going out for supper. She loved anything and everything I cooked for her and would lavish on the praise. It’s hard to imagine how someone who lived in such great pain could find such great joy. I would love to find even half of the joy that she could find in each day. She taught me that every person has a place in God’s plan, even if they are not physically well. She was an amazing prayer warrior and encouraged so many people with her peppy spirit and her determination. She has taught me to not be afraid to love the people around me, recognizing that I may lose them, but that love is always worth the risk.

It’s been two and a half years and I still find myself struggling to know how to live without her. I turned 30 in September and I felt like I was all of a sudden in a pretty good place. I felt like, “Wow, I’ve made it to 30 without Mom.” Maybe I really can do this. I felt pretty strong and independent.

I’m pretty sure this is the place where God chose to remind me how much I need Him and that it’s only because of His grace that I make it through each day. I suddenly found myself in the midst of my own health crisis. What I thought was just really annoying stomach pain, very quickly landed me in the hospital, and very quickly resulted in me having major bowel surgery. I had intussusception, which meant that my intestines were being sucked into one another, like a telescope. I had a large lump that was causing the pulling action. So, I had a bowel resection done. They removed a chunk of my small intestine, a chunk of the large intestine, and attached them back together. It was a less than pleasant experience. It definitely added to my perspective on everything that my Mom went through. This was just one surgery and my Mom had endured so many. I continue to be in awe over what she persevered through because of her love for her kids. Perhaps the worst part came, though, once I got home. That first night I slept on the couch and Satan attacked me with every lie that He could tell me and He knew I would believe in the midst of my weakness. He told me that I was going down the same path as my Mom, and that we would share a similar fate. I couldn’t pray hard enough against it that night and I felt like I was being swallowed up. The next day I got my prayer warriors behind me and it never got to that point again, thankfully, and God clearly spoke to me that those were, in fact, lies meant to paralyze me in my service to God. A few weeks later, the pathology report came back, and the lump that they removed was precancerous. If my intestines had not caused me so much pain, I may have never had any symptoms, and it would have likely developed into cancer of the appendix. I cried as I left the doctor’s office, just so humbled that He chose to spare me. God clearly isn’t done with me yet, and I am so honored to still be able to continue to serve Him.

God has demonstrated His faithfulness to me time and time again over the years. The words that He has spoken to me over and over are ‘Trust Me.’ His timing has always been perfect with Mom. He looked after her in so many near-death experiences that we were witness to, that literally the angels must have been standing guard around her. And those are just the incidents that we saw. I can’t imagine how many times He interceded on her behalf that we didn’t see. So many times I’m tempted to put God in a box and try to plan out my own life. He gently (or perhaps not so gently, at times) reminds me that His plan is far greater than mine. I just need to remember to trust. I feel like I’m sitting at a major crossroads of my life. My health is a bit uncertain, my career may shift gears sometime in the near future, I’m still waiting for Mr. Right, and I’m figuring out how to take care of my Dad and brother, as their lives continue to change, as well. It’s all a little scary, but God just challenges me to let go. I want to encourage you that no matter where you are in your life, to seek out the reminders of His faithfulness, to recognize just how big our God is, to live your life in light of eternity, and to just let go.