This post is an excerpt from Even If Not: Living, Loving, and Learning in the in Between.
I never would have written a brain tumor into my story but I would never wish to write it out.
It was a part of me and now it is , one I never expected to have and now have the gift of telling for the rest of my days. You could pass me in the grocery store aisles or sit one table over at the coffee shop and you would never know that I had brain surgery at age seventeen. For a long time we didn’t have any answers and to this day I simply refer to those months as when I was “sick.” But flashback to a Saturday in February of 2010 and you’ll see that the story had turned to a new chapter overnight, one I didn’t yet know I was in.
Many years have passed and yet this is still my story: Human hands worked to assist in a miracle that was all God’s doing. There have been other scares and more MRIs than I ever wished to have. I’ve been poked and prodded and put under. Several years later, pain still creeps in and the scar throbs but it is only a reminder of what once was.
There are countless tests and scans of my brain and they all tell the same story over and over again: I was sick and I have been healed. But that story was already mine long before an early July morning rid me of a brain tumor.
My soul knew the truth: He could heal me but I would choose to love Him even if not. And if He chose not to heal me? It would not make Him any less of a healer.
The truth is, my history includes a chapter titled July 6, 2010, but it’s actually His Story. I just get to tell it.
Although I’m grateful to live each day soaking it all in — the smell of grass and the sound of a baby’s laugh, and all of the countless little things I never want to take for granted again — when I’m real honest there are days that I struggle with it all.
I wrestle with the fact that I’m alive and countless others with the same diagnosis are not. Years later, I still walk the hospital halls at every checkup, purposely looking at the faces of the children and parents sitting in the waiting room with fish and coral made out of painted handprints, praying they would ultimately receive the same news that I did.
Soon after surgery, I began to wrestle with the question of why. With every piece of me, I was grateful. And with every piece of me, I asked “why me?” Why was I healed and not someone else? Why do little children have to experience the deep physical pain that I went through?
I’ve carried with me the pain and the healing, the wonderings and the gratefulness, and all of it is mixed together into the story He has given me to share. I don’t know why He chose to write this into my history and I surely cannot understand all the “whys,” but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I trust the One who is writing every story.
I may never know why a golf-ball sized tumor was written into the pages of my story. You may never receive healing in the way you’re requesting or answers to the questions that keep you up into the early morning hours.
Sometimes the only answer is that this is how He has authored the pages.
Whatever day you find yourself reading these words, can I tell you that He is faithful? Nothing about who He is hangs in the balance of what story this page will tell.
He has already won. The story is already written. We must make the choice to trust the One holding the pen, believing that He will heal and trusting Him even if not.
He isn’t taken aback by your brokenness. It is not too much for Him. He is the Answer you may not even know you’re searching for and all those broken pieces, all the hurting and thin places, He will heal and mend. It’s what He does; it’s who He is.
This post is an excerpt from Even If Not: Living, Loving, and Learning in the in Between.
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