November 22, 2010
I gave my testimony this weekend at a high school girls retreat in Running Springs. Thinking it would be easy to get up in front of those girls and talk about my own life, I only had half of what I was going to say prepared when I drove up there on Friday afternoon. Reading it through that night, I decided to trash it and start all over. I thought this would be easy...
Saturday, I sat in our cabin with Angie going over the things I wanted to say and points I wanted to make about how God has changed my life with this halting plan of His, but rehashing through all the nightmares of this journey just made me question God like I would back then. I never question whether He exists, because I know He does, I question whether there is reasoning behind what I have had to go through and what I continue to go through every day. I never like to cry in front of people, but when reading through the notes I would say that night, I couldn't help but let a few tears fall down my cheeks, and apologized for getting so emotional.
The fact is I can't hide it anymore. I share my papers and my journey with all of you and even though I talk about my struggles, I make them sound so small, when really I struggle to keep it together every day. Because what I went through wasn't just some tiny little bump in the road that I am finally over. God gave me the rockiest mountain to climb and has watched me fall many times, and I still feel like I'm only a third of the way up that mountain.
So what kind of inspiring story can I tell about the girl who lost it all? I lost my life! I lost who I was! I lost things I loved! I lost things I wanted! I scream out in hiccupping cries when I am alone in my car driving from place to place trying to keep my life going. I miss my old life and I miss the future I thought I had in store. I no longer have hopes, because when I start to plan for things that I want, God tells me I'm wrong by taking those things away and pointing me in another direction. A direction that I have no desire in taking because I want to be selfish for once in my life and get the things that I want! That’s not inspiring, that’s selfish and pathetic.
You want to know my story? My story is that I had it all. I had a great life with no real problems to worry about. I was active, I was a great student, I had great friends, no deaths in the family, and the world at my feet where I could do almost anything I wanted. But when my life is going great someone says, Whoa, Michelle, not so fast.
There I was, a sixteen-year-old girl, with my whole life ahead of me, when God stepped in and took all my dreams away. Everything I loved doing was gone. Everything I loved about myself was changed. I hated God. I hated myself. I hated everyone. Michelle’s fuming, get out of the way! WHY ME?
Surgeries became my specialty, puking became my pastime, my life became an experiment, pain became all I felt, and depression became my lifestyle. I had thirteen surgeries in three years: brain surgery, spinal rods, femur rod, hip/femur replacement, vocal implants, and a feeding tube just to name a few. While my friends were in school taking vacations and planning for college, I spent my days with my head over a chemo bin throwing up sometimes fifteen to twenty times a day, eventually dropping from 135 lbs to 96 lbs in less than two months. I couldn’t eat, I didn’t know how. I was much like a baby sitting in a highchair with mother-like figures forcing food down my throat, or in my case down my feeding tube. And just like a baby I got “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” as I took my first steps out of that hospital room, making me want to punch everyone in the face for being proud of something so little. I might have been learning how to do those things all over again, but my mind was developed, I wasn’t a baby. I knew how to walk before. I knew how to swallow before. I knew when my bed was soiled. And I knew when I got those pitiful stares from the many visitors that were seeing me for the first time after my diagnosis, shocked by just how different I looked from the last time they saw me.
I became a human vegetable shriveling away as doctors came at me with needles sucking out the only blood I had left. I’m sure over one hundred people have flipped through my medical chart trying to figure out just what to do with someone as unique as me. We tried chemotherapies, radiation treatments, and trial studies, and with every one of those that were tried I was told that side effects would be scarce. But that was a lie. I got infections. I lost my appetite. I watched chunks of my hair clog the shower drain. I threw up the lining in my stomach when there was nothing left to throw up. And I lost almost all chances of having my own children one day.
With no end in sight, except for my own life, it’s no wonder depression took over. Every time I was wheeled into the hospital, I made eye contact with no one. No expression crossed over my face except for misery and pain. And when my oncologist tried to get me to take antidepressants and tricked me into talking to someone about what I was going through, it just infuriated me more. I had a right to be angry! I had a right to be sad! I had a right to feel overwhelmed! I had a right to shut everyone out! No doctor of mine was going to tell me that I was depressed and force me to take a pill that I was so against. I could easily stop being depressed if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to.
I was stuck in that mindset of nothing is ever going to get better for so long, that when I finally got the great news that my tumors were no longer active I wouldn’t let myself be happy. Initially I cried as I got the phone call, but then I started to think, Well, now what? For two years I was in and out of the hospital and didn’t know any different. Now I was somewhat better and was just supposed to go back to a normal life? Nothing about my life was normal anymore.
That’s when I started to hear them. Those repeated phrases from everyone who thought they understood. Keep fighting. You’re so strong. You’re so inspiring. Don’t give up. Everything happens for a reason. God has a plan for you. Blah, blah, blah… The truth is, when you’re actually the one who is suffering, those are the last things you want to hear from people who have it better off than you.
Even though I hated hearing those phrases from everyone else, it was somehow okay to say them to myself. And so I started to think, maybe God does have a plan for me. That became my only way of getting through each day. I knew that I couldn’t be going through all this suffering for no reason. Something began to pull at my heart, and I started to feel important. I started to feel worthy. Something told me that everyone was going to know my name one day, and I wasn’t going to stop till that day happened. But I went through a dry spell for over a year. I had the same routine every week: wake up, take medicine, go to school, go to physical therapy, go to the hospital. And in the back of my mind I was always wondering, What is my purpose? Why am I going through is? Who am I supposed to be? How can I use these circumstances for God’s glory?
For a year I never heard any answers to those questions, but I still felt like God had a huge plan for me. A plan to change the world and people’s lives. And when I shared these thoughts with my mom I began to cry in hope that it would actually happen and in fear that it would be more than I could handle. “He carries out his decree against me, and many such plans he still has in store. That is why I am terrified before him; when I think of all this, I fear him” (Job 23:14-15). That was exactly how I felt, terrified that these plans were going to be too big for me, and terrified that I was going to have to step way outside of my comfort zone.
I was tired of waiting to find out the answer. I developed patience in every aspect of my life except when it came to God. This was my life and I wanted to know where it was going. But I was wrong; it wasn’t my life at all. It was His life. He is in control, not me. And when I finally realized that, I began to relax. I became more aware. My eyes got wider and my ears heard farther. I started to reflect back on my life with pride, and not entirely with anger. I liked who I was. I liked how I was maturing. I looked back on tough moments and saw meaning. I saw how God gave me those months before my surgery to enjoy my life and youthfulness for the last time. I saw that by being in a hospital that was chaotic and sometimes unorganized I developed patience and understanding toward others. I saw that by taking friends away when I felt like I needed them most, made me stronger and helped me grow into a mature independent young woman. I saw that without all these things I wouldn’t be who I was at that moment. I loved who I was and yet I hated how I got there. I knew that I couldn’t have it both ways. I knew that it was time to start over. I knew that it was time to start taking chances.
Taking the scariest chance first, last December, I moved out of my mom’s house. Next, I stopped holding on to old friendships that I so dearly missed. And finally, I started taking charge of my own life for the first time. Little by little I started to see changes. I started to see God’s work. But I wanted more.
At the beginning of this year, a little girl with cancer whose story I had been following wasn’t doing so well. Her family would make long prayer lists and post them on her website at all hours of the day in hope that people would be reading them and start praying for her healing. That’s when I made prayer a priority, and not just when I felt I needed something. I would read down the lists and one by one would pray for every request her family had, and I would cry in praise when the next morning there would be an update saying that our prayers had been answered. I saw God’s response and it made me want more. So while praying for the little girl, I began to throw my own prayer requests in. I’d ask God for direction in my life. I’d ask for people to be brought into my life that would love me no matter who I was or what I had been through. I’d ask for career advice and how I would be able to use my experiences to help other people. And I’d ask for opportunities to share my story with others.
In the past few months I have felt God more than ever before. I have seen Him working in my life and planting seeds in my mind of all the possibilities I have in front of me. New friends as well as old friends have reached out to me when I finally stopped trying. I met someone who wants to know every side of me, good or bad. And when everyone else takes “fine” as an answer to how I am feeling, he pries the truth out of me no matter how hard I try to fight it.
After a high school friend reached out to me this summer when finding out that she was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma, bone cancer, I flew to her side and answered any questions that she had, in hope that she would never feel as alone as I did. By doing so, I made the tough decision to drop out of the sign language interpreting program that I dedicated two years of my life to so that I could switch to psychology and become a therapist for cancer patients. Nothing feels more right than that. And when sharing with my own therapist that I wanted to write a book, she suggested a nonfiction writing class at UCLA, and I was registered for the class the following day.
I’m not saying I have it all figured out or that I am passed this medical nightmare. I still have meltdowns from the amount of trauma I went through. I still get angry at the fact that I can no longer do some of my favorite activities. But with this tragedy, God has made up for the torture and pain that I have had to endure, and will continue to do so as long as I follow Him. I know this is just the beginning. But what a great start to the many ways God will use me.
This is my story, my true story.
Saturday, I sat in our cabin with Angie going over the things I wanted to say and points I wanted to make about how God has changed my life with this halting plan of His, but rehashing through all the nightmares of this journey just made me question God like I would back then. I never question whether He exists, because I know He does, I question whether there is reasoning behind what I have had to go through and what I continue to go through every day. I never like to cry in front of people, but when reading through the notes I would say that night, I couldn't help but let a few tears fall down my cheeks, and apologized for getting so emotional.
The fact is I can't hide it anymore. I share my papers and my journey with all of you and even though I talk about my struggles, I make them sound so small, when really I struggle to keep it together every day. Because what I went through wasn't just some tiny little bump in the road that I am finally over. God gave me the rockiest mountain to climb and has watched me fall many times, and I still feel like I'm only a third of the way up that mountain.
So what kind of inspiring story can I tell about the girl who lost it all? I lost my life! I lost who I was! I lost things I loved! I lost things I wanted! I scream out in hiccupping cries when I am alone in my car driving from place to place trying to keep my life going. I miss my old life and I miss the future I thought I had in store. I no longer have hopes, because when I start to plan for things that I want, God tells me I'm wrong by taking those things away and pointing me in another direction. A direction that I have no desire in taking because I want to be selfish for once in my life and get the things that I want! That’s not inspiring, that’s selfish and pathetic.
You want to know my story? My story is that I had it all. I had a great life with no real problems to worry about. I was active, I was a great student, I had great friends, no deaths in the family, and the world at my feet where I could do almost anything I wanted. But when my life is going great someone says, Whoa, Michelle, not so fast.
There I was, a sixteen-year-old girl, with my whole life ahead of me, when God stepped in and took all my dreams away. Everything I loved doing was gone. Everything I loved about myself was changed. I hated God. I hated myself. I hated everyone. Michelle’s fuming, get out of the way! WHY ME?
Surgeries became my specialty, puking became my pastime, my life became an experiment, pain became all I felt, and depression became my lifestyle. I had thirteen surgeries in three years: brain surgery, spinal rods, femur rod, hip/femur replacement, vocal implants, and a feeding tube just to name a few. While my friends were in school taking vacations and planning for college, I spent my days with my head over a chemo bin throwing up sometimes fifteen to twenty times a day, eventually dropping from 135 lbs to 96 lbs in less than two months. I couldn’t eat, I didn’t know how. I was much like a baby sitting in a highchair with mother-like figures forcing food down my throat, or in my case down my feeding tube. And just like a baby I got “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” as I took my first steps out of that hospital room, making me want to punch everyone in the face for being proud of something so little. I might have been learning how to do those things all over again, but my mind was developed, I wasn’t a baby. I knew how to walk before. I knew how to swallow before. I knew when my bed was soiled. And I knew when I got those pitiful stares from the many visitors that were seeing me for the first time after my diagnosis, shocked by just how different I looked from the last time they saw me.
I became a human vegetable shriveling away as doctors came at me with needles sucking out the only blood I had left. I’m sure over one hundred people have flipped through my medical chart trying to figure out just what to do with someone as unique as me. We tried chemotherapies, radiation treatments, and trial studies, and with every one of those that were tried I was told that side effects would be scarce. But that was a lie. I got infections. I lost my appetite. I watched chunks of my hair clog the shower drain. I threw up the lining in my stomach when there was nothing left to throw up. And I lost almost all chances of having my own children one day.
With no end in sight, except for my own life, it’s no wonder depression took over. Every time I was wheeled into the hospital, I made eye contact with no one. No expression crossed over my face except for misery and pain. And when my oncologist tried to get me to take antidepressants and tricked me into talking to someone about what I was going through, it just infuriated me more. I had a right to be angry! I had a right to be sad! I had a right to feel overwhelmed! I had a right to shut everyone out! No doctor of mine was going to tell me that I was depressed and force me to take a pill that I was so against. I could easily stop being depressed if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to.
I was stuck in that mindset of nothing is ever going to get better for so long, that when I finally got the great news that my tumors were no longer active I wouldn’t let myself be happy. Initially I cried as I got the phone call, but then I started to think, Well, now what? For two years I was in and out of the hospital and didn’t know any different. Now I was somewhat better and was just supposed to go back to a normal life? Nothing about my life was normal anymore.
That’s when I started to hear them. Those repeated phrases from everyone who thought they understood. Keep fighting. You’re so strong. You’re so inspiring. Don’t give up. Everything happens for a reason. God has a plan for you. Blah, blah, blah… The truth is, when you’re actually the one who is suffering, those are the last things you want to hear from people who have it better off than you.
Even though I hated hearing those phrases from everyone else, it was somehow okay to say them to myself. And so I started to think, maybe God does have a plan for me. That became my only way of getting through each day. I knew that I couldn’t be going through all this suffering for no reason. Something began to pull at my heart, and I started to feel important. I started to feel worthy. Something told me that everyone was going to know my name one day, and I wasn’t going to stop till that day happened. But I went through a dry spell for over a year. I had the same routine every week: wake up, take medicine, go to school, go to physical therapy, go to the hospital. And in the back of my mind I was always wondering, What is my purpose? Why am I going through is? Who am I supposed to be? How can I use these circumstances for God’s glory?
For a year I never heard any answers to those questions, but I still felt like God had a huge plan for me. A plan to change the world and people’s lives. And when I shared these thoughts with my mom I began to cry in hope that it would actually happen and in fear that it would be more than I could handle. “He carries out his decree against me, and many such plans he still has in store. That is why I am terrified before him; when I think of all this, I fear him” (Job 23:14-15). That was exactly how I felt, terrified that these plans were going to be too big for me, and terrified that I was going to have to step way outside of my comfort zone.
I was tired of waiting to find out the answer. I developed patience in every aspect of my life except when it came to God. This was my life and I wanted to know where it was going. But I was wrong; it wasn’t my life at all. It was His life. He is in control, not me. And when I finally realized that, I began to relax. I became more aware. My eyes got wider and my ears heard farther. I started to reflect back on my life with pride, and not entirely with anger. I liked who I was. I liked how I was maturing. I looked back on tough moments and saw meaning. I saw how God gave me those months before my surgery to enjoy my life and youthfulness for the last time. I saw that by being in a hospital that was chaotic and sometimes unorganized I developed patience and understanding toward others. I saw that by taking friends away when I felt like I needed them most, made me stronger and helped me grow into a mature independent young woman. I saw that without all these things I wouldn’t be who I was at that moment. I loved who I was and yet I hated how I got there. I knew that I couldn’t have it both ways. I knew that it was time to start over. I knew that it was time to start taking chances.
Taking the scariest chance first, last December, I moved out of my mom’s house. Next, I stopped holding on to old friendships that I so dearly missed. And finally, I started taking charge of my own life for the first time. Little by little I started to see changes. I started to see God’s work. But I wanted more.
At the beginning of this year, a little girl with cancer whose story I had been following wasn’t doing so well. Her family would make long prayer lists and post them on her website at all hours of the day in hope that people would be reading them and start praying for her healing. That’s when I made prayer a priority, and not just when I felt I needed something. I would read down the lists and one by one would pray for every request her family had, and I would cry in praise when the next morning there would be an update saying that our prayers had been answered. I saw God’s response and it made me want more. So while praying for the little girl, I began to throw my own prayer requests in. I’d ask God for direction in my life. I’d ask for people to be brought into my life that would love me no matter who I was or what I had been through. I’d ask for career advice and how I would be able to use my experiences to help other people. And I’d ask for opportunities to share my story with others.
In the past few months I have felt God more than ever before. I have seen Him working in my life and planting seeds in my mind of all the possibilities I have in front of me. New friends as well as old friends have reached out to me when I finally stopped trying. I met someone who wants to know every side of me, good or bad. And when everyone else takes “fine” as an answer to how I am feeling, he pries the truth out of me no matter how hard I try to fight it.
After a high school friend reached out to me this summer when finding out that she was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma, bone cancer, I flew to her side and answered any questions that she had, in hope that she would never feel as alone as I did. By doing so, I made the tough decision to drop out of the sign language interpreting program that I dedicated two years of my life to so that I could switch to psychology and become a therapist for cancer patients. Nothing feels more right than that. And when sharing with my own therapist that I wanted to write a book, she suggested a nonfiction writing class at UCLA, and I was registered for the class the following day.
I’m not saying I have it all figured out or that I am passed this medical nightmare. I still have meltdowns from the amount of trauma I went through. I still get angry at the fact that I can no longer do some of my favorite activities. But with this tragedy, God has made up for the torture and pain that I have had to endure, and will continue to do so as long as I follow Him. I know this is just the beginning. But what a great start to the many ways God will use me.
This is my story, my true story.