In July of 1997 I became a mommy. Ethan was born after years of prayer and 42 weeks of waiting – since of course he was late. He was 6 pounds, 15 ounces of sheer perfection and I couldn’t believe the love I had for him after I regained my strength from the torture of his birth. (He was a trying little guy even then…) I had miscarried a couple of years before and we feared for a while that children wouldn’t be in the cards for us. But along with his birth came the natural plans of a sibling down the road in a couple of years too. Eighteen months later I discovered this wasn’t meant to be.
After a routine visit to my doctor I was told I needed some tests. “Just routine” they told me, and I bought that. But those initial tests led to more tests and the next thing I knew I was sitting in a wing back leather chair in my Doctor’s actual office while he told me that I had cancer. I was 27 years old. He told me that it seemed to be growing at an uncommonly high rate of speed and so he would be sending me to a specialist as soon as possible. The specialist did his own tests and we waited.
I was at work when I got the phone call. The doctor simply said that the cancer was at stage 2 bordering on stage 3 and I needed surgery as soon as possible. The surgery would leave me unable to have any more children. I begged him to let me have one more before he did the surgery and his exact words were “If I did that you would be leaving 2 children without a mother.”
Just a few weeks later I was in a hotel room with my husband. I was spent from 48 hours of pre-surgery “cleansing” and lay on the bed exhausted, dazed and terrified. The next morning I would be losing my ability to have any more babies. It was so final and I was so young and this was not in my plans.
My relationship with God was better by this time. I finally had grasped the concept of grace after a childhood of works based teaching. But once again I found myself questioning why He would allow this to happen to me. I mean really – losing my mom was bad enough wasn’t it? I had rebuilt my life, settling into that new kind of normal that everyone talks about. I had married a wonderful man, had a perfect little boy and I was doing things His way. None of it made sense to me.
I remember the sadness I felt afterward. I felt emptied and like a little less of who I used to be. The loss of my mom had changed my past. This loss forever changed my future. I was left to wonder about my prognosis for over a week, allowing for lots of speculation, fear of the worst and anger – lots of anger.
Thankfully my prognosis was good. They were able to remove all the cancer and the lymph nodes tested negative which meant that it had most likely not spread. I was given a clean bill of health, patted on the head and told to go on my way – which ironically made me even angrier. Now I wondered if the surgery was even necessary in the first place and I wanted that part of me back. I wanted another baby so bad, and it was impossible.
We talked about adoption a few times, but we could never land and the financial burden of it at the time was too daunting. So we accepted the fact that we had an only child and we went on.
Of course I can look back now and see so clearly how this changed the course of my life, but at the time it seemed like just another cruel blow. I was bitter with God for a while, but I got over it and decided to start serving Him instead. I poured all of myself into that in fact. It began to consume me. I think maybe it was my way of trying to prove to Him that I WASN’T bitter. I sort of understood grace and all, but I still didn’t feel like I had any right to question God, and so I stood up straight and said “I’ll serve You.” in almost an “and I’ll show You…” sort of way. Hindsight has proven that probably wasn’t the best idea.
The next chapter of my life became one of the most defining ones to date and led me to the place I am today. In the next chapter I went into ministry…
