Stories are powerful. That’s why the best speakers today use them so often. That’s why Jesus used them. And that’s why I want to share my story.

I realized a few months ago that I’ve never shared in one place my entire story. I’ve shared pieces of it, but not the whole thing. So in the next few months, I plan to share it all….my story….some of the key defining moments in my life that have made me who I am and transformed my faith and my thinking.

I hope reading it will bless you in some way, because the truth is, my story isn’t just for me or for my family.

My story is for you too….just as your story is for me. God wants to use each of our stories to minister to someone else.

So…with that being said, here goes.

My Story: Part 1

There are defining moments in each of our lives…moments that leave us different than we were before. (I had one such moment last weekend, but that’s another post for later on down the road. That moment will make much more sense once you read about the moments leading up to it.)

My story begins here as a fifteen year old teenager. My family and I had been going to church at that time for about 4 years. We had all committed to Jesus, and I was active in the church youth group. I was also a ballet dancer and a cheerleader.

One morning in September (isn’t it funny how we can remember dates of key events like this?), after a tough cheerleading practice the night before, I woke up with intense pain in my right foot. (I’m talking intense pain….pain like I had never felt before in my life).

The pain kept me up the rest of the night. In the morning, I told my parents. My mom suggested (like many good parents would) that I try to walk it off. She assumed I must have hurt it at cheer practice. So, that’s what I did. I tried to walk it off.

By midmorning, I couldn’t take the pain anymore so I called my mom and she took me in for X-rays. A few hours later, the doctor called because he wanted me to see a specialist ASAP.

There was something on those X-rays he didn’t like. 

Fast forward 24 hours, and I sat in the exam room of a specialist in a neighboring city. “I’m 99% sure it’s not cancer,” my doctor told me. “But you need surgery.” He went on to explain that I had a cyst growing in the bone in my foot. The cyst was eating away at the bone and needed fixed.

He sent me home on crutches and with instructions not to put any weight on the foot. One week later, they opened up my hip bone and grafted that bone into my foot to replace the bone the cyst had eaten away.

We still don’t know what caused the cyst to form. What we do know is that the pain I felt was the remaining bone in my foot beginning to snap.

My bone graft was successful, and after 6 or  7 weeks on crutches, I was able to walk again.

But those weeks were eye-opening.

They were the first time I really understood physical pain. They were also the first time I really understood that life isn’t always fair and sometimes bad things just happen and we don’t really understand why. They were the first time I saw firsthand that you can be faithful to Jesus and still struggle.

Many of you reading this probably learned this lesson at a younger age than 15. I was blessed with an easy childhood. My parents were (and still are) together. Other than the deaths of grandparents (which, don’t get me wrong, was very hard), I had very few struggles in my younger years.

So when this medical mystery presented itself at 15, I was rocked. It was my first experience with injustice, the first time I really wanted something and had to wait. I wanted to cheer at my regional and state competitions, and I had to sit on the sidelines. I also wanted to walk and not use those embarrassing crutches, but I couldn’t.

Sure, in the grand scheme of things, those aren’t huge deals. But to 15-year-old me, they were big. I was sad about what I missed and angry at the injustice of it all.

But, along with those lessons, I also learned that God is faithful.

He carried me through those weeks. And in the end, he used the medical team around me and my loving family to heal me. (This, as you’ll see in a few posts down the road, is important. I’ll explain why later on.)

At 15, I had my first defining moment. The next one came about 5 years later on my 20th birthday and two weeks before my wedding day. I’ll share that story in my next post. Stay tuned.