It’s been a minute since I’ve posted anything on my blog, and I’ve been wanting to get back to it; but between trying to graduate college and dealing with some health difficulties, it’s been a wild ride for the last couple of years. Here I am, though, with a journalism degree, good health, and some important lessons learned along the way.
In December, I was working on an application essay for a program I was hoping to be accepted into. One of the essay questions asked about an experience that shaped me. If you want to get all butterfly effect about it, I guess I could have written about almost anything, but it made sense to me to write about the obvious.
I wrote about, not one single experience, but rather, a set of related experiences that have taught me lessons throughout my life. It all started the year I was born– in 1996, the year of the Nintendo 64, iconic movies like Mission Impossible, Space Jam, and Independence Day, and the release of DVDs in Japan. Maybe, while in the womb, I somehow caught wind of these happenings in the world and was ready to experience them. I just came a little too early to the party.
I was born prematurely on Dec. 2– eight weeks early. Born at four pounds and five ounces, I was diagnosed with hydrocephalus, which means “water on the brain.” I needed a tube in my brain called a shunt to drain excessive cerebrospinal fluid. That month, my first shunt was put in, and in Feb. 1997, I had my first shunt replacement.
The shunt functioned well until 2006, which is when the real story starts. I recall my brother going to vision therapy as a child. Wanting to be like my brother, I decided to tell my mother my vision was weird, too, and would black out for two to three seconds at a time occasionally. I didn’t find these blackouts to be troubling because they had been happening for a while, but my mom was deeply concerned.
After a few trips to an opthamologist, and then a few trips to Duke, I eventually had another neurosurgery. The first one tested the levels of pressure in my brain. The pressure was too high, and a resident told my father I would need an additional surgery. As they stood in front of me discussing the risks, which included things like hemorrhaging and death, 9-year-old me was terrified. At that point, I had been taking an apologetics class, and I understood my faith. There was evidence for what I believed all my life. I knew, intellectually, that Jesus really died for me, and since I was pretty sure I was going to die– 9-year-old me was very dramatic– I decided I should accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior because the Bible said it was the only way to heaven. It was fire insurance.
Nevertheless, the prayer I prayed was sincere, and that’s how my spiritual walk began. Not very inspirational, I know. But for the first time in my life that I could actually remember, the Gospel “clicked” with me, and the experience kickstarted my journey to learn about God and who He is, and moreover, that as much as I was scared and suffering, Jesus suffered even more than I could ever understand on the cross because of His love for humanity. (I still struggled a lot with the problem of evil and suffering though. Just so I can move on with today’s post, I’ll link the first, second and third posts about that here.)
In March of 2018, I noticed a floater in my eye. What seemed to be an insignificant moment led to several life lessons over the next three months. I scheduled an appointment near school to get my eyes checked. The doctor saw swelling and bleeding in my eyes and called my neurosurgeon. Shortly after leaving the office, I received a call telling me to drop everything (including my Pelicans snoball with marshmallow topping) and head to the Duke Emergency Department. What should have been one surgery to replace the shunt was the first of five unexpected surgeries that I would have in 8 weeks.
How did this series of events affect me? Aside from my salvation at age 9 and the obvious “my brain got cut through and I ate a lot of hospital food” answers, I learned some serious life lessons.
Firstly, I learned what a burden physical pain can be. Elaine Scarry wrote in her book The Body in Pain, “to have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt.” When you don’t understand pain on a personal level, it’s harder to wrap your mind around the pain of someone else and their need for community when they’re struggling. Recovery was a humbling experience because I had to rely on people in ways I hadn’t before, but it also showed me ways I could support people around me who were experiencing pain.
Secondly, I learned the value of strong friendships. During the time I was in the hospital, I had friends who called every day and some who didn’t check in at all. After going home, who came to see me when I hadn’t had visitors? Who brushed it off because they were too busy? My recovery taught me that words without actions don’t mean a lot, but I also learned to put a higher value on strong relationships. My friends that withstood the storm are ones I know I can count on; they love unconditionally. I truly can’t think of another way that I could have better learned the importance of having community with believers.
The most important lesson was about a different relationship– the one I have with Jesus. The God who knew me in my mother’s womb, when I was itching to burst into the world in 1996, and who I grew to trust in 2006 because I was scared is the same God I could lean on in 2018 as the unchanging, great Physician who knew greater things were yet to come.
UNBOXING FAITH 