Here's my daughter's testimony that she wrote for ninetyandnine
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October 15, 2001
My shoulder was sore again. I hurt it playing volleyball. Rubbing . . . kneading . . . and then, there under my fingers . . . “Amber, feel this lump. Do you feel it? It’s just above my collarbone. I don’t think there’s one on the other side. Do you have any bumps there? This seems weird… I don’t remember feeling that before.” It was—ironically—a comic moment as I sat next to my friend in church on a beautiful spring night in April of 1993, poking around on our necks to see if either of us had any superfluous lumps or bumps near our collarbones. I was 17 years old, a senior in high school, and my top priority was the United Pentecostal Church prom to be held that weekend in Des Moines, Iowa.
I had no idea that there was a storm on the horizon.
After church I showed my dad what I had found, and with me still thinking I was as invincible as every 17 year old believes themselves to be, he promptly gathered my pastor and the other elders of the church to lay hands on me and pray.
It was getting dark.
My mom called the doctor on Monday and he said, “Bring her in.” She did. He said, “Take her to see this surgeon tomorrow. He’ll arrange an appointment to do a biopsy.” The surgeon wanted to do it on Thursday. The prom was on Friday! I begged him to let me have the weekend. So as planned, I headed off for my last weekend with clear skies. Amidst the balloons and fancy dresses and the young men in their best suits, I told my friends of the events of the week prior, and at the panicked tone in their voices,
... the clouds began moving in.
It was still dark when I arrived at the hospital at 5:30 a.m. on Monday, completely exhausted from the weekend excitement. Though drugged, I was awake for the surgery, and my mother was allowed to stay. I could feel the warmth of her hand as she held my foot throughout the procedure. (That was the piece of me that she could reach.) As she described to me later, the doc pulled a little ball, a tumor, about the size of a cherry and similar in appearance with the little surgical string attached, out of my neck, just above my left collarbone.
The clouds were growing thicker, and darker.
On Tuesday I was home again, still drugged and recuperating nicely. The phone rings and I answer. It’s the surgeon. The extension is picked up and I pretend to hang up my phone, but I don’t. I had to know. “Mrs. ------, I’m sorry. I don’t have good news. We believe that the tumor is malignant. I have arranged an appointment for your daughter, at the University of Iowa Hospitals for next Monday. They will be able to run the necessary tests to determine how advanced the cancer is, and give you the necessary treatment options.” Click. Mom is running down the stairs, and I am running up. We meet in the middle to cry, and our tears are the torrential rain that had begun to fall.
The thunder claps, and the clouds hang overhead.
Two weeks later at Iowa City University Hospital I had surgery and my first round of what was to be 15 months of chemotherapy, for Hodgkin’s Disease, Stage 3 BS. I quickly learned that this meant I had cancer of the lymphatic system, which had reached the 3rd stage of 4. The cancer had spread into the upper and lower regions of my chest and abdomen, but had not, thank goodness, spread to my bone marrow. The ‘B’ meant that I was unlucky enough to not have any symptoms that I was sick. The ‘S’ meant the cancer had spread into my spleen as well.
The next months were at first horrific, but then, through the rain, we saw the vicious storm turn to a soft, steamy rain, with the occasional burst of heat lightning. Through our commitment to Him, God had sent us comfort, and said, “There is a reason.”
In October of 1995, nearly a full year after my last chemotherapy treatment, God told me through the prophecy of a stranger that the cancer that had been in my body, and—even more shocking—was still in my body, was now gone! Through the months of chemotherapy, God chose not to heal me, but at that moment He saved my life. I don’t know why He chose for it to be that way, but I will be forever thankful. Not only did I have the rare opportunity to learn all of the beautiful truths that you can only know from experiencing a personal tragedy firsthand, but I also have His blessing and this testimony that will never die.
Not that living through 15 months of chemotherapy didn’t present any challenges—to the contrary, I experienced strange side effects to the drugs, side effects that ranged from insomnia to an insatiable appetite, to the psychological effects of being bald at age 17 (much less being an Apostolic girl with no hair), to near death due to a nasty bout with pneumonia at the same time that my blood counts bottomed out. But the real test for me came much later, after my hair began to grow back, and all of the drugs and their plethora of side effects were gone. It came in the form of normalcy.
I always thought that if you experience the worst that life has to offer, the jolt of that experience should prompt some sort of supernatural reaction so that you will “never be the same again.” Contrary to this ideal, it may have been before I had even seen my last bag of chemo hung in an I.V. that I began to forget. I’m not even sure at what point I had begun to take things for granted, but suddenly life was shifting back to normal. Shouldn’t this be a good thing, life returning from chaos to some semblance of normalcy? One would think so; however, at some point I realized—I didn’t want to be normal! I longed to remember the intimacy I felt with God during the worst of that storm. I wanted to feel the closeness to my family, and the bond with my friends that I felt during those nights my mother sat up with me, and days that my friends watched over me in her absence.
So I’ve learned that my faith and my relationship with God, as well as with my friends and family, can’t be forever strengthened by one moment of difficulty. Not only must I make a conscious choice each and every day, but I must act on that choice in a conscious effort to be a better person, have stronger relationships, and serve my Savior in the best way possible.
There is no magic pill—not even a terminal illness—that will substitute for daily effort. Having a traumatic life experience certainly plays its part in cementing a heightened appreciation for life and a greater pleasure in the little things. But eventually life returns to normal, and those life lessons seem to fade into the distance, just like the clouds after a rain, and I once again must strive for every breath that I take to give praise to my Creator, my Savior, who has saved me in more ways than one
God was and is my “refuge and strength, a very present help in the time of trouble.” (
Psalms 46:1) He has never left me, even when for a moment I may have forgotten the storm clouds.
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