A Completely Broken Woman

 

I’ve always known that I wouldn’t make it to 30.

I can’t explain it. It was just something I knew. I always chalked it up to fear because my grandmother passed away before 30, and I think I was afraid that somehow I’d share her fate.

By the time 29 rolled around, I got this feverish desire to work harder than I ever had before to create something to leave behind. To at least make something that would show that I was here, that I had left a tiny little mark on the world. I felt like that line from Hamilton, “Why do you always write like you’re running out of time?”

It might sound silly, but I poured my creativity into learning python coding and creating a video game. It was just a small indie thing, but it satisfied me. After releasing it in May of 2019, I sold lots of downloads, my favorite YouTuber picked it up and played it on his channel, and people even drew fan art based on it! That was more than I ever expected to receive from it, and I was perfectly satisfied and grateful.

Two months later, I got really sick. We’re talking very sick. Deathly sick. With my 30^th birthday looming up ahead in September, it didn’t look like I was going to make it.

I won’t go into the gritty details, because those are too dark to look back at, but the doctors thought I had pneumonia. However, they strictly refused to X-ray my chest. The look of fear they had in their eyes is something I will never forget. I believe they saw my symptoms and were afraid of what they would find.

Now, a full year into a pandemic, I think I understand why. I haven’t had my antibodies tested, but looking back on an illness with an eleven day, 104.5 degree fever, and months without my senses of taste and smell, I believe that I was one of the earliest cases of Covid-19. I think the doctors didn’t know what they were looking at, at the time, and were afraid.

I was also afraid. But more than that, I didn’t want to go. Not yet. To die at 29 is just so young. What had I really done with my life? Nothing. I had lived selfishly. I had done very little for others, and even less for God. My life had been my own, selfishly my own. And now I felt it ebbing away from me.

I remember being in the hospital, clinging to life. I was in and out of consciousness, and I kept feeling this very strange impression that my spirit was slipping away. I guess it’s what they call an “out of body experience.” Some might say I was hallucinating. I probably was, but I kept feeling like I was going to leave my body. It was the only time in my life when I thought to myself, “If only I could be free of this body…”

The doctors got some fluids in me and pumped me full of medicine. But I knew that I had to talk to God. I didn’t want to go, but if it was my time, I needed to make sure that I spoke with him first. I had to make my plea.

I prayed and asked God for more time. I told him how I’ve always thought he gave me the ability to write for a reason and I still wanted to be able to use my gift, to write something that would mean something to someone—a piece of work that would remain.

After that point, I started to improve. Eventually, the fever reduced and finally went away. I was healed. Of course, the road to recovery was long and exhausting. I had lost a lot of weight and I was very weak for months. But I had been changed.

I came out of the illness a new person. Not exactly a fresh and shining new person, but a weak and broken person. I began to draw closer to God. I spent time with God each day and just thanked him that I had recovered.

In the weeks that followed, something unusual happened. Every morning when I’m in the shower, I like to listen to Tony Evan’s sermons. It gives me a good start on the day. Over and over, his sermons were about King Hezekiah. Then, when I did my personal devotions, they were about King Hezekiah. But the studies weren’t just about him in general, but rather about his illness. When I realized this, I started to pay more attention.

His story goes like this:

In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, “This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.”

Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, “Remember, Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him:  “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the ruler of my people, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord.  I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.’” (2 Kings 20:1-10 niv)

 

I realized that God kept putting this story in front of me to show me that he had done the same for me. He healed me from the illness that was going to kill me. He gave me extra time. I celebrated my 30^th birthday —the one I never thought I’d see—surrounded by loved ones. I was weak, tired, and a lot thinner, but I was alive and grateful.

My 30th birthday!

I no longer have that conviction that I am going to die. Having passed the 30-year mark, I feel as
if I’ve been given a brand new life. In that illness, in that burning fever, I died to myself.

So in a way, I did die. The woman who lives on is not the woman I was before. Instead, I now live for the Lord. There really is no other way to say it. I am not my own. I was broken, completely broken, and he saved me. God gave me my life back, so now I give it back to him.