Elephants and Tea - March 2022 - 32

Examining Your Faith PAIN OF THE PAST
We Were
Made for
Great
Things
BY BECKY LEE
32
ELEPHANTSANDTEA.COM
MARCH 2022
M
y memories as a child are filled
with lazy summer days and
rainy winters shooting ants
down storm drains. Church on
Sundays wearing dresses my
mom designed lovingly and
paid a seamstress to have made
for me.
Those days were filled with
wonder and laughter, love and ease. Nothing
to prepare me for what the next years
would bring, but something for me to hold
onto in those times when nothing made
sense. And I wonder if God had filled this
memory bucket for me because, one day,
He knew I'd need it desperately.
If you had asked me at any age before 16
how I envisioned my future, cancer would
have been the very last thing on my mind.
My faith had been tested before this when
I was nine, when my mom was diagnosed
with a brain tumour that left her with half
vision, complete loss of smell, and countless
other issues, but alive and the very epitome
of a thriver.
She became my greatest source of
strength.
I could have lost her then, but I think in
so many ways God must have known that
that blow would be so much greater than
the one that came next.
At 16 I was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma
- a one in a million per year type of
cancer - one that had been misdiagnosed
for six years by that time.
I still remember that day so vividly -
falling on my knees like in those stereotypical
movies and crying out the ugliest cry
I had ever heard coming from my mouth.
The type that comes with devastation and
mourning of a life that hadn't been lived yet.
There was guilt - had I done something
to cause it? Had I angered God in some way?
Anger - why was our family hit again
with yet another tragedy, and why had they
not caught it earlier? Why did everyone
else have these family sitcom lives, and I
was living a life filled with valleys?
Gratitude - that it was me, so another
loved one didn't have to endure this.
Sorrow - for the life I thought I would
lose, and the dreams I'd never get to live out.
I don't know if anything else brings you
to faith and God as quickly as thinking
life is over.
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Elephants and Tea - March 2022

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