A note from the editor:
Planning a life is exciting. Planning a life is stressful. Planning a life can be disappointing because things never go according to plan. It's frustrating when circumstances beyond our control, such as illness, interfere with the "perfect life" we have planned for ourselves.
While reflecting on the unexpected trials she had faced, LDS speaker Tiffany Webster said: "With Christ we are enough. We are powerful. We are more. My life of striving for perfection wasn’t about what Christ could make me; it was about what I thought I needed to be in order to be enough. It was about glorying in being busy while worshipping checklists. There was no room for error, no room for flaw, not enough time, not enough talent, and never any grace. When God let my life crumble, it wasn’t because He didn’t love me. He let my life crumble because He wanted me back. He wanted to teach me. He wanted to change me. Fifteen years ago I made a list of what I thought my life would look like. Fifteen years later, my life looks nothing like that list. I’m still broken. I still have health challenges. And some days my life feels like a real mess. But now, instead of chasing perfection, I’m chasing Jesus. And I’ve never been happier."
story 5 of many.
My twenties and thirties were supposed to be a wonderful time full of rapid progress towards my life goals. In high school, I had been able to memorize scriptures and principles in a minute or two that took everyone else days of practice. This amazing memorization ability had also set me up quite nicely education-wise; I graduated number two in my class in a school of over 3,000 students and received numerous scholarship offers from all manner of schools. My heart had always been set on BYU and I had no problem getting a scholarship from them too.
Physical talent was no problem for me either, as I came from a family full of athletes and had been a double letterman both cross country and volleyball, even receiving some volleyball scholarship offers to lower-division colleges. I was that guy who could play pretty much any pick-up sport and instantly be at least decent at it. In pickup games of everything from volleyball to soccer to ultimate, I dominated. I worked hard and kept myself in excellent physical shape but also had a lot of natural talent.
I felt like everything was going according to plan for a perfect life. I worked hard, played hard, and felt like I had a good grasp of gospel principles and was being blessed for doing things the right way. Things weren't without challenge, of course. I went into BYU as a microbiology major and made the mistake of jumping immediately into upper-level courses. I soon discovered that I loved biology and microbiology, even if I was taking classes that were a bit of a stretch for an 18 year-old. Unfortunately, I also learned that I passionately hated college chemistry. As I realized just how much it was intertwined with my career goal of being a forensic microbiologist, I became apathetic and totally slacked off my second semester. I embarked on my mission on academic warning, but this seemed like a small bump in the road, since I was sure I'd easily find something I loved after I got back from my mission and be good at it.
My mission was a great experience, and I felt like things were going in the right direction. Of course missions are difficult, but I was enthusiastic the whole time and knew that I was in the right place. European missions are known for being fairly difficult as far as rejection rates are concerned, but even on my worst days I never once questioned or regretted being out there on my mission. I loved Germany, and I loved the language. After three months, I was having Germans insist on speaking to me instead of my companion who was finishing his mission soon because my German was much better than his. My mission was certainly a trial, but it was an expected trial, and one that I dealt with enthusiastically. I poured out my heart and soul to the Lord many times and grew immensely in both my testimony and in maturity. I also became far more empathetic and far less rigid in my political views, finishing my mission as a much better person and much better Mormon with the promised blessings that had come from serving a mission.
I returned to BYU as a 21 year-old full of enthusiasm for the future. I did well in my classes, and discovered what career I wanted to pursue and was passionate about. While taking the German course that returned missionaries at BYU usually take, my professor opened my eyes to how much the study of language and history could change your worldview and make you a better person. He's one of the best teachers I've ever had, and I realized that I wanted to have that same effect on the lives of others. So I became a German teaching major with a coaching minor. And for the first little while, things went pretty darn well. Some of the courses challenged me, but I again had excellent grades.
The second year after my mission started well too. I had amazing professors, quickly started dating a wonderful girl, and was thriving in my extracurricular activities as well. And then, something changed. I woke up one day with extreme dizziness, loss of balance, cognitive impairment, and memory difficulties. I figured I had just caught the flu or something, but it was still there after a week and was getting worse. I started falling over just walking in the hallway of my apartment. I tried pushing myself and made it up to campus several times, but it was worthless, as I had severe short term memory loss and collapsed more than once in the middle of a class. I saw the campus doctors, and they weren't entirely sure what was happening, but gave me some stuff to help with the dizziness and memory and cognitive issues. It wasn't perfect, but it did allow me to go back to classes more regularly. Unfortunately, that didn't last, and I to take a medical withdrawal from my classes in order not to fail them. My girlfriend broke up with me too, as it's not much fun to have a significant other who randomly turns into a vegetable and can only stare at the wall blankly for a couple hours each day.
My memory issues also started causing problems in my eating, as I couldn't remember what or when I had eaten, and preparing anything beyond simply throwing stuff in the microwave became virtually impossible. When I went home for Christmas, my mom screamed when I walked in the door. I hadn’t realized that I had become a walking skeleton. I was 6'2 and gone down from 190 pounds to 135 pounds in just a couple months.
While at home, my parents pushed me around to all sorts of doctors and specialists. Most were stumped, but one found that I had a severe vitamin D deficiency, which explained a lot of the issues. It was a mystery as to how such a severe deficiency happened in the first place, as my athletic nature meant I had often been out in the sun, the great giver of vitamin D. I started taking Vitamin D mega pills and quickly began to improve. I returned to BYU for winter semester, and even though I wasn't quite as good physically or cognitively as I had previously been, I was at a functional level.
I viewed this as a bit of an unorthodox trial, but not an extreme one, and I felt my faith grow through this minor setback. For most of the rest of the year, I did fairly well, although I did have a couple scares that put me into the emergency room. They weren't real serious though, and I was sure everything would go back to normal soon enough.
Around the time of Thanksgiving though, things changed drastically. I started having incredibly violent involuntary full-body muscular spasms. Basically, it looked like I was having an epileptic seizure, except I was conscious. These attacks got more and more violent. On one occasion, it made the muscles in my neck seize up so hard that they cut off my airway during the middle of the night. In a panic, I tried to slam my neck and chest against nearby objects to force the muscles to release. As my vision started going black, I was very distraught that I was evidently about to die. My thoughts were “Why, Heavenly Father? Help, this isn't right.” With only a small portion of my vision remaining, my muscles finally released, and I lay there in the dark gasping for air. I felt the comforting power of the Holy Ghost and Heavenly Father's power then, but it wasn't real reassuring--just present. I was frustrated and angry and hurt. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had just suffered quite a severe trauma. It sounds obvious now--nearly dying in the middle of the night because your own body betrayed you--but I didn't realize that at the time, so I just thought that I needed to be more valiant in facing my trials.
I headed back up to BYU a bit shaken after Christmas break with a regimen of liquid B12 injections, but sure that things were on the right path now. I felt these trials had strengthened my relationship with my Heavenly Father, although I was still dealing with untreated trauma. Over the next few years, my health would go in a cycle of decent to terrible and back again. This meant that I occasionally had to cut my class load, so college began to drag. I still wasn't that worried, as I thought that it just meant that my life goals and all the things in my Patriarchal Blessing would just take a few years longer to occur, that's it.
During this time, I tried my best to move forward with both my academic plans and personal life. I got close to a few girls and went on several dates with some of them, but each time they would eventually see a downturn in my health and get scared off, which is understandable. But I was frustrated with Heavenly Father. I was doing all the things that I was supposed to, and factors beyond my control kept keeping me from the blessings and life goals I thought were mine.
In the fall of 2013, everything came crashing down. One day, as I came back into my apartment from doing laundry, everything started violently spinning and my body felt like it was on fire while I doubled over on the couch in excruciating pain. Things worsened over the next days, weeks, and then months. I couldn't even get to the bathroom in my apartment without collapsing frequently. When Christmas Break rolled around that year, my parents decided to have me move home so that we could hopefully get things fixed up once and for all over the next couple months.
Doctors found a few unusual things, but nothing to explain what was happening overall. Being a mystery diagnosis wears on you, especially when it derails your life for an extended period of time like it had to mine. An uncle of mine who was a psychiatrist recommended that I start counseling to deal with all the frustration and pain. Before, I had just toughed it out and figured things would get better if I was simply faithful to God.
I started seeing a counselor from LDS family service. This was one of the best decisions I've ever made. In my appointments with her, I started to realize how much underlying suffering and anger I was carrying and how that was affecting my relationship with Heavenly Father. I knew the Gospel was true, and no outside circumstances could change that. But this pain did affect how I acted on that testimony. My prayers were often full of anger and resentment. It became less “Thy will be done” and a lot more “Heavenly Father, STOP IT AND MAKE IT RIGHT.” I came out of these counseling sessions a year later in a much better place emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
Physically things were unfortunately not getting better. In fact, I was still deteriorating. I trusted Heavenly Father, but I was so confused. This wasn't the Plan of Happiness that I had understood. I had done the right things, but here I was in a perpetual state of uncertainty that had derailed my life. Eventually, I came to a state where I was able to have a greater degree of inner peace regardless of my physical circumstances and felt closer to God through this peace.
In the summer of 2017, neurologists at UCLA were finally able to figure out at least a piece of the puzzle: I had a rare combination of some unorthodox neurological issues that had been playing off of each other for years. I started being treated for those issues, and started to see some improvement. I've been slowly improving ever since, although my recovery is likely going to be a very long and slow one, as my level of neurological deterioration was quite advanced. But having hope for the first time in years has made an enormous difference in my daily life. I don't see my terrible physical days as an insurmountable obstacle, just as a bump in the road on my path to recovery. It may be a few years before I can go back to school or hold a job, but that future is now a possibility.
I'm still not physically able to live on my own, so when my parents retired and moved to Utah, I came with them. My new ward here has been very welcoming and accommodating. I wasn't able to physically go to church for a large portion of the time after I moved back home, so it's become much more meaningful to me when I make it. Most members are pretty understanding about how my unexpected life course can make me feel out of place, although a few do still think that I should be a perfect Mormon husband with a stable career supporting his family right now regardless of what has happened and is happening in my life. Those people used to discourage me, but I've come to realize that they are very much the exception, not the rule. Overall, people do their best to make me know that I belong.
This has been a spiritual journey in a physical body. I can't say that it's all been for the better, as there are certainly areas of my life where I'm weaker than before. But I have learned many things that I never would have learned before, especially as far as patience, inner peace, and empathy are concerned. I'm still learning and growing, and there's still plenty of pain and frustration that I face regularly. But it doesn't feel like this is all there is any more. I do trust Heavenly Father even more now, and have come to understand that just because things don't occur on what seems like a reasonable timeline to us, it doesn't mean that Heavenly Father has broken his promises to us or forsaken us. He’s waiting to show me more.
Comments
Post a Comment