#Letsgetreal

In a world of eerily flawless social media lives, deceiving hashtags, and selfies always taken at the perfect angle, I want to get real with you. This year, my life has been a #hotmess, and 2018 has completely #kickedmybutt. Friends, this blog is a dose of realness for you – and hopefully also a dose of faith amidst the mess. (That means you've got to read to the end if you want to hear the good part.)

 

 

To put things lightly, my year hasn't gone quite as expected. I made the transition out of 2017 by blowing the transmission in my car and entered 2018 by being poisoned, finding out I had skin cancer, and breaking up with my boyfriend of two years. It's crazy how some seasons of life seem to go like this. They play out like a bad movie, and you just keep wondering if the happy ending is ever going to come.

Let's start at month one: January. I was ecstatic to have an opportunity to travel to Uganda, my former home of several years, to visit the village where I used to reside. Since moving back to the U.S. in 2015, I've visited often and always look forward to my reunions with Ugandan friends and family. On January 7^th of this year, I arrived in Amoroto village and entered my little mud hut – the Ugandan home I proudly own. After three days of exhausting travel, I was ready to unpack, get settled, and finally sleep. However, while being inside the hut for maybe five or ten minutes, I started to feel a horrible itching sensation inside my ears. The itching slowly started to spread, and I realized it was moving to my face and neck, then my stomach and torso, then everywhere.

I ran to my friend Connie's hut (who had travelled with me) and banged on her door. Groggily, she climbed down from her bunk bed and opened her door, half-awake.

"Connie, look at me! What is happening???" By this time, I was covered in hives and had massive welts under my arms.

Thankfully, Connie is a nurse and had come to Uganda equipped with Benadryl. She gave me a triple dose and said we should see if taking an antihistamine would calm this freaky allergic reaction. A few minutes passed, and she asked if I felt any relief. The itching was the worst I'd ever experienced, and I felt like it was becoming harder and harder to breathe.

"I'm not feeling better," I stated worriedly. "I feel like I can't breathe. I feel like – like my lungs are closing."

Connie said we needed to get to a hospital immediately, and we woke up our Ugandan friend Robert to explain the urgency of the situation. He couldn't find the keys to his car, so he quickly hotwired it – yes, you read that right – and we sped off to the hospital.

During the car ride, Robert explained that a missionary had stayed in my home and filled it with poison to kill rats. He'd returned to his home country a month prior and had sealed up my hut. The tin roof and intense African sun created a sauna-like environment inside my house, and I'd probably ingested major rat poison fumes. I was trying not to panic, because it was already so hard to breathe. I knew if I panicked or even cried, it would get even harder. Robert was solemn, focused on getting us to the hospital as quickly as possible. Connie remained calm, quietly assuring me we would make it before it was too late.

At one point, the car broke down, and I thought that moment might be the difference between life and death for me. I remember turning to Connie and asking her, "Am I going to die tonight?"

"No," she replied calmly. "We're going to make it. You're going to be fine." (She later admitted that she was freaking out inside and was looking for a pen in the car so that she could conduct an emergency tracheotomy whenever I stopped breathing. Fortunately, she was able to stay outwardly calm, which helped me also stay calm when I needed it most.)

Thankfully, Ugandans can fix anything, and the car was soon running again. #africansuperpowers Robert continued speeding on until we pulled into the parking lot of Bethesda Hospital. My lungs hadn't closed yet. We. Made. It.

Long story short, after having steroids shot straight into my veins, puking out some poison, and breathing through a nebulizer, my lungs fully opened up again. Air had never felt so good.

Three weeks later, I flew back to California and decided to get checked by an American doctor because I was still having trouble taking in deep breaths. I was given a lung function test where I blew into a little machine that looked like a kazoo. If you have a strong lung capacity, you can blow up to the 800 mark on the lung kazoo (whatever the heck that means), but to pass, you only need to score 400. I scored 250. Pulmonary tests and five months of lung detox treatments soon followed.

Now we enter month two: February. While getting my lungs checked, my primary doctor expressed concern about a tiny red mark on my face that looked like a patch of dry skin. She told me I needed to go to a dermatologist immediately. The soonest appointment was on Valentine's Day, which didn't seem to matter much until halfway through the appointment when I realized what was happening. The doctor told me she needed to take a biopsy but was already certain the mark was skin cancer. She cut off a chunk of skin and put a big, cumbersome bandage across my cheek. Before sending me off with my ugly face bandage to celebrate Valentine's Day with my boyfriend, she sat me down for a moment. She put her hand on my arm and looked at me with so much sympathy that I suddenly felt scared. "Normally I wait until later in the process to have this talk," she began. She paused and gave me a worried smile. "But you're young and your skin is still pretty, so I want to just be honest with you now. The mark on your face looks small, but there's probably a lot more going on under the skin. Even though the cancer itself isn't very serious, the surgery is going to leave a scar." She paused. "A big scar. I'll refer you to a plastic surgeon, but honestly, it won't matter. It's going to be big. I'm so sorry."

"How big do you mean?" I asked.

She spread out her index finger to her thumb, about four inches long. "Pretty big."

A four-inch scar on a leg is noticeable. A four-inch scar on a face is all you notice.

This brings me to month three: March. I met with Orange County's cockiest plastic surgeon a few weeks later, who greeted me with a gruff, "Okay, where is it?"

I sheepishly pointed to my cheek as he had his assistant snap pictures of my face before even asking my name. He looked at my skin in horror and immediately declared, "That is gonna leave a scar! I'll tell you right now. I'm a plastic surgeon, and I can't make that look small. That is really going to leave a mark! That is going to SCAAAAAR!!!"

His dramatic declaration made me feel like I'd probably look like a pirate after my surgery. #ahoymatey But what could I do? If a Newport Beach plastic surgeon couldn't help me, no one could. I came to grips with the fact that I had two choices. I could let cancer keep growing inside my face. Or I could remove cancer and look ugly. I figured I better go with option two.

Now comes month four: April. On April 24^th, I spent seven hours at Hoag Hospital and had a successful skin procedure. I left bandaged up, exhausted, and in terrible pain – but also thankful it was just "baby cancer" that could be removed in one sitting. A week later, the stitches were taken out. I was expecting the worst after all the pre-surgery talk. The mark wasn't nearly as big as the doctor had originally anticipated. However, my skin was awkwardly sewn up like a triangle and looked bizarre in the middle of my face. I stared in the mirror at the doctor's office, confused as to why they'd chosen to make my cheek look like a geometry lesson. #dangisosceles  My face didn't look like my face anymore. I walked to my car, closed the door, and cried.

But the pinnacle of my pain really struck in month five: May. A week after getting my stitches out, I faced the biggest loss of the year – something far more painful than having my lungs close or face cut open. I lost the man I thought I was going to marry. I want to be careful with my words here, because I don't want to dishonor him in any way. I won't mention his name; I'll simply say we'd been together for two years, and deciding to split wasn't easy for either of us. We loved each other and talked about possibly getting married this year; but unfortunately, I began to realize his romantic statements were more abstract dreams than concrete decisions. When it came to actual steps forward, nothing seemed to be moving. The thought of marrying me terrified him, and I could see that committing to forever with me was a burden he could not carry. Again, this is not meant as a criticism to him (or me); there was simply something in the dynamic between us that made things hard when they should have been easy and natural. Regardless, no one wants to feel like a weight on the shoulders of someone you love, and my heart ached at this reality. I realized I was losing my goofy, joyful self because I felt hurt and frustrated all the time. With no other choice, I said goodbye.

Jus three days after the breakup, I went back to Hoag Hospital for a second procedure. In the midst of heartbreak, it only seemed fitting that this procedure was torture. In order to prevent any future skin cancer on my face, I was zapped with a blue light that burned away any precancerous cells. I sat in a pitch-black room while a strange machine burned my face for sixteen minutes and forty seconds of agony. I literally felt like I was inside a flame. All I could think about was how horrible it must be for people who burn to death. I wanted to scream, but pride kept me quiet.

I spent the next 48 hours in darkness. I was told any contact with light – not just the sun, any light source at all – could burn me and permanently damage my skin. I wasn't even supposed to use a phone because the light on a screen could burn me. So I spent two full days with no light, a fresh scar on my face, a layer of skin missing, and a broken heart with nothing to distract me - no TV, no laptop, no phone, no being outside. All I could do was sit and wait and face the reality that things were broken. My lungs were broken; my face was broken; my heart was broken.

Then comes month six: June. Two weeks later, I hopped on a plane to be a bridesmaid in a friend's wedding in Ohio. You want to know the best cure for a breakup? Be in someone else's wedding. #justkidding Though happy to celebrate my dear friend, it felt strange to be travelling without the companion I thought would have been by my side for the wedding. Additionally, the cost of flights, a dress, hotel, rental car, etc. kept adding up, and I started to stress about finances. How ironic that I'd thought I'd be spending my money on a honeymoon this year. Instead, all my extra spending money has gone towards medical bills and other peoples' weddings.

If I stop here, you'll probably feel sorry for me.  Please don't.  Fortunately, this is not the end of the story. And I don't feel sorry for myself. You see, in the midst of the worst circumstances, there's always hope. There's always light; there's always joy; there's always God's goodness. Let's look back on my year as I fill in some holes that make the story a bit different:

Blowing my transmission right before I left for Uganda seemed like a financial nightmare – that is, until my pastor (who's also my boss) called me and said it was taken care of. I was very confused because I hadn't told him what happened. Before I'd let him know about my car, someone else from my church had already told him, and he'd arranged for a friend to fix my transmission while I was in Africa. I didn't pay a single penny for my transmission and came home to a good-as-new car after my trip.

Having my lungs close was pretty freaky, but God reminded me that He's got me and that He's in the details. My friend Connie doesn't normally doesn't bring Benadryl with her when she travels, only other basic medications. However, for some weird reason, before our January trip, she felt a strong prompting to bring it. I can't be sure, but I wonder if taking that medicine is what kept my lungs from completely closing on the way to the hospital. I wonder if that was God's strange way of protecting me.

Also, while resting and recovering in Uganda, I had an encounter with God so beautiful that it almost feels cheap to describe it in mere words.  I saw a vision of Jesus embracing me, and it was so real and powerful that I just wept in God's awesome presence. I could feel Him hugging me and comforting me; I've never experienced anything like it. I'm not sure if I would have had such an intense experience if things hadn't gotten quite so desperate.

When I got back to California, my friend Ashley (who's also a nurse), just-so-happened to be working a new job where she was learning a ton about natural detoxes. She told her boss about my lung situation, and he generously gave me five month's worth of nebulizer treatments that Ashley helped me administer at home. Normally, those treatments would require bi-weekly doctor's visits and thousands of dollars. I paid just ninety bucks, and my lungs are completely back to normal.

And that rude plastic surgeon who told me how huge my scar would be? Guess what, he's not the one who did my surgery. Right after my consultation with him, I bumped into Mona, an old client of mine, at the gym on a day that I normally wouldn't be there. Mona is a doctor and had heard about my health issues from one of my friends. She pushed me to fight for a Mohs surgeon, a doctor who is trained in a specialized cancer removal technique that leaves the smallest scarring possible. Mona helped connect me to the doctor who ended up performing my surgery and texted me throughout the entire process, checking in on me and answering questions. The doctor I ended up with was voted "Most Compassionate Doctor in Orange County."

After my surgery, a girl at my church who doesn't even know me very well me gave me an expensive microderm abrasion roller made by a high-end skin care company. She said she wanted to give it to me for free because it would make a drastic difference in the appearance of the scar. And as for the weird triangle? It's actually starting to fade and blends in with my natural smile lines because of the odd way it's shaped. A few weeks ago, a stranger complimented me on the cute dimple on my cheek. #butitsaweirdscar #geometryforthewin

Oh, and on the day of my blue-light treatment, I wasn't alone. My friend Amy sat with me at Hoag Hospital for six hours while I waited to be treated, and she patiently and joyfully chatted with me despite me being anxious and sad about my breakup. She even sent me home with glow sticks and a fidget spinner to entertain me while I had to be in the dark.

I don't think it's a mere coincidence that one of my girlfriends, who lives three blocks from my apartment, went through an almost identical breakup to mine a couple of years ago. She's coached me through the whole process and has been an incredible adventure buddy. This summer, we've been pursuing homeless ministry together, a missions trip to Mexico, and lots of hiking/beaching/exploring. It's been an amazing summer.

And this brings us to month seven: July. Things have started to turn around. After spending my extra money on medical bills and multiple weddings, I gave up on the idea that I would ever be able to take a real vacation. Clearly, there would be no honeymoon for me this year, but I still desperately wanted to get away. My two bosses were aware of what a hard year it'd been and asked me what I needed to feel refreshed. I explained that my ex-boyfriend had given me boat passes to Catalina Island and I still wanted to go even though I couldn't go with him. One of my bosses connected me to a couple who owns a house on Catalina Island who let me and two girlfriends stay there for free. I was also unexpectedly given $300 to spend on whatever I wanted while in Catalina. Our girls island getaway was more than I dreamed. It was the perfect balance of rest and adventure. We drove a golf cart around the island, took a speedboat ride to a beautiful bay, went snorkeling, and climbed to the top of a mountain. We also sunbathed, rested, worshipped, read, and ate tons of good food.

It's funny that Catalina marked this turning point, because the island had become symbolic for me months prior. In probably March or April, I was overwhelmed by how many things were going downhill and felt lost in confusion. I decided to go to the beach, my favorite place to get away and clear my head. As I walked along the ocean, I looked out into the distance. Often, you can see Catalina Island pretty clearly from the Orange County coastline, but some days are too foggy to see much of anything. As I saw a blurry glimpse of the island in the distance, I heard God's voice whisper, "Not all hope is lost."

I wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but I heard it again and again throughout my walk along the sand. I remembered that even though I could barely make out Catalina in the distance and even though I'd never been there, I was still certain that it was there. I had complete faith the island existed even on the days when it was too foggy to see it at all. I remembered that God's promises were much the same. Sometimes they seemed so far away; sometimes I couldn't see them at all. But whether I could see them or not, they were as real as Catalina, which stood out in the sea no matter what the weather looked like from my perspective on the shore. And I heard the voice whisper into my heart again, "Not all hope is lost."

All these months later, it was really special to finally make it out to the island. One night while sitting atop the house's deck in Catalina, looking down at the harbor, I remembered my walk on the beach back in March or April. I remembered how far away and blurry Catalina had looked that day. And I realized – I was here. The once blurry view was now a tangible experience. I had swum in Catalina's waves, eaten fish from its waters, touched its sand. The promise was no longer in the distance. I was inside of it.

While in Catalina, I started to dream about what I want my life to be. I realized that when I die, I don't want people to say that I was great or my life was wonderful.  Instead, I just want people to say, "Her life was beautiful." Messy, wild, unpredictable - but beautiful. I want them to see Jesus in my life; I want them to see His beauty. I want them to see how He's made broken cars, broken lungs, broken faces, and broken hearts into something incredibly beautiful.

Sometimes I see other people and wonder why they look like perfectly carved pieces of glass – completely flawless and unblemished. But in the end, I prefer to be more like a mosaic – fragments that have been shattered and broken but pieced back together into a captivating piece of art.

The end product doesn't mean the shattering process isn't painful. To be honest, I still have "off" health days and feel discouraged when I think about how much physical trauma my body's been through this year. I still have days when I miss my ex-boyfriend or grieve our dreams together that will no longer come to pass. I still have days when I feel sad that I never got to say goodbye to his family. I still get frustrated when I think about how much money I've lost on medical bills. BUT I can also say that I genuinely feel grateful and full of hope. I've learned so much during this season and have felt extremely loved by God and by my amazing friends. I believe the future is bright, and I'm excited for a better season ahead.

Wherever you are in your life's journey, I want to remind you that the mess is never the end of the story. There are times that try us, scar us, break us – but the end product is only that much more beautiful. Whether your life looks like month one or month seven, God is there with you. He loves you. He sees you. He won't necessarily spare you from pain; but He will reveal His love in the mess and make you into something beautiful. If I can make it, so can you. #wereallgonnamakeit