As 2020 is approaching, I reflect on this past year and look back on all the different memories and experiences that have been created. This year was definitely a year of starting a brand new chapter in my life, celebrating a mark year, and undergoing the most difficult trials.
I have to say that regardless of the good or bad, I am thankful for it all. Everything that has happened to me this year has opened my eyes to opportunity and has tested and grown my faith even more than the last year.
This year, I planned my own wedding, and executed everything I ever dreamed of, turned 30 (which was a blur with all the wedding planning), got married, traveled all over Italy, and made new friends and grew larger bonds with current friends. Just as the year was coming to a close, the most devastating thing happened to my family.
At first my mom had a terrible fall and broke her ankle. Then the next day, my sister was taken to the hospital and was diagnosed with brain/bone cancer. With a tumor the size of almost half the left side of her head, and hearing the word cancer was hard to comprehend. My family and I have definitely endured some hard time but it was my sister who has been enduring the most.
Despite the happy memories that were created this year, and the new adventures I begin to take in life, it's unfortunate how this year is closing with such difficulty. My faith has been tested and the trials that have recently occurred, continues to remind me of the Lord's goodness. Cancer is a terrible thing, matters involving the skull and brain is scary, and not knowing what may happen to your loved one brings fear to the surface.
When I heard the doctors tell my sister that her growth became malignant and was a rare form of cancer, the news felt like a joke and it was very unreal. As the first week past by, the reality of the result sank in and I kept thinking why am i not worried? Shouldn't I be worried? Why is it that I'm okay leaving the hospital and trying to do what's normal in life. After crying out to God many nights, meditating, and praying to God, I came to a point of realization that I am not worried because my faith was strong.
This isn't the first time a life threatening situations occurred in my family. We have faced death multiple times and it is God's goodness and miracles that turns an impossible situation to a possible one. In the past, I was full of fear when these times happened. I didn't understand whether things were truly God or if it was just coincidence. I saw my family praying to God but I saw it as a ceremony and didn't realize the relationship behind it all.
As you grow in continuous faith in God, you begin to realize that God is not of rules who controls us to make us hate life. The Lord designs things with purpose. What He asks for us to do or not do was created and designed to help make us get through life easier in this difficult world. God wants a relationship with Him. Just like we talk to our friends and family, or invest time in relationships, that is the relationship we should have with God. In the past couple of years, I've come from Christianity as a religion to Christianity as a relationship with God.
With the relationship I hold with God, enduring another tough situation felt peaceful because I knew clearly that God was in the midst of everything. God doesn't give us a situation that we cannot come out victorious in. Life isn't perfect, we have free will, and this is a fallen world. It's beautiful to know that in this shattered world, life's interruptions, becomes God's intervention. In saying this, it means that I could see that in this crazy, troubled world, the Lord uses our free will decisions or situations and turns it into something beautiful.
If you have reached this point in my blog, thank you for reading this part of my story. The reason it became a faith based story was because despite what my family is going through, I am full of Joy of not being afraid and witnessing God's miracles existing today. After multiple scans, tests, exams, and chemotherapy, the tumor still did not shrink. My sister had to undergo surgery with the chances of complications such as physical issues, not being able to speak clearly, stroke, etc.
My sister's initial assessment was an 18 hour surgery.Through God's coverage, my sister was in surgery for 10 hours, with no complications, and when she woke up from surgery she was singing and talking. The next day they tested her physical abilities and she was able to move and function as if nothing happened. I say goodbye to 2019 in a way of seeing my new adventure of marriage, letting go of the last month of the unknowns for my sister, and going into 2020 excited and thankful.
I have spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, and now New Year's Eve in the hospital instead of being able to celebrate normally on an outing or traveling. But in all retrospect, I am thankful to be celebrating these moments and holidays with my sister here, alive, and normal instead of celebrating these holidays outside of the hospital with her gone.
2020, we will be on the journey to recovery with my sister, exploring new adventures as a wife to my husband, and entering a new world of so many new opportunities I am excited to venture on.
To you all, have a Happy New Year, and I look forward to you joining me on this new road with The Project of Purpose & Life.
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