People often ask me how I survived everything I went through.
multiple sclerosis.
lupus.
A heart attack.
Brain aneurysms.
Surgeries.
Recovery.
Years of uncertainty.
Years of pain.
Years of questions.
The truth is simple.
I didn't survive because I was strong.
I survived because God met me where I was.
Not where I pretended to be.
Not where I wished I was.
Not where others expected me to be.
He met me exactly where I was.
Broken.
Exhausted.
Afraid.
Confused.
And desperately in need of His grace.
For a long time, I thought faith meant having all the answers.
I thought faith meant never doubting.
Never questioning.
Never struggling.
Illness taught me otherwise.
Real faith is not certainty.
Real faith is trust.
Trusting God when life makes no sense.
Trusting Him when prayers seem unanswered.
Trusting Him when the future feels uncertain.
Trusting Him when your heart is breaking.
Some of the most powerful moments of my journey happened in places I never wanted to be.
Hospital rooms.
Waiting rooms.
Recovery rooms.
Places filled with fear and uncertainty.
Yet those were often the places where I felt God's presence most clearly.
I remember sitting alone before appointments, praying quietly.
Sometimes my prayers were long.
Sometimes they were only a few words.
"Lord, help me."
"Lord, give me strength."
"Lord, don't leave me."
Every single time, He answered.
Not always in the way I expected.
Not always with immediate healing.
Not always by removing the challenge.
But always with His presence.
Always with His peace.
Always with enough strength for the next step.
That became one of the greatest lessons of my journey.
God rarely showed me the entire path.
He simply gave me enough light for the next step.
And then the next.
And then the next.
Looking back, I can see His fingerprints everywhere.
In the doctors who treated me.
In the nurses who cared for me.
In the friends who prayed for me.
In the family members who refused to leave my side.
In the strangers who spoke words of encouragement at exactly the right moment.
At the time, many of those moments seemed small.
Today, I see them as evidence of God's faithfulness.
There were days when I couldn't see how anything good could come from my suffering.
Days when the pain felt pointless.
Days when I wondered if my life would ever make sense again.
But God was doing something I could not yet understand.
He was rebuilding me.
Not into the woman I had been.
Into the woman He created me to become.
A woman with deeper faith.
A woman with greater compassion.
A woman who could sit beside someone else's pain and genuinely understand.
A woman who could offer hope because she had lived through hopelessness.
The more I surrendered, the more I discovered that God's strength truly is made perfect in weakness.
My illnesses taught me I was not in control.
My faith taught me I never needed to be.
God was.
And He still is.
That realization brought freedom.
Freedom from trying to understand everything.
Freedom from trying to predict every outcome.
Freedom from carrying burdens that were never mine to carry alone.
Instead of asking, "Why is this happening?"
I slowly began asking a different question.
"What can God do through this?"
That question changed everything.
Because once I stopped focusing solely on my suffering, I began noticing my purpose.
I started seeing opportunities to encourage others.
To pray for others.
To share my story.
To offer hope to people facing battles of their own.
What once felt like meaningless pain was becoming part of a greater purpose.
God wasn't wasting my suffering.
He was using it.
The woman who once sat in a parking lot crying after her diagnosis could never have imagined what God would eventually do.
She couldn't see the purpose.
She couldn't see the ministry.
She couldn't see the lives that would be touched.
But God could.
And step by step, He was leading her there.
Looking back now, I understand something I didn't know then.
God never abandoned me in my suffering.
He walked through it with me.
Every diagnosis.
Every surgery.
Every sleepless night.
Every prayer.
Every tear.
Every victory.
He was there.
And because He was there, I am still here.
Not just surviving.
Growing.
Learning.
Becoming.
And for the first time in many years, I began to believe that my story wasn't only about what I had endured.
It was about what I could become.
The healing had begun.
And so had the purpose.