I think the title of this piece speaks for itself but I bet the worst day of my life isn't the day you are thinking of. It is not April 6, 2018, they day I was officially diagnosed with MS. It was actually a few weeks before that on March 20, 2018.
March 20 started out as a typical Tuesday for me. I woke up, got ready, and headed to work arriving somewhere between 7:00 and 7:30am. I was getting settled in and reading messages when one of my co-workers said to everyone sitting in our little section, "Have you guys heard the update on Emmy?" Emmy is the granddaughter of one of my co-workers, is roughly two years old, and has been battling cancer all her life. I replied, "No, I haven't heard the update." So, my co-worker started to fill me, and the rest of the group sitting near by, on how Emmy was doing. She said, Emmy has been on a ventilator the last few days and hasn't been doing well. They have decided to take her off the ventilator and just spend the remaining hours with her. *Gut Punch* I get my work day kicked off by finding out that this two year old girl is about to lose her battle with cancer. It hit me hard. I have a son who is roughly 6 months older then that little girl. My mind instantly was filled with thoughts of, Why is this little girl losing her battle to cancer? Why does this little girl even have cancer? That could have been Hudson! What if that was Hudson?!
After several minutes I told myself that I needed to focus on work and tried to move on. I was sitting there and it was a little hard for me to see. Things were a little blurry on the computer screen and just in general. I was talking to Lauren about it and told her I needed a new contact prescription in my left eye because it had been blurry for a week or so. I asked some co-workers where I should go and got a recommendation for a place in Ankeny. I looked online at their scheduling and noticed that they had an opening later that afternoon. Great! I will snag it and hopefully get a new prescription later that day. After I got my eye appointment scheduled the rest of the day before the eye appointment was fairly normal and straightforward.
I left work and headed to the eye doctor. I got there and had some pictures taken of my eyes, normal for a first time visit to an optometrist. I was sitting there after my pictures, waiting for the doc when I get a call from my mom. I answer and she tells me, "Did you hear the news about Kirk? He passed away this afternoon." *Gut Punch #2* Kirk was a high school friend of mine who had fallen really ill a week or so before this day. His organ were shutting down on him and he needed a liver transplant. I got a message earlier in the day from another friend of mine that said they found a donor for Kirk. If he was healthy enough they would do the transplant later that even, March 20, but Kirk was never healthy enough and ended up passing away less than 24 hours after finding out he had a donor. Right as my mom told me Kirk passed away I got called back to see the doctor. I couldn't really say anything to my mom other than that I had to go. I tried to not focus on my high school friend who was 26 when he passed away but it was hard! We did the normal eye exam and then the doctor finished up, takes a seat at her desk, types some things into her computer, and takes a big sigh. She turns to me and says, "you are experiencing something called optic neuritis. No contact prescription will help you resolve the blurry vision. It should go away on its own in a couple months." At this point in my MS journey I had done alot of research and new a lot of symptoms and signs of MS. I plan to write a blog to better explain my symptoms and what lead me to thinking I had MS prior to diagnosis but for now I will just say that I had done a lot of research and optic neuritis was not something I wanted to hear. So I asked her, "What can cause optic neuritis?" "Well there are a few different things that can cause this. The first thing that comes to mind for me is MS." *Gut punch #3* As mentioned above, I had suspected that I had MS for some time but no doctor had told me I had it. I actually had a doctor tell me in 2017 that the MRI of my brain showed no signs of MS and there was no reason to do further testing. This was the first time I felt like a doctor told me that I had MS. It was the final straw for me. It is what convinced me that I had MS. It was hard to take. Hard to stomach. What made it worse was that it wasn't the only hard thing to stomach that day.
To recap, I started off my day by being told that a co-workers granddaughter, who was my son's age, lost her battle with cancer. Shortly after I was told Kirk had a liver donor and could make a comeback with his health. Around 4:30 that afternoon I got a phone call that Kirk had passed away, then not 30 minutes after that I got my final confirmation, in my mind, that I had MS. That isn't an easy day for anyone but for someone who didn't run into many hard times in life, it was extremely hard. I didn't quite know how to handle everything. This was also around the time that I had my worst MS symptoms. I couldn't do things physically like I used to. I completed a triathlon in the summer of 2017, now March 2018 I can't even run a quarter of a mile without tripping over my feet and nearly falling. I would tell my wife I was going to the gym to workout and I would just drive to the gym, sit in the car, and cry. That was my way of dealing with things. I would cry, listen to 'I Can Only Imagine' (Great song) and cry out to God trying to figure out what is going on in my life. Wondering "Why me?" In the midst of all that God reminded me of a verse I had read growing up. Looking back on my life and how I ran into this verse all I can think of is how God orchestrated it for this exact moment.
It was John 16: 33. "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
That is all that I needed from Him to help guide me through that day and those times. Jesus tells us right there that life isn't easy, life will challenge you. Adam and Eve opened pandora's box a few thousand years ago and because of that we live in a broken world, with broken people, broken relationships, and broken bodies. My body was a good example of that. But as Jesus goes on to say, "Take heart! I have overcome the world." Jesus died on the cross for me, for you, for all of us to create a world that isn't broken, where bodies aren't broken, where relationships aren't broken. How incredible is that?!
What gets me through is hope. I have a broken body but it is temporary. This world is temporary and because of Jesus we have someone on our side that has overcome this world, this brokenness. We have a promise of a life of eternity which, and I am no scholar or anything this is just me pondering, I believe will be a life much like the world we live in today but there will be no brokenness. No broken relationships, no broken bodies, no broken people. Just people living life to the fullest worshiping God. How awesome is that!
I encourage you to take heart knowing that, though there will be troubles in this world, Jesus has overcome this world. It may be difficult to see what God is doing in your life, it took me a bit to start to understand and I am no where near fully understanding what God has for me, but I know it is for our Eternal Goodness. Take your story, take the troubles God has put in your life and make it a blessing to others. I promise you that you aren't the only one going through hard times. I will say it one more time, please Take Heart!