My Testimony

It's been a long time since I have posted on here and a lot has happened in my life since my last post.  Looking back on the year, my life has been a whirlwind of twists and turns and obstacles that I could never have predicted.  I just moved to Cleveland, Tennessee to attend Lee University and the past couple of days I have heard a lot of stories of how people got to where they are now.  Whether it is that they have always dreamed of coming to Lee or they got recruited to play sports or that they had never even heard of it about 6 months ago and now they are here.  So all of this talk of where we are from and why we are at Lee has encouraged me to tell my story.

One year ago, I was preparing to move to New York City and go to a musical theatre conservatory in the heart of Manhattan.  I was excited and nervous and pretty much feeling every emotion possible.  I was going to do the thing I love but moving to NYC by yourself at 18 is a big change from my comfortable life I had in Alabama.  When I finally moved in in October 2013, I was so excited for this brand new start.  I was also very very very scared and homesick.  The only thing I had to cling onto was my faith.  I grew so much closer to God during my time in New York.  In every way possible I grew closer to him.  What was so challenging is that in the musical theatre world, it is about selling yourself.  Promoting your talents.  Showing everyone what YOU can do.  The attitude in every audition is "it's about me.  I have to do my best.  I have to be better than everyone else here if I want to get the job."  Now I'm not saying that everyone does this in a negative aspect at all.  As a matter of fact, most people I met there were lovely and great and so nice!  And the short couple of months I was there, were some of the best months of my life so far!  I learned so much and had so much fun and hey, I got to live in one of the best cities in the world!  But I just felt like there was something missing in all of this.  Like I wasn't seeing the big picture.  So, when I came home for Christmas break, I had 2 weeks and I was spending time with friends and family just like every other college student does when they come home during breaks.  One week before I was flying back to NYC,  I was at a movie (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty to be exact) with some of my friends and I started to feel an ache in my chest and stomach.  I just thought it was heart burn.  I woke up in the middle of the night still with heart burn so I took a TUMS and tried to go back to sleep because usually if I have heartburn, TUMS take care of it immediately and I'm good to go.  But it didn't work and it kept me up all night.  I didn't really think anything of it so the next morning I went on with my day.  I noticed that the ache in my stomach was worse and I still had heartburn but I had a dentist appointment I had to go to and those things are hard to reschedule especially when you live 1000 miles away!  When I got home later in the morning, it wasn't going away and I just laid around all day thinking it was just something I ate.  But then the nausea and vomiting started.  Over the next couple of days everything just got worse and we made 1 trip to the doctor and 3 trips to the ER.  All having no idea what was wrong with me.  The ER just kept telling me I had a UTI and that I was just overreacting.  After the 2nd ER visit, they told me I was fine to fly back the next morning.  Ha.  Yeah right.  I woke up the next day feeling even worse and made a great decision not to get on the plane and a couple of hours later I got even more symptoms of muscle spasms and my whole body was hurting at about a 9 1/2 out of 10.  So we went back to the ER at a different hospital.  They admitted me for low sodium but still had no idea what was wrong.  After about a week of pretty much every test and x-ray the hospital offers and a surgeon offering to cut into my stomach and just poke around (sounds great right?!) I finally got a diagnosis.  As the doctor and his med school student walked into the room with a paper, I knew I was finally going to get an answer.  He said that I have a rare blood disease called Acute Intermittent Porphyria.  He briefly explained that it cause severe acute attacks or flare ups.  He also included that in the 20 years he has been working, I am the 2nd person he has diagnosed with this.  Most of the time when you hear about someone getting a serious diagnosis, it is sad.  But I was completely opposite.  I was so happy to know what was wrong!  Me and my family actually had pizza delivered to the hospital room to celebrate haha.  When I got home, the pain had not gone away.  It was still just as  bad as it was in the hospital but I was stable so they let me go home.   For about 3 weeks I was constantly in doctor's offices and when I wasn't I was at home throwing up or trying to sleep but not actually sleeping.  I grew very depressed (which is a symptom of the disease, so that didn't help).  I remember my mom coming home to me just laying on the living room floor in the same spot I had been in 4 hours before when she left home and I just sat up and told her I was too sad to move.  I didn't know what to do.  I felt too bad to go out of the house.  I couldn't keep down any good food or any food at all for that matter.  My thoughts during this time were, "I am supposed to be in New York City right now singing, dancing, and acting and doing the things I love in my favorite city in the world.  This isn't supposed to happen.  I didn't plan for things to happen this way."  Then, it hit me.  God>Molly.  I can't do this alone.  Why am I making this about me when this isn't about me at all?  I have to use this to glorify God!  This is his plan for my life and it is so much better than anything I had planned, even if it didn't feel like it at the time.  I immediately thought of the song "Just As I Am" with the tag that Travis Cottrell sings.

The chorus says:
"I come broken to be mended
I come wounded to be healed
I come desperate to be rescued
I come empty to be filledI come guilty to be pardoned By the blood of Christ the LambAnd I'm welcomed with open armsPraise God, just as I am"

I also reflected on what I had been doing the past 6 months.  Yes, I grew closer to God in my experiences I had at school.  But everything I was doing there, every time I used the talents and skills that God blessed me with, I gave myself the glory and credit for it.  Never once did I think to give God the glory for the things that he gave to me.  Also, I realized that if I am going to continue singing, I want to impact more people.  I'm thinking hundreds, thousands, millions, hearing the gospel and worshiping God.  Not worshiping the person on stage.  But worshiping our Father in heaven.  So in the next few weeks, I gradually saw doors opening in my life to go into Christian music.  I got accepted to Lee University's music program and really felt the presence of the Lord there.  Since then, I have had multiple times where I have gotten sick, but God is so much stronger than me and I have learned to cling to him and he will fight my battles and always be at my side, holding my hand every step of the way.  I am just starting my journey here at Lee but it is already a great one and there are so many people on fire for God.  I hope to use any and everything I do to glory God while I am here and after I graduate.  

I would just like to say thank you for all the prayers and also thank you if you actually read this whole post haha!  

'Til next time!

Molly