There have been multiple factors that have led me to the faith I have today. One of those being my diagnosis of type 1 diabetes.
At the time of my diagnosis, I was already questioning some things. I grew up in Alabama and my church was teaching me something that seemed completely different than those around me. After my parents got divorced, I was the only one to stay at our church for a while and then eventually when my mom moved, we began to try new churches all over Birmingham. There were a couple that lasted a while, but none that stuck.
There was a certain period of time that I began going to a popular church where a lot of my friends were going. It was the cool church. I liked the Sunday school teacher and liked being able to see my friends a=on the weekend and felt like I fit in.
One day, our Sunday school teacher was telling us about a mountain. And heaven was at the top. There were a bunch of different entrances at the bottom, all kinds of religions, but only one led to the top: Christianity. So I asked her what about the people who didn’t know about that entrance? What about the people who grew up only knowing of a couple of entrances that didn’t lead to the top? Would they not be able to go to heaven? And she said they wouldn’t.. they would be punished for their upbringing and exposures is how I took it. Something they couldn’t help.
I didn’t go back to that church. I wasn’t even able to drive yet, but I knew that wasn’t the God I believed in.. if I believed in one.
I saw this Sunday school teacher a few weeks after my diagnosis when I was on my way to school. I had stopped at Starbucks on my way to school and she asked how I was doing. I was honest in my response that I wasn’t doing well and told her that I had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and it was a big adjustment.
You know what she told me?
That if I prayed hard enough, God would cure me of my diabetes.
I had just been told that there wasn’t a cure. That hopefully there would be one day, but there was nothing I could do. My new ride or die. And this lady just told me it was all reliant on prayer? Was I not a good enough Christian to prevent it? If I prayed and wasn’t cured, was I a bad Christian then?
I stopped believing for a while. It was as if my Sunday school teacher thought I hadn’t already thought all day in the hospital about why I was being punished. What had I done wrong, was I a bad kid, did I disappoint God, was I not good enough?
I was resentful. I became numb. I learned how to turn my emotions off, or so I thought. I craved to control my own pain. I craved rebellion. I craved sin.
I tried my whole life to be the glue for my family. The piece that was stable, hard working, good, that didn’t make things better, but was the one thing not making things worse. So to be told that I was being punished, after spending years killing myself to be as close to perfect as possible to not rock the boat, it broke me. I thought that if God was going to punish me for trying to be good, then I’d be bad. Of course, this is relative and looking back and even in the moment, I knew my rebellion didn’t run that deeply, but it was enough to feel like I was proving a point to God.
As I was going into my freshman year of college, I knew that the God I was told about all around me couldn’t be the only way. The God I was taught about when I was little had to exist somewhere. I searched and searched. I dated a southern, Christian guy my freshman year who led me to Him.
It was the Summer after my freshman year that I went to Lighthouse for the first time. Erin Moniz, the assistant chaplain at Berry came with us, and it was the most impactful experience of my life. After a traumatic day paired with the emotional drain of Lighthouse, I asked Erin in our room full of Berry students, how was I supposed to believe in God’s plan if I was sitting in a room full of kids with childhood cancer? That wasn’t a God I wanted to believe in.
Boy did she correct me. Her explanation, telling me those kids, those parents, didn’t cause childhood cancer. That cancer HAPPENED, but God did not cause it. That cancer is worldy disease that happens, evil does exist. But God was there to walk on that journey with that child, those parents, that family. It wasn’t God’s plan for that child to get cancer, but that didn’t mean that God wasn’t present the whole time.
God didn’t give me Type 1 Diabetes.
I wasn’t punished. It wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t that I didn’t try hard enough or that I wasn’t a good enough Christian. It just happened.
But God was with me the whole time. Even when I doubted Him.
Today, I pray to God about type 1 diabetes. Every day. I pray for every person and every family who questions Him and doubts Him because of it, that they feel His embrace, His arms wrapped around them in comfort and love and peace. That they know they are not punished and it doesn’t make sense, not at all, but I pray they fall into Christ instead of away from Him.
How blessed am I to be loved by a God who wept for me when I purposefully turned away from Him. I have received the utmost pure grace and pray every day that I use my days and my time glorifying Him, giving others the grace I was given. Loving others as He loved me when I turned away.
Thank you, God, for giving me type 1 diabetes, so I can be Your light spreading to others with this disease.
Friends, you are loved, you are more than enough, and you have a God who will has never and will never leave you.
HP