So today I want to talk to you a little bit about
kind of how, you know, ways
to find your worship even in the middle of
tragedy. That's really what this is about.
I've always had a very strong faith, but
it was never really a tested faith. My mom
tells a story that I was born on a Wednesday
night, and by Sunday morning I was back in
church, and loved
church, and would get so excited about the
dresses that I got to wear for church, and
who I got to see at church. And so I've always
really loved church, and so
whenever you, you know, if you were to ask me
where, you know, about my home
church, or my home from when I was a kid, I
would always think of my church first.
And it's sad because that church doesn't even
exist anymore. It's
Pittman Creek Church of Christ from Plano, and
there were so many
splits. There were two major splits within ten
years, and so the church ended up
collapsing, and now it's Highland Oaks Church
of Christ West, which is great. I'm glad the
building is still in use,
but it's just not there anymore. And I can just
remember walking,
you know, down the hallways and the children's
wing, and I remember
the high school wing where I had my youth group.
So I just
always remember the smell and the feel of that
place. So in the summer of 2008,
when my life was completely falling apart, and
when I needed to find myself,
I found myself sneaking into the building in
the middle
of the week, and walking through those hallways
again, and then going to the baptismal where I
had been baptized, and sticking
my hands in the water and just praying. I
didn't have anything else I could really think
of to say.
And my baptism story is kind of a funny story,
too, because I was baptized at the age of nine,
which is very young. And now that I have a
nine-year-old daughter, I cannot
imagine allowing my daughter to be baptized so
young. But my
parents, and I remember when I asked my
parents, my sister had just been born,
and I asked my parents to get baptized, and
they said, no, you know, you're too young. And
I kept asking, kept asking, and now you're too
young. So finally, my parents took me
to the preacher at our church and said, okay,
she wants
to get baptized. We don't know what to do with
her. And the preacher said, well, let me sit
down and do kind of
a little study with her and see how much she
knows, and you know, it'll be fine. Well, at
the end
of six weeks, he told my parents, there's
nothing we can do. She knows what she's getting
into. She knows what she wants. You need to let
her do it.
So on July 13, 1986, I was baptized. And
as closely as God has always been a part of my life,
there's also something else that has always
been a part of my life, as long as I can remember.
And that's cancer. My grandmother had breast cancer
when I was young. She had a mastectomy, a
unilateral mastectomy on the side
that was infected and did radiation and
chemotherapy. And she's still
alive today. She's fine. In my mother's family,
there are four children, or there were four children.
My aunt Margarita was the oldest, and she was
mentally handicapped.
She had a high fever at a very young age, and
so she was only ever about eight or nine
in her mind. Second was Amelia, who was the
wild child.
She was the one who got pregnant very young and
partied and, you know, kind of went crazy.
Then there was my mom, Beatrice. And my mom was
named after the Beatitudes,
because my grandmother was so frustrated with
this wild child that she had,
she thought, okay, I just want a child who
mimics the Beatitudes, you know, so
she named my mom that. And then there's my
uncle Ronnie, who's the baby of the family.
He's the fourth. And of those four children,
the oldest Margarita died
of breast cancer at 50. My aunt Amelia
died of breast, well, ovarian cancer at 57.
My mother is still alive. My uncle Ronnie,
in what can only be an irony, is his
wife, Beverly, actually died just Sunday of
breast cancer.
And so, you know, just kind of the ironies of
cancer in my family is
extreme. And one of the things that I always
remember is kind of the
children, you know, my cousins, who were left
without their mothers so young.
My aunt Amelia had two boys that were in their
twenties when she passed away.
And then my aunt Beverly had three kids, ages
17-24, when she
died on Sunday. So, you know, it's one of those
things that I watched my cousins
go through this. And so I always knew that
cancer would be a part of my life story.
I can't explain it, except to just say that I
always knew that was something that I was going
to be a part of.
And so after I had my daughter in 2002, I
started to talk to doctors about this history
that I had, and what did that mean,
and what could I do about it. And I remember
being told by one doctor in particular,
oh, just don't worry about it until you're 40.
Just keep having babies.
That's what he said. But I knew that
once my second aunt, Amelia, was diagnosed with
stage four
ovarian cancer in November of 2006, that it was something
I couldn't ignore anymore.
I, being a professor, being a
scholar, being somebody who does a lot of
reading, I knew just enough about what was
called the breast cancer gene to be dangerous.
To be able to go to my
doctor's office and say, what about this? What
about this? And so
in January of 2007, I went to,
I left the Just Have More Babies doctor, and I
found a doctor who
actually believed me and went to go see about
the breast cancer gene test. And it's actually
quite simple.
I mean, once you kind of get them to agree to
it, they just fill out a form
and send you to a special clinic where you go
and you have some counseling done
and then you give the blood. I mean, it's that
simple. And what they're looking for
essentially are two different mutations.
They're looking for the BRCA1 mutation and the BRCA2
mutation. The BRCA1 mutation is what's
considered the straight breast
cancer mutation. If you have that mutation in
your DNA, essentially
your body will feed cancer and not fight it.
And if you
have that gene, then you have a 94% chance of
breast cancer at some point in
your life. The second gene is the BRCA2 gene,
which was discovered
about 10 years after the BRCA1 gene. And with
the BRCA2 gene,
it is the breast slash ovarian slash everything else
gene. So, again, your body would be feeding the cancers.
If you have this gene, you have an 87% chance
of breast cancer in your life.
A 45% chance of ovarian cancer in your life.
And then highly elevated chances of skin,
colon in men, prostate, prostate also in men,
colon in women as well, skin cancer, stomach
cancer, brain cancer, I mean
all of it. And so, as you can probably imagine,
that's heavy knowledge to live with, to know
that you might
have this gene and have the possibility of
having this
lifelong elevated risks of cancer. And so,
many hospitals will not even test you until
you're 25.
And even then you have to go through a series
of counseling sessions to figure out if you're ready
for this knowledge. And so, I remember after
getting the paperwork
that allowed me to have the tests done, going
to talk to my mom about it.
Because there was no way for me to get tested
without her finding out
that she had it. Because obviously my father's
side of the family had very little cancer.
So, it had to be her side. And if I had it,
that meant she had it.
And if she had it, then she was going to have
to deal with that knowledge as well.
And so, it was really hard. At first she was
quite resistant. My whole family was quite
resistant to
the idea of even exploring this very particular
and very serious kind of situation. And so,
we talked about it for a few months. She didn't
want to do it. And all I can say, and if she
were here, she would tell you the same thing,
is that I was hell bent on doing this. I knew
that this was something I needed to do. I knew
it needed to be done. And even if I didn't have her
support, I was going to do it. But I needed her
support to get through this.
So, finally, I got her, because
she's just the mom she is, I got her to at
least come to the counseling session with me.
Just listen.
Right. And plus, the other thing is that they
really like to have as much
of your family history as possible when you do
this genetic counseling. And I didn't
know my family history real well. So, I needed
her, and all of her
extensive knowledge of family, to help sit down.
And so, we sat down with a genetic counselor.
And I'll never forget, because they sit down
with a blank sheet of paper and start
drawing out your family tree. And they went
back two generations to my
great-grandparents in my family tree. So, you
had my great-grandparents,
then on my grandfather's side there were
fourteen kids. So, all fourteen of the kids.
On my grandmother's side there were five girls,
and all the five girls.
And just watching them, you know, squares for men,
circles for women, a flash if that person had
had cancer,
and then what age they had been diagnosed, and
what kind of cancer it was.
And then blackened out if they had passed away.
And of that cancer.
And to see it all laid out in front of you is
harrowing. I mean, it's just one of those
things that you can't even imagine,
because it's all right there. And so, I
remember her kind of finishing up
the family history. And there were a couple of,
you know, extended cousins here and there
who had also had cancers of various kinds. And
so, we included them in the list.
And we ended up with two sheets of paper side
by side. With all the family
that had had cancer. And so, it wasn't just a
family tree,
it was a family tree of my cancers in my family.
And so,
once she was finished, she was pretty
convinced, the counselor was pretty convinced,
that yes,
this was genetic and not just random cancer.
And so, she did encourage us to get the test.
Well, the way that the test works
is that it's a $3,000 test for the very first
test that you take.
Because they have to map your entire genetic
code. And they like to have
people in the family who have had cancer,
because it creates kind of a special marker
in your DNA that allows them to know where the
mutations are.
Considering all of my family, everybody I've
mentioned to you, are all in South America.
Except for my mom and my uncle. It made it very
difficult for us to find somebody who had had
cancer who could be tested.
So, my mom agreed, after going through this
counseling session, agreed to have herself
tested first. So, she paid the $3,000
and had her entire genetic code mapped so that
I would know what kind of
mutation we were looking for. So, after about six
weeks, she got her results back. Yes, she had
the BRCA2 mutation. We expected
that. They were able to tell us exactly what
chromosome it was on. And so, then
my test started. And my test was only $300,
because once they know what they're
looking for, then they just go straight to that
gene, straight to that chromosome, look for
that, and
it's done. And so, about three weeks after
that, I got
my phone call that I also had the BRCA2 mutation.
And I remember not being surprised.
You know, just kind of making the assumption
that that's what it was.
And in the subsequent years, my younger sister
has had the test done, and she does not have
the gene,
which is a blessing for her. And then my
brother has had the test done.
He does have the gene. And for men, it's
different. There's some risk of breast cancer
and stuff, but it's
something for him to think about when he has
kids, you know, as it passes on in the gene line.
So, my first plan when I got the results was
just to follow
the extra precautions. MRIs twice a year,
mammograms twice a year, sonograms if they
found anything interesting.
And so, after a year and a half
of sonograms almost every month, and MRIs
all the time, and biopsies and just stuff
coming up
all the time, I decided that that wasn't going
to work for me anymore.
The idea of continuing to kind of stick to that
was too much. So, I made a
very tough decision. By this point, and I
haven't even
started this story, by this point I knew that
my marriage was collapsing. We had tried counseling.
It wasn't working. There was nothing else that
could be done. I had a five year old child
who I didn't want her life to be marked by,
well, mom had cancer when I was ten
and twelve and fourteen and sixteen and finally
died when I was eighteen, you know,
or whatever. I just didn't want her to have
that experience in her life. So,
I talked to the doctors about the possibility
of having a double mastectomy
so that I wouldn't have to worry about it
anymore. From there,
once that decision was made, it was quite easy.
Insurance covered it for me so I didn't have to
pay for it,
which was a huge blessing. Basically, you just
kind of wait for all of these
doctors to get together and figure out their
schedule so they can have a whole day to work
just on you. So, on May 7th, 2008,
I had my double mastectomy. They removed all
the tissue
as much as they could and then began the
process of reconstruction,
which took another two years after that and
four more surgeries after that.
But, it was interesting because,
you know, that was the time that I really found
my faith more than anything else and really was
able to learn to kind of
live by faith alone. So, two weeks before my surgeries,
I got the phone call that finally I knew my
marriage was over.
It fully ended my marriage. And so, by that
point, I had already filed for divorce, but we
were kind of working through it, kind of go to
counseling, figure it out. But once that phone call
came, I knew that it was done. So, I called the
lawyers and started the process of
getting the divorce. And so, on May 7th, 2008,
when I had my surgeries,
which I had at UT Southwestern Medical Center
in Dallas. It's a wonderful
place over there. During my surgeries,
they found precancerous lumps in my breast
and then also in my lymph nodes. And if you
know anything about how the lymphatic system
works, as soon as it gets
to your lymph nodes, that shoots it all over
your body. And so,
they told me that within six weeks or six
months, I would have had cancer.
At some point, it was precancerous. So, that
was, you know, that made my
decision much easier, obviously, after that.
So, that
summer was when I found myself, with my hands
in the water,
at the baptismal at Pitman Creek Church of
Christ. And the reason I was there
is because I got to the point in my faith where
I didn't know how to talk to
God anymore. I didn't know what to ask for. My prayers
were very incoherent. It was just, please,
please, please.
God, please, Taya, my daughter, Taya, Taya,
guide me. And that's about all I could say.
And I remember that I never, ever asked God why.
Because to me, that was kind of an inane question.
Why not me? Why am I so special that somebody
else would have to deal with this when I can
deal with it just as well? And so, I never asked
those why questions. Because to me, it just
was what it was. And I was going to move forward.
And I really,
anybody who was kind of around me at that time
can tell you that I really sheltered myself.
Also a great deal during that time. I really
shut down and wouldn't
allow people kind of past a certain wall when
it came to being friends.
And friends and colleagues tried to minister to
me, but I wasn't always willing.
I read self-help books. I read poetry. I read
novels. I went through the whole Twilight
series like four times during this period.
I, you know, I mean, this was how I got through. And
even the Bible was not very comforting during
this time. I could open it and
there were verses that would stick out to me
and there were verses that I would kind of
meditate on.
But as far as sitting down and reading, you
know, page after page of the Bible, I couldn't
do it.
One verse that I very much focused
on was Micah 6:8, which is, What does the Lord
require of you, but to live
justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with
your God? And I felt like
that was a really good kind of
example of what it was that I was being asked
to do in that moment.
Was to live justly, to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with my God.
During this time I actually found my faith in a
different church.
I ended up leaving the church that my
ex-husband and I had been members of. And I
knew that I
wanted to go to a new church and start over.
But in this kind of six-month period
in between the surgery and the divorce being
final and
all of, you know, everything kind of going
wrong, I really needed to go somewhere else.
So I ended up going to, not a church of Christ,
here in town.
And I really, I found
comfort in this new kind of
service. It was a very liturgical service, you
know, very kind of high church.
And so I found comfort in the sameness of each
Sunday morning.
The kneeling and the standing up and the saying
that I see in Creed and then saying the Lord's Prayer.
And the kneeling again, the standing up. I
found solace in the pre-written prayers
that I couldn't, because I couldn't express
what I needed to God. And so here were these
this book of prayer that I could look to and if
I needed something it was in there.
And I could focus on that. I found strength
in the act of truly kneeling down in service
before God's
throne. And during this whole time
I was also, as you can probably imagine,
visiting a normal counselor
to help me through all of this. And I remember
telling him at one point
you know, I was really worried. I felt like I
wasn't connecting
with God anymore. And that my worship was gone.
And that my ability, my faith was gone.
And he asked me, okay, well, you know, what do
you do all day long?
And I said, well, you know, really all day I
just sit there and listen to Christian music.
And I had gotten
into this like obsession of Christian music.
And he said, well, there's your
worship. You know, you may not be able to say
the words, but here's some songs
that are helping you to say the words that you
need. And so that really helps me to
feel better about kind of forgiving myself for
what I felt like was walking away from God when
I didn't.
In fact, I just needed to find a different way
to worship.
In the years
since I've had four more surgeries
everything is done now fully reconstructed. My
breast cancer risk has gone from
eighty-nine percent to 4 percent, which is
average for the average American woman.
Ovarian cancer is still a risk, but I've been
assured over and over again
that that's something to not worry about until
forty, forty-five. So I have ten years.
And it really has become
a ministry to me to be able to talk to other
women who have gone through both of these experiences.
Not just the breast cancer stuff, but also the
divorce stuff.
And, you know, one of the things that I found,
you know, I told you I was meditating on certain
verses in the Bible at different times. And
Micah 6:8 was important. But another one that was
always important to me was just be still and
know that I am God.
And I would just meditate on that one a lot. Because
really that was when I felt the most comfort
and the most
calm was when I was silent and when I was just
being. In the months after my divorce
I had a really good friend named Karen who
would come and she knew my custody schedule.
And she would make a point of always being at
my house whenever my daughter was not.
Whenever she was with her dad. So that I would
never be alone. And we would never really talk
about what was happening. We never really, you
know, prayed together or made it kind of
this big worship thing. It was more just let's
order a pizza and watch movies.
Let's sit on the couch. I mean I ended up
buying two copies of every Twilight book
and she would read them and I would read them.
And this is how we spent our time together. It
was just
really being still.
And that was a very important part of what I
went through.
One of the most helpful things.
So, is there any lessons
from my story? I think that there are
six of them. And for each one of these lessons
I also have a Christian
song attached to it that I want to read you
some of the lyrics of. To help you kind of see
where these lessons can be found other places.
And my mom was in here on Monday's session and
she said, well make sure you tell people. This
is not just
about breast cancer and divorce. This is about,
you know, any kind of tragedy you go through.
These are things that can help you. And I said,
yes, okay. So, my mom says
for you to know that all of these are for any
kind of tragedy.
Not just mine. The first lesson that I really, really
hope you learned from today is to trust yourself.
Know your family history. And be your own advocate.
My mother always told me that doctors are
nothing more than
high powered mechanics. And I think that's true.
You know, they do a great job and I found some
phenomenal doctors at UT Southwestern. But
they're just
doctors. The song that I always think of whenever
I think of kind of trusting yourself and really
being your own advocate is Matthew West's
song Strong Enough. Which is a fairly new song.
So, it wasn't one that I listened
to during this time in my life. But now it's
one that I listen to pretty frequently.
And he says, and it's written about a woman
who had been going through kind of multiple
tragedies all at one time. Just like I did.
And the song goes something like this. You must
think I'm strong
to give me what I'm going through. Forgive me,
forgive me if I'm wrong.
But this looks like more than I can do on my
own. Lord, right now I'm
asking you to be strong enough. And so just
asking him to be
there when you don't know what else to ask for.
The second
lesson, and this is a big one to me, is also
to trust your God. It's very easy in these
kinds of situations
to ask the why questions. Why? Why me?
And there's not really an answer there. You
know, if it's not you, it's somebody else. So
why not
you? But he will
find you and he will walk with you through
whatever you need him for. And even if you
don't think he's
there, he's there. And that was something that
I always knew. That was part of
that strong faith I had that was never tested,
but I just
knew God was always there. There's a poem,
a Christian poem that used to be really popular
in the 80's and 90's, I don't think it is much anymore,
called Footprints. Do y'all remember Footprints?
Did y'all know this one? Yeah.
And it's about, it's a story of a poem of you
and God kind of walking together next to each
other on a sandy beach
and you can see the two sets of footprints. And
the way the poem goes is
the guy or the girl, whoever it is, talking to
God says, well, during the hardest times
of my life, I noticed there were only one set
of footprints. So did you leave me?
Did you walk away? And God says, no, that's
when I was carrying you.
And I remember that being a plaque on my
parents' wall at my parents' house. And that
was something I thought about a lot during this time,
was just, okay, he's carrying me. So if there
were one song that I would
attach to the idea of trusting God, it's Nicole Nordeman.
She has a song called Hold On, which was
actually written about a close friend of hers
who committed suicide. But let me read you just
some of the lyrics.
It will find you at the bottom of a bottle. It
will find you
at the needle's edge. It will find you when you
beg and steal and borrow.
It will follow you into a stranger's bed.
It will find you when the doctor's head is
shaking. It will crawl into the foxhole
where you're praying. It will curl up in your
halfway empty bed.
So hold on, love will find you. Hold on, he's
right behind you.
Now just turn around and love will find you.
Hold On, by
Nicole Nordeman. The third lesson
that I would hope you would learn from this
story is
to let people in. I didn't. You know, like I
told you,
I kind of built walls around myself. And I
really wish I had
more because I needed them. So, you know, we
are meant for community.
We are meant to be with other people. And even if
they don't know what to say, and you don't know
what to say, and it's just a matter of sitting,
like my
friend Karen did, then that's really one of the
best things that you can do for them.
Number four. One of the
things that I really, truly focused on a great
deal during this time in my life
was the power of faith, hope, and love.
And, you know, Corinthians, and just really
focusing on
what it meant to have hope that things would
get better. What it meant to have
faith that God was in charge, not me. And what
it meant to love.
And allow myself to be loved.
And, in fact, it became such an important part
of my life
that I actually had it, and my students know
this, but tattooed on my wrist. It says
faith, hope, and love. And the reason I did
that is because I wanted people to be able
to see how important it was to me, but then
also, you know, people ask, why do you have
that? Well, let me tell you why. I have this
story. And here's my, you know,
my story of faith. So it was very important to
me. There is a
local country artist and Christian artist named
Twyla Foreman.
You can find her on iTunes. And
she has a song called, oh, I didn't write the
title down with me.
Face My Way. That's what it is. Face My Way.
And here is
a part of her song. Through this journey on
earth, a battle
rages on. Win, lose, or draw, each
battle makes us strong. Some days we have the courage,
some days we just run. The weapons of war will
sustain us.
They are faith, hope, and love. And that,
again, became very important to me as I was
going through this.
Number five. This is another one that's really
important to me.
You need to be willing to worship in the way
that feels right to you.
Forgive yourself if you're not fulfilling this
model that you've grown
up being told about, that this is what worship
means. But remember, God
is going to find you wherever you are. And if
that means that you
are in a different church and worshiping in a
different place,
that's okay. Because, again, He is
going to find you where you are.
This one, I'm going to read you the whole song
because it's really important to me, is a song
by, again, Nicole Nordemann and also Fernando Ortega.
It was a duet called Small Enough.
And this one, I swear, I would put it on repeat
on my iTunes in like eight hours.
Nine hours of just this one song. My poor daughter,
she can sing it by heart, too. Okay. Oh, great God,
be small enough to hear me now. There were times
when I was crying from the dark of Daniel's den.
And I have asked you
once or twice if you could part the sea again.
But tonight I do not
need a fiery pillar in the sky. I just want to
know that you're going to
hold me if I start to cry. Oh, great God,
be small enough to hear me now. Oh, great God,
be close enough to feel you now. There have
been moments when I could
not face Goliath on my own. And how could I forget?
We've marched around our share of Jericho's.
But I will not be setting out a fleece for you
tonight. I just want to know
that everything will be alright. Oh, great God,
be close enough to feel you now.
All praise and all the honor be to the God
of ancient mysteries whose every sign and
wonder turns
the pages of our history. But tonight my heart
is heavy
and I cannot keep from whispering this prayer.
Are you there?
And I know you could leave writing on the wall
that's just
for me or send wisdom while I'm sleeping like
in Solomon's
sweet dreams. But I don't need the strength of
Samson or a
chariot in the end. I just want to know that
you still know how many hairs
are on my head. Oh, great God, be small enough
to hear me now.
And the last lesson,
lesson number six, actually comes from the
Isaiah text
that Summit is based on. And it's based on
Isaiah 1:1-17.
And if you've read through this section of
Isaiah, what's
happening is that God is really asking the
Israelites to
look more closely at who they are and saying
you're claiming you worship me, but then you go
and do these things.
And that's not okay. Right?
You know, you have to follow my rules. You have
to follow my law. And you know,
the enough part comes when God says to them,
you know, enough. Enough of
the way you're living. Stop calling yourself
Christians if you're not going to be Christians.
And I think for me, that was very important
because I felt
like not so much with the cancer stuff because
I don't believe that the cancer
was in response to anything other than just my
family genetics. But the divorce in
particular, I really felt like God was saying, enough.
You know, you've tried. You've worked. It's not working.
And in addition to that, you know, I believe
that God
will force us to find his will, one way
or another. And sometimes it's easy if you can
follow his will and discern well and know
what's going on.
But I think sometimes you need a course correction.
And it can be jarring. And it can be hard. And
I think
that that's really what happened to me was that
God needed to reposition me.
And it may not have been fun. And it may not
have been easy.
But it was what I needed in order to find his
will again.
If anything else, I think probably the last
song I want to talk about is Bring the Rain,
which is obviously the title of the entire
series of my lectures, which is a
Mercy Me song that many of you probably know.
And you know, the song is really about
kind of saying to God, okay,
this is more than I think I can handle. But if
it's going to help me
to glorify you, then bring it. If I have to go
through more stuff like this, go for it.
Because if that's what it takes for me to
glorify you.
And I think that that's really, you know, if
you learn nothing
else today, if we're talking about nothing else
today, just
being able to take an ugly situation and being
able to
use it to glorify God. And if that means speaking
to others who have gone through that or just
allowing your voice to be heard
if it's, you know, a tattoo on a wrist so that
when somebody asks you, you can tell them that
story, then that's what you do. Because
God doesn't give you more than you can handle,
but he does give us a lot.
But he gives us a lot because he knows we can
handle it with him.
And so that's the important part. And then
using it then to help
others as they go through. Whether it be
similar situations
or just tragedies on their own. So, I'm done.