A couple weeks ago I was organizing some documents on my computer and I found this paper I wrote a few years ago about my experience with scoliosis. The pain of my scoliosis journey stays with me to this day, and I certainly wouldn't have chosen to have a back that was so broken. At the same time, I know that God has used my back pain to work in my heart, and I am so thankful for the opportunities it has made possible. Without my scoliosis, I may never have seriously considering nursing as my career path. My favorite Bible verse is Jeremiah 29:11, and I have grown to love it more and more throughout the years as I have seen God's plans unfold in my life...
Over the past couple of months I have had many people ask me to write about my experience with scoliosis. At first I totally shrunk from that. I couldn’t process what was happening to me in my own head, let alone on paper. This past month I have attempted to write many times. Usually it is easy for me to write, but this time it hasn’t been. I suppose it’s because I am not an outgoing person when it comes to talking about myself. I’ve never really had anything all that interesting to write about ‘me’ up until these past couple of months. Yet, when I finally had something to write about that would be worth reading, I found that I couldn’t get my thoughts out.
Part of the reason this is the case is because my struggles with scoliosis haven’t stopped. Yes, my back is straightening out, and I praise God for that. But the whirlwind of emotions that I have faced through this whole experience haven’t completely died down. Everything happened so fast! One day I was a totally healthy, fit, active teenager with my whole sophomore year planned out, and the next day my world seemed like it was turned upside down, and I felt totally lost.
At my physical this past summer I was told that I had scoliosis, but it wasn’t anything major. My doctor just wanted me to go to the orthopedics to have it checked out so that they could make sure it wouldn’t get worse. I didn’t think anything of it. Why should I? I was totally healthy. I’d never even broken a bone, let alone had surgery! I had walked into a hospital very few times in my life, and then only to visit someone else. If you had told me then that I would soon be lying totally helpless in a hospital bed, I would never have believed you. But when I went to Concord Orthopedics, the doctor explained scoliosis and the different levels. A zero to twenty-five degree curve is okay, but not great. A twenty-five to forty-five degree curve needs a brace. Forty-five degree is borderline for needing surgery, but anything above fifty definitely needs surgery. He told me that my curve was over fifty. I was stunned. A wave of emotions swept over me. Nothing could have prepared me for that moment. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Everything seemed a blur. I struggled to blink back tears as he showed me the x-rays of the deformed bones going down—could it be?—my back. I turned my face away from the x-ray and struggled to maintain my composure as I heard the horrible details. I felt like I was hearing something in a dream. Rods. Fusions. Five to six hour surgery. Three to five days in the hospital. One year recovery. Five pound weight limit.
I walked out of that building feeling crushed. How could it be that in one day, one moment all of my plans were totally lost? How could it be that in one moment my whole world was turned upside down?
After the initial shock was over, I pulled back from everyone and everything around me. I never talked to anyone about my fears and struggles. Whenever I tried to say something, words couldn’t come. I didn’t know what to do. I realized that absolutely nobody could do anything to change what was happening to me. I didn’t enjoy everyday activities anymore. Even an afternoon with friends just seemed to drain me.
I remember one day, as I was sitting all by myself, shedding bitter tears and questioning God angrily. “Why is this happening to me? Why didn’t You make me with a straight back?” As I pondered this, I suddenly felt a dependence upon God that I had never felt before. I came to treasure the hymn, ‘What E’er My God Ordains is Right.’
What God ordains is always good:
He never will deceive me;
He leads me in His righteous way,
And never will He leave me.
I take content
What He has sent;
His hand that sends me sadness
Will turn my tears to gladness.
What God ordains is always good:
Though I the cup am drinking
Which savors now of bitterness,
I take it without shrinking.
For after grief,
God gives relief,
My heart with comfort filling
And all my sorrow stilling.
As soon as I began to believe that God had a purpose for this surgery and rested upon Him for strength, I felt like a new person. Yes- I still shed countless tears, and I still felt anger at times, but I began to realize that I needed to face one thing at a time. If I looked at the big picture of scoliosis, like I had been doing, I would be totally and utterly overwhelmed. I needed to face one appointment, one week, one day, one moment at a time. God has promised not to tempt us beyond what we are able. This is what held me up through the flurry of appointments and many emotions that threatened to encompass me with despair. I realized that having scoliosis would be considered a very minor thing compared to many other trials that other people are going through. But in my life, at this time, scoliosis was the most I could handle.
The emotions that I felt varied over the weeks following the news. The first couple of weeks I grappled mainly with fear. I had no idea what to expect. I felt totally helpless and lonely. As far as I knew, I was the only person who was going through this at this time. I would listen to people complain about how much homework they had or how busy their schedule was. You have no idea! I thought. I would have given anything at that moment to have a busy schedule be my only concern. Up until now, that could have been all that I struggled with. All that I could do was turn to God in the midst of this. One passage that moved me especially was Psalm 139.
For You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb…My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me when as yet there was none of them.
I didn’t know at first why these words are so comforting. God made me this way. He made me with a back that is in our eyes totally deformed. He could have made me with a perfect back. The reason that the words were so comforting was that the Holy Spirit was working in me as I read them. I saw myself in a totally different way. Surely if God ‘intricately wove’ my back into the way it was, it couldn’t be a mistake. When I saw the x-rays I couldn’t believe it was my back I was looking at. And yet it was. And God, Himself, made me that way.
I am sure that someday when we see Christ with His scarred hands and marred side, we will think it the most beautiful thing we have ever seen. We will surely not think it a hideous deformity. Instead, we will praise God for our precious Savior, scars and all.
On the morning of my surgery I got out of bed, exhausted. Everything seemed unreal. I got into the car and looked out the window at the empty streets. I stumbled into the building and shook uncontrollably as I got into the hospital bed. I simply felt numb. There was a flurry of questions, forms, doctors, and nurses until I finally it was time. Suddenly the reality of what was about to happen swept over me like a wave. Tears stung my eyes as Mom and Dad hugged me goodbye. People have told me I was so brave to go through all of this. I felt anything but brave at that moment. As I felt the medicine being put into the IV tube, I wanted to jump out of bed. I wanted to run, far, far away from the reality that stared me in the face. But I realized that nothing could be done. I held open my weary eyes and tried to remember the verses I had read the morning before. “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety…You keep Him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you…For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace…” As I slowly drifted into unconsciousness, I clung to these precious promises.
I don’t remember waking up. When I did, my face was swollen and I could barely open my eyes. A nurse gave me a button to push for my medicine. The next couple of days were a sleepy blur. I heard them say the surgery was very successful, but all I knew was my pain. I was doing okay and holding it together until they said I had to go home. Home? They still hadn’t gotten my pain levels totally under control. Going home seemed to me like I was acknowledging the reality of my surgery. There in the hospital it seemed like I was another person. I didn’t want to go back to being ‘me’ because I was so changed.
The ride home was horrible. Every bump went right through me. I never could have possibly imagined that I could hurt so much. When I got home, I saw wearily through the haze of dizziness that swept over me that Dad had redecorated my bedroom. I simply forced a smile and collapsed into my bed.
I will never again take for granted being able to do even the simplest things. Even now it is incredibly hard to get in and out of bed. During the first couple of weeks after the surgery, I had to rest for an hour after doing something as simple as getting dressed. I felt like I would never be a normal person again. I struggled with much loneliness during this time. It was on an especially hard day that I came upon this prayer in my prayer journal:
God of all hope, help me to not lose sight of the plans You have for me—to prosper me and not to harm me, to give me hope and a future. Help me, Holy Spirit, to hope in You and not in circumstances, so my strength will be renewed. Fill me with joy and peace as I trust in You so that I may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I was so blessed during this time by my family and friends. They sent me flowers, chocolate, gifts, and many, many cards. I filed each of the cards in a folder and pulled them out when I was feeling especially down. They comforted me through every moment. Dad helped me each night by giving me medicine for my pain, and propping me up with pillows. Mom helped me by bringing me verses of comfort, coupled often with a mug of hot chocolate. The little kids helped by bringing me sweet little cards and praying for me every day.
I grew much closer to God through this time. When I felt strong, He made me weak. Mom shared with me these words from the Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment: “Usually when God intends the greatest mercy to any of His people, He brings them into the lowest condition…A little before daybreak you will observe that it is darker than it was any time before, so God will make our conditions a little darker before the mercy comes.”
I never realized how much Christ gave us when He came to this world took it for granted, the agony He went through for us. He poured out His love for us in His precious blood. He loves us with unfathomable love, even though we deserve absolutely nothing. His words became more precious to me than ever before: “I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart: I have overcome the world.”
I am not the same person I was before I went through scoliosis. Not only do I now have rods and scars that I will carry for life, but my relationship with God and my emotions have changed as well. I have gone through an experience that I never could have dreamed of. Yet, through it all, I am thankful for scoliosis. It has brought me so much pain, so many tears, doubts, and fears, but it has also brought me love, hope, and the peace that only comes from resting on Christ when everything seems to be falling out from under me.
I needed to have my security, health, and self-confidence taken from me. I thought I was strong, but God showed me how weak I really was. I thought I was able to take care of myself, but God gently laid me down in a hospital bed, unable to perform even the most basic life functions. I thought I had a secure trust in God, but God showed me how unstable my faith was. He took away, and then He gave me back so much more. Yes, what He gave me came with pain, but it also came with the ability to go through that pain through hope and faith in Him.
Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but YOU shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.
--Phillips Brooks
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