The Grace I Almost Missed

There was a time when I never pictured myself becoming an adult. I do not know exactly why. Maybe because surviving took up so much room. Maybe because pain has a way of shortening your vision. Maybe because when you spend your childhood trying to make it through the day, you do not always learn how to imagine thirty years from now.

I just remember never seeing myself here. Not here writing books. Not here building BFF Youth Network. Not here loving and being loved. Not here sitting on a couch beside Alvin on quiet evenings while dogs sleep nearby.

I never saw this life coming.

Maybe that is why gratitude feels different to me. Because gratitude, for me, was never born from a perfect life. It was born beside grief. It sat beside fear. It stood quietly beside hospital beds. It waited beside heartbreak. It stayed near me in places where I thought hope had left.

I did not know I was sick at first. It started as an ordinary annual physical. Just another appointment. Just another day. Until it wasn't.

The doctor noticed something during my exam and began talking about additional testing. I remember knowing immediately that something was wrong. But I kept it to myself. I did not want to speak anything into existence before I knew for sure.

I remember being terrified to tell my mother. Not because I was scared for myself. Because I was scared for her. She had lost one of her childhood best friends to breast cancer and I knew exactly what this news would bring back into her heart.

The thing I never admitted out loud was that I was scared to need people.

I had spent so much of my life believing I had to be strong. Believing I had to carry things myself. I was terrified of needing help. Terrified of the financial burden. Terrified of the emotional burden. Terrified of becoming too much. Terrified of letting people see me afraid.  

I prayed constantly. Not necessarily for healing. I prayed for strength. I prayed for endurance. I prayed that somehow my family would find faith through watching me walk through mine.

I was never angry with God. I just did not understand. I wondered why life seemed so heavy. I wondered if maybe I was not worthy of happiness. Not worthy of peace. Not worthy of the life I wanted. Not worthy of motherhood. I questioned myself far more than I questioned Him.

There was one moment I truly thought I might not survive. The cancer had returned again. And again. And again. Mine was resistant. Each recurrence seemed to chip away at me a little more. I had reached a place where I was simply exhausted. Not tired in the way sleep fixes. Soul tired. Fight tired.

I remember sitting on the bed of my stepfather's truck in my parents' driveway. I told him I did not want treatment anymore. I told him that if it was my time, maybe it was just my time. And I remember him crying. He was not an overly emotional man. But he cried. And he asked me to try one more time. Just one more time. He reminded me that people loved me enough to help carry what I had spent my whole life trying to hold alone.

I think now that God was sitting on that truck too. Because later there was Houston. I was scheduled for inpatient treatment. Final tests before trying something new. I was preparing myself for another fight. And then the results came back.

No signs of cancer.

No explanation.

No warning.

Just remission.

I remember thinking, There You are. Not because He had finally arrived. But because I suddenly realized He had never left. He had been there all along.

He looked like homemade applesauce from Aunt Sandy. He looked like a beautiful pink dress my parents bought me for my first remission party. He looked like friends and family surrounding me, holding me in the center while they prayed over me. He looked like my mother telling me that watching my strength had strengthened her faith. He looked like reconnecting me with Alvin after years apart and finding the greatest love of my life. He looked like all of the small moments I almost overlooked.

And then there was another heartbreak.

The miscarriages.

The slow unraveling of what I thought life was supposed to look like. I had always wanted to be a mother. Always. And each loss broke something quietly inside me. I questioned whether God believed in me. Whether He found me worthy enough for the one thing I wanted most. But then Alvin showed me something I had spent my entire life struggling to understand.

He showed me that love stays.

The day I miscarried; he left work immediately. He dropped everything. He stayed home for days. He sat with me. Held me. Loved me. He never made me feel like I was too broken or too sad or too much.

I thought motherhood had only one shape. I thought it meant carrying a child beneath your heart. I did not understand then that sometimes you carry people inside your heart instead. My nieces. My nephews. The quiet children at BFF who do not yet know how extraordinary they are. The ones I see myself in. The ones who remind me of little Jenny. Maybe that was grace too.

I never thought I would live long enough to heal from it all.  I still stop and smile when I think about memories with my sisters and brother.

The ordinary thing I treasure now is quiet evenings on the couch. I thank God every time I open my eyes and am given another day. Because I have learned something.

Life does not become beautiful because pain disappears. God never promised me an easy life. He never promised me I would understand every wound or every loss. He only promised that I would never walk through them alone.

And somehow, over and over again, He has kept that promise.

Even when I doubted myself.

Even when I felt abandoned.

Even when I felt unworthy of grace.

I spent years thanking God for saving my life.

Before I realized I also needed to thank Him for the life He let me stay long enough to live.

— Jennifer Rene Wallace