I turn 23 this month. It's a pretty unremarkable age when you think about it. I'm still a few years away from being a quarter of a century old, and thirty is still [thankfully] somewhere far over the horizon. For me, the main reason this year will be worth celebrating is because it's my anniversary.
Ten years ago I sat on the sterile white paper stretched out over the pediatrician's uncomfortable examination table. I had been having trouble breathing in class, and was missing school more and more often. I'd had asthma all my life, and even though I hadn't struggled with it in a while, I figured this was just another flare-up that would be treated and dealt with before the month was out. It was a week before my birthday, and I was far more concerned about getting what I had asked for that year than I was about a little shortness of breath. The pediatrician performed the checkup. Everything was progressing normally until we got to the breathing test. I'd done it a thousand times: breathe deep, hold, breathe out. Repeat, repeat.
Repeat. Repeat.
Repeat. Repeat.
A murmur, he said. Thirteen years of breathing tests, chest x-rays, physicals, hospital visits had come up with nothing. A little bit of extra attention, of looking for more than what was already known, and a pediatrician and a stethoscope find what the specialists couldn't. He said it might be nothing, that a lot of people had murmurs and didn't need any treatment. Most of the time they only needed to take a few pills to keep things under control. At any rate, I needed to see a specialist soon. He'd set me up to see them tomorrow.
An ultrasound. An EKG. A chest X-Ray. Within the hour, they knew they were going to have to operate. The surgery was scheduled for August 23rd. Four days to prepare for the moment that would change the rest of my life. I wish I could remember exactly what those transitional days were like. I know I was very thoughtful, but I don't remember worrying too much about what was ahead. I was too busy making sure my parents knew I was okay. My mom says I had a small birthday party on our back-porch with Greg and Patrick, but I can't remember it at all. I'm sure I enjoyed it though, we were all pretty inseparable.
The absence of memory is what brought this post about, in all honesty. I remember the surgery and the weeks following very clearly. Things start to get fuzzier after that. I know I've lost a lot of memories from my 13th-17th years. It's not a complete wipe by any means, but I know there are some important pieces of the puzzle missing. Typing this out has helped recover some of those memories, strangely enough. I hadn't even intended to write about my surgery, to be honest. I had even forgotten that I had it the day after my birthday—my mom had to help me out with that one. But for whatever reason these moments are triggers that lead me to others.
I've been thinking about my testimony a lot lately. My salvation happened about a year or so after all of this, and I've been having trouble putting all the pieces together to remember what led up to that point and what happened afterward. I remember the cruxes, but I know there is much more to the story. I guess I'm just afraid that I've lost some moments that might help others, some of the fracture-points and mistakes made along the way.
On the news this morning, they were talking about the death of the last surviving British soldier who fought in World War I. They said he couldn't talk about most of the battles he fought in until he neared the very end of his life. He said that some of his brothers had forgotten those moments, but that there would never be a day he didn't remember them. It made me wonder if maybe I had been blessed with a sort of selective forgetfulness. God brought me through those times, so maybe He is sparing me from having to relive them over and over again.
"But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead..."
-Philippians 3:13
And man, do I have a lot to look forward to.
