Purpose Beyond a Plan

Yesterday it was troponin. The doctor said my labs showed it to be elevated such to indicate a cardiac event or heart attack within the last 72 hours.

The thing is… I went into the Emergency Room to get stitches out. They weren’t even supposed to look at my heart.

My legs were very swollen, as they usually are. It’s third spacing edema. And end stage heart failure. My vitals showed my blood pressure was frightening low, as it usually is. So they decided to do labs before they removed the sutures.

It felt unfair for him to tell me this. So I told him that.. and signed out AMA. (the 33 year old version of taking my toys and going home). The immediate conversations I had about my experience with a couple people on the phone included my urgent concern and sadness of not yet swimming with dolphins. I haven’t become a published author. Post-Covid, post-car crash, post-California back to Florida move (yes, just another 6 weeks in this crazy-you-wouldnt-believe-it #terminalaintterriblelife), I’ve stepped back a bit from letting life inspire me, letting hope fill me. My heart has started to become rooted to the physical pain and disappointment rather than beating for the purpose and dreams that have propelled me through this year.

This week I got to accidentally share my story with a guy on the Main Street of Magic Kingdom. I met him after he mockingly asked if I was an “instagrammer” while I tried to capture a photo of the castle and my card and all the 50th Anniversary Celebrations. I told him try as I might, I most certainly wasn’t… but that I did have a hashtag— #terminalaintterrible. I shared briefly about what it meant and he ended up telling me about the last year and a half or so of his life.

Once again, I will tell you what I so firmly believe: You don’t have to have a terminal illness to live a life undetermined by a timeline and our purpose can’t always come from our plans.

My new friend had gone after his childhood plan and was living the life… until COVID shutdowns shut him down and he was forced to fully surrender the story he had dreamed or pick up his whole life and move to another state to take the pieces he still held and try to build once more. In the process of pursuing, he’s now become so discouraged. Understandable. He feels like everything he’d dreamed about doesn’t look like the vision he saw in his head. Yes. The only thing immediately terminal about his story I only found out days later, when he let me know that his discouragement had, in weeks prior, led him to the edge of taking his life. What was he missing? Hope. Even a small reminder that he still had a purpose beyond his 5 year plan. That his timeline or even his trajectory wasn’t the alter at which he should surrender his life.

I didn’t know when I shared about my silly Instagram hashtag that I’d really be sharing the hope the keeps me going, and that hope would be what was needed to spark something in someone that would potentially save their life. That’s when you know that nothing you can plan is going to be as purposeful or as sacred as what a single conversation ordained by God can bring about.

Even in the moment, I didn’t realize the weight of the moment until days later when my new friend shared his story in a message on my gofundme after giving a gift he hoped would be as impactful to me as our interaction was to him. His greatest need, meeting one of my greatest needs. If that’s not a testimony… people.It’s been the injection of hope I’ve needed, and it’s what I’ve come back to since receiving those lab results.

I’m doubling down my efforts this week on a few of the items on my #terminalaintterrible list. I’m going to need to swim with Dolphins. Soon. My efforts haven’t panned out in the past and I’m the kind of person that gets disappointment fatigue easily and stops trying in order to avoid it further. Also, I’m going to write again this week after claiming a recent fog and block as my pass not to.

But what am I really saying?

I’m going to live reminded. My body is failing, my pain is immense… but my days are miraculous. The ones that I watched the new Disney fireworks, the ones I saw friends that have encouraged and inspired me in big and small ways throughout the years, the ones when I was made aware that words I said changed a life or a future. The ones (and sometimes they’re the exact same ones) when the illness is in moments all consuming and I can’t even use my body weight to lift myself out of bed, or one when I spend the whole day fighting insurance and payment plans and social security… and the one where I go into the doctor to remove my stitches and find out my heart is barely holding out.

There’s a story in the Bible about a group of guys who were healed by Jesus. They all were thankful for the miracle but only one returned to say thank you to the healer. I feel like many of us read that story and subconsciously bargain that we’d never be guilty of the same. I have. And yet days have become too frequent that I don’t rejoice in the gift that I have been given another.

My assignment, I believe, for however many of these miracles I have left is to live them thankfully, hopefully, and joyfully. Authentically real that all is not easy or fair, but all is for good. Because the giver, the miracle worker, and my ultimate healer is good.

Our purpose can’t come from our plans. We were made for far more than our timelines could ever prescribe. Live beyond yourself today. Live it like the miracle it is… like the miracle you are.