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When I was in high school, I had a special number. My house number, 1114. It was a mystical, childish obsession with an arbitrary number.
In high school, I went through a period of time during which my whole world was flipped upside down. I did not have many friends. I felt betrayed by everyone and everything I had ever trusted. I felt like I had lost my home, my house, my church, my family. One of the things I lost was that address, beginning in that special number. Just one of the many pieces of my childhood I felt had been stolen from me.
That summer, I started working for an equestrian center - my dream job. Any of you who have been reading this blog long enough know that summer of work earned my first horse, Gambler (another dream come true). You can't imagine the joy and comfort I experienced when I discovered that this particular barn had no stall 12 or 13. Each stall was numbered: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14 . . .
During my time of questioning and loneliness, wrestling with my faith and my experiences, that number became a sign of God's faithfulness. Not only was He real and present, but He cared enough for me - of all people - to "coincidentally" place this little number into my day. This was a priceless act of love in a time and place where I felt completely unloved and unlovable.
I've shared my number with a few people here and there throughout my life. Some people definitely think I'm crazy (but are too polite to say it). Other people have attested to the way this particular number shows up at the oddest times. On a hard day I'll glance at the clock "randomly" to see 11:14. One day I was working at McDonalds, cleaning through the tears as a attempted to process a difficult friendship. One of my coworkers walked up to me and said, "There is some girl in the drive thru and she said to tell you that her total was $11.14?" One time my mom brought me an extra bag of chips from an event and the serial number on the bag was 1114.
When I was prayerfully considering college, I received my acceptance letter in the mail containing my "falcon number" w3111438. That's the main reason I went to college in the first place.
Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch is another piece of my childhood. I read several of Kim Meeder's books when I was about ten. I dreamed of visiting the ranch and potentially starting my own similar ministry for years. While in my last year of college, I decided to pursue a summer internship at the ranch after graduation. I commented on a CPYR Instagram post about how excited I was to apply.
Fast forward to October 2019. My own personal series of unfortunate events. First, I broke my finger. This became even more painful when through an insurance mishap I was charged over a thousand dollars for my visit to the ER. That's a lot of money for a broke college student!
Later that same month, I was turned down from a colt starting class I had my heart set on for years. The worst part was the reason - I wasn't good enough at riding. For someone who struggles with shame narratives, that was devastating to hear.
Only a couple days later I crashed my car into a deer. I was now a broke, brokenhearted, brokenfingered college student who was commuting to class without a car. That was one of the darkest emotional and spiritual periods of my entire life. It was in this season that I realized that for all my years of claiming to trust God, I didn't.
I trusted in my bank account, my independence, my reputation, my skills and abilities. When those things were taken away I fell to pieces. Jesus wasn't enough for me. I gave up on my application for the CPYR internship. How could I serve in an unpaid position when I didn't even have the money I needed to buy a new car?
And then (if you were paying attention to the screen snip from earlier you might know what's coming) someone replied to my comment on the Instagram post.
I filled out my application and submitted it. A few weeks later, I received a request for a phone interview. I begrudgingly interviewed. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. I knew only a few minutes into the interview that these were the kinds of people I wanted to surround myself with. These people loved Jesus and knew Jesus and trusted Jesus - something I was not doing. I was brutally honest during this interview. You know how you're supposed to talk yourself up in an interview? I was not doing that. I was honest about my shortcomings, my lack of experience, and my utter lack of money. To my surprise, this did not deter the ranch staff. I offered to serve the last three months of the year so I could work for a few months and save up the funds. We prayed together, they hung up, and I waited.
They called me back and told me that the Holy Spirit told them to offer the position, but with a condition. I had to agree to take the position starting in May, right after graduation, with no idea how I would gather the money I needed.
This was the moment I made my decision. I was going to say yes, and I was going to trust God to make it work. I didn't feel any trusting emotion toward God at the time. I decided to put everything on the line. I tried trusting in myself and it had failed me. I might as well try the alternative. I began fundraising.
In December, rumors of Covid-19 started to appear. I chose to trust God.
In February I started to experience weird physical symptoms. I chose to trust in God.
In March, my boyfriend shipped to boot camp. The week after he left my symptoms increased. I told myself my vision was failing from crying, and that my lack of appetite was to blame for my sudden decrease in body mass. I was so thirsty all of the time and so hungry - especially for sweet things I normally didn't like. I became more and more weak.
In April my digestion stopped completely. My mouth was so dry all the time. I couldn't even swallow food without drinking something to wash it down. My bones started to show and I became too weak to work. My doctor prescribed my laxatives and electrolytes. I guzzled Gatorade even though I hated the taste because I didn't want to go to the hospital and have an IV placed.
On April 25th, 2020 my mom drove me to the Emergency Room. We called ahead for a wheelchair because I was too weak to walk. I barely managed to give my insurance information to the receptionist because my mouth was too dry to speak clearly. I was taken into a room, stuck with an IV and several other needles as they took various blood tests. The whole time, I felt peace. I was scared and lonely and in more pain than I've ever been in before, but also feeling more peace than I ever have before.
I was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes. This means that due to a genetic flaw, my immune system turned on the cells in my pancreas that make insulin and killed them. Without insulin, all the food I ate turned into sugar in my blood that had no way reach the cells in my body. Without sugar, my body was starving to death. With all the sugar stuck in my blood, my blood became acidic, putting me in diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition which results in a coma and eventually death. Thanks be to God, I was diagnosed in a day and age where diabetics can live long healthy lives thanks to the technology and injectable insulin available to us.
I'll be honest, the first morning in my house after being released from the hospital, I woke up and immediately burst into tears. I felt like my life was over. I felt like I could never work again. I felt like I had to give up on the internship. For days I struggled to inject myself. I cried, I screamed, I punched walls. It wasn't pretty. I didn't survive because there is anything special about me. I survived because no matter how afraid I was I trusted God. Even though there were struggles, the most memorable emotions tied to my diagnosis story are peace and joy and courage. That same first day back from the hospital, I discovered a familiar number on a bottle of glucose test strips. I knew at that moment, that God was still with me. Still weaving together every tiny detail so that a silly little number showed up on a prescription.
