Remaining faithful and hopeful

In the spring of my senior year of high school, things weren't going quite as well as I had wanted them to be. I was exhausted no matter how much sleep I got, which translated to a bad mood no matter who I encountered. My doctors decided that my body might have been experiencing something a bit more serious than basic fatigue, so I was sent to the hospital for tests. When recovery lasted much longer than expected, I found myself still in a hospital bed on the night of my high school graduation. That night I learned that I was suffering from pulmonary hypertension, a life threatening illness that, if remained undiagnosed, would have taken my life in the following three months.

My family was devastated. I had been a model student and family member - how could everyone have missed that I had been suffering for so long? The doctors didn't want me to attend an out-of-state college, so my dreams of attending Georgetown University crashed. All of my friends and family could barely comprehend the disappointment. It seemed so hard to see God's plan in everything that was happening, but through a faith in God that seemed to come from a bigger and better place than inside myself, I remembered that God works in and through everything. Of course I grieved the loss of an imagined future at Georgetown, but I kept the constant knowledge that that was what God wanted for my life at that point in time.

Once diagnosed, instead of improving, my health deteriorated - and quickly. Soon my family found ourselves faced with doctors who could do nothing more to help me. Their best advice was for us to travel for a lung transplant to a different and better hospital - one that was over 800 miles away. While it was hard to leave most of my family and almost all of my friends, I held steadfast in the understanding that God always has a plan. Who was I to question our Divine Creator? We made the move.

Once I was at the new hospital, I really felt God's calling to be a light of hope and inspiration for those around me. Every day I prayed for God to do great things with my life so that my heartbreak could become hope and strength for others. I knew that would give me strength and hope, though I never lost faith throughout the whole journey.

Then God worked a miracle. Before ultimately deciding to transplant the doctors tried one last medication, and it had drastic effects. Within two weeks I was a new person. Most that knew me readily accepted that my healing was a true miracle, but I know they couldn't have felt the workings of the Lord as I did. I was soon told that I could attend school in the fall, which was something I had thought was impossible only a few weeks prior. Not only could I go to college, but also it was possible to attend my dream school once again, for my university is only 45 minutes from my hospital. Without question, God knew what God was doing all along.

Most people that I knew credited my recovery to "the power of prayer" or even "the power of positive thinking," but I truly believe that God gave me this enormous obstacle to overcome because God knew that I could take the situation and use it to inspire people, which is what God knew they needed. I was (and am) an instrument of his love, peace, and hope, as is every child of God. Through my experience I have learned to always thank the Giver and Provider for each and every thing I have in my life. I thank God over and over each day, and I know in my heart that those prayers of thanksgiving will never amount to all that I have been blessed with. Knowing that I am - and we are - forever being sustained by the Giver of Life keeps me faithful and hopeful.

Jenny Faenza is in her first year as a HELM Leadership Fellow and is a member of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Springfield, Tennessee.