Books Under the Blanket (with a flashlight)

Story for the Week

Our daughter made her Confirmation today.

I grew up going to church every week. When our daughter was born and before she started school full-time, my parents watched her every day, so they were always taking her to church for something or other. She attended Vacation Bible School regularly, sometimes even twice in one summer—once at our church and once at my mom and dad’s church. She wears a cross every day that I received on a retreat in college a good number of years ago (I won’t say how many).

For the past two years, she has been attending Confirmation classes at our church, and she was honestly afraid that this would be another thing that COVID-19 took away from her and that she would be confirmed on paper or in a drive-by, much like she graduated middle school “with a yard sign and a bottle of Gatorade.” But our minister was determined to make this special. So they finished their classes over Zoom, and today, in the park behind the church with a limited number of family and friends in lawn chairs at appropriate social distances, she was able to reach this important milestone. Part of the process was a faith statement that each Confirmand had to write and present about his or her faith journey.

I may be biased, but I was pretty impressed with Corinne’s. I had to ask both her permission and her dad’s to share it because it is heartbreakingly honest—and so worth the read.

Hi, my name is Corinne Ahyee, and my faith statement is about adversity. Everyone deals with adversity at one point or another. It’s a part of life. When you’re younger, the worst thing to ever happen is your parents saying “no” when you ask to get a toy. As you get older, things like disease and bullying start to become problems. I, myself, have dealt with bullying in school, and my dad has cancer.

I dealt with bullying with multiple kids in seventh grade, which was hard, but I got through it. They would call me names, tease me for random things, and just try to get a reaction out of me. In May of 2019, which was the end of my seventh grade year, my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We caught it early, but we found out in around August 2019 that it had spread, so they couldn’t do surgery. Shortly after that, people that I considered really close friends started to pick on me at school. They mainly picked on me for my allergies, but also made me feel like what I said didn’t matter and would judge me for the way I did things or reacted to certain things. This went on from the start of the school year to October of last year. After being cut off by people I trusted a lot, it was harder to get past than it was in seventh grade because of everything going on at home.

I had a good few months, but then Covid-19 hit. School got closed in March 2020. We were supposed to be out for two weeks. We were excited because who wouldn’t be excited about a two-week spring break? As those two weeks went on, we got a notice that my school’s closing would be extended to the middle of April, then May 1st, and then the rest of the school year. I missed out on my field trip to Six Flags, my eighth grade dance, and of course, graduation. It was one thing after another, and it seemed like it wouldn’t get better.

I’ve grown up in a Christian family. Well, that’s obvious. I don’t think I’d be here if I weren’t Christian. I’ve been going to church since I was little and have always heard things like “God is good,” “Everything happens for a reason,” and “God has a plan for you.” After everything I’ve been through, I’ve thought, “What the heck is His plan for me? If You want to tell me, go ahead. I’m all ears.” Like I said, I’ve always heard, “God is good,” but after everything I’ve gone through, what’s good about this? It seems to be one bad thing after another. 

Even though I’ve gone through some really bad things, there are positive things that came out of them. In the situation where I lost some really close friends, having that experience of them teasing me made me realize who they actually were. It made me realize that they were bad for me, and I don’t want them in my life. They also cut me off and stopped talking to me before I had the chance to do that to them. I think it’s a good thing they did that out of anger because I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it myself. I saw a quote that says, “Don’t worry about people God has removed from your life. He heard conversations you didn’t, saw things you couldn’t, and made moves you wouldn’t.” This quote shows that God does things that may hurt, but He has good intentions. 

Now, let’s talk about quarantine. For me, being a social person, it hasn’t been great. Even though I haven’t been taking quarantine well, it’s done great things for the environment. Animals are returning to their habitats, and there’s less pollution. Take Los Angeles for example. They used to have smog that was there constantly. After quarantine started and places started closing, the smog went away completely because of less pollution. There’s also a positive for me. I’ve gotten more time to spend with my dad.

My dad’s father (my grandfather) also battled cancer, and he passed away from it about a year after my parents got married. My grandfather was living in Peru at the time, and my dad wasn’t working, so he and his dad spent hours talking online everyday. This gave the two of them time to really connect and have deep conversations about things. I’ve been able to do this with my dad a little more because I’ve been at home. I haven’t been spending hours doing homework or going anywhere, so I’ve had more time to be with him and talk to him. [He just started] a clinical trial, and we don’t know how that’s going to go. Quarantine really gave me a chance to maximize my time with him because I’ve been at home. He’s already beaten the odds as a pancreatic cancer patient without surgery, so I’m hoping he can beat the odds with the clinical trial.

I may have gone through a lot of adversity, but I never thought that meant that God didn’t love me or didn’t have a good plan for me. My scripture is from 2 Corinthians 6: 4-11. 

“Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you.” 

Shout out to Pastor Scott [Oberle] for helping me find the perfect set of verses that I can relate to because of everything I’ve been through. Verse 8, which says “Genuine, yet regarded as imposters” really speaks to me because it reminds me of people who I thought were genuine friends that actually turned out to be imposters. All of these verses together show that God may give us challenges in life, but he still opens up His heart to us and still loves us. That’s what faith is all about. Even though I’ve been through a lot of hard things in my life, I still have faith that God has good intentions for me. After all, God is good. I may not know what those intentions are, but I have a feeling they’re good. I have to trust that they are. Even though it’s hard to understand His plan sometimes, you have to. That’s what faith is.

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