Do you have a song that would be in the soundtrack of your life?

Have you ever had a song that just hit you.

A song that seemed to sum up your very being.

For the last five years there has a been a song that has sat with me.

It’s a song released back in 2018 from 90s band Mercy Me called Even If.

The song speaks about holding onto faith even when your life doesn’t turn out how you think it should.

Earlier this year I wrote a post all about how gratitude and grief can coexist.

This week I watched the movie I can only imagine 2 which was all about Mercy me and Tim Timmons journey behind the song.

In it, Tim Timmons one of the writers of the song talks about how he holds Gratitude in one hand and grief in the other.

The line stopped me, because that is what my last five years has felt like.

Gratitude for the life I am living but grief for how I thought it would be.

If my last five years had a soundtrack this song would be it.

Five years ago I walked into a doctors office, naive.

When I walked out only thirty minutes later my life had been turned around.

Three years.
Five years if I was lucky,
Unless I had heart surgery, and unless it worked.

Suddenly as someone in my thirties, life was measured in years, not decades.

It was a very lonely journey, not because I didn’t have family supporting me, but when you get a health diagnosis you have to work it out in your own head.

I constantly sat in between Gratitude and Grief.

Gratitude for my family, my life, the joys, the memories.

Grief for the what ifs.
My Grief wasn’t in the big things. No it was the Little things, like wondering if I was ever going to be able to go on roller coasters with my kids again.

Gratitude that five years later I am still here, and now with a normal life expectancy.

But then grief over the journey. Grief over watching my family deal with the diagnosis.

But this journey through gratitude and grief is not just my own journey.

In the last three and half years our beautiful daughter has had to face her own battle.

Watching her battle through epilepsy, a condition that keeps trying to steal so much from her, that has brought its own deep grief.

Grief over missing out on normal teenage plans
Grief over loss of independence
Grief over the fear that epilepsy can bring into everyday life.

But then you have Gratitude
Gratitude in the little moments.
Gratitude when she started University.
Gratitude when she adapted and went on her dream trip, not able to travel alone, so adapting and travelling with others.
Gratitude in the smaller moments that feel so much bigger now.

Through it all we keep walking forward, balancing gratitude in one hand and grief in the other.

I think that is what Faith is all about.

Faith is not pretending the struggle isn’t real, faith isn’t pretending its all going to be ok.

Faith is sometimes just getting up and fighting even when everything around you is falling apart.

Faith is believing that even if life doesn’t look like you think it should, that it is still worth the effort, there is still purpose in the journey.

That is what the song Even If reminds me.

Faith isn’t everything turning out perfectly, it is taking a moment to find gratitude in the small things.

It is believing that everybody matters, and every bodies story matters.

It’s knowing through it all there is still hope.

Over the last five years I have learnt that Gratitude and Grief don’t cancel each other out, they sit side by side. They coexist.