When Your Core Gets Shattered: Breaking Beautiful
There are moments that split your life into "before" and "after" – moments that shatter
not just your world, but your entire understanding of how the world works. I call these core-shaking experiences, and once you've had one, there's no going back to who you were before.
The Moment Everything Changed
Picture this: I'm 31, curled up on our living room couch. My three kids, (Newborn, four year old and six year old) are nestled beside me with their books and toys scattered around. My new husband Darin and I are still finding our rhythm as newlyweds, learning to blend our family with all the beautiful chaos that brings.
For six long months, I've been shuttling between doctors, clutching prescriptions for amoxicillin and Tylenol. "Just pneumonia," they said. "It'll clear up."
Except it wasn't pneumonia. Inside my body, an 8-inch aggressive, late-stage cancer was silently growing next to my unborn son, while I was being treated for a simple infection.
After being ping-ponged between hospitals like a medical mystery no one can solve, an oncologist walks in and casually detonates my world: "You have a week to live without treatment."
One. Week.
When Everything Falls Apart
What we didn't know then – couldn't have known – was that surviving would be just the beginning of our battle. Five years after the treatments that saved my life, they turned traitor. My organs began failing one by one, like dominoes in a weird game of chance – heart, lungs, liver, each one shutting down in rapid succession. A second tsunami, but this time with no clear enemy to fight. WTH…?
Darin and I emerged from this medical nightmare alive but altered, carrying invisible wounds that run deeper than any scans can show. We found ourselves grappling with complicated grief – mourning not just for the life we lost, but for the people we used to be. Complex PTSD became our unwanted companion, turning ordinary moments into minefields of triggers and memories.
They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. They never mention how it first breaks you into pieces you didn't even know existed.
You know what's worse than being shattered? Trying to parent three kids while you're in pieces. Trying to hold space for your husband's darkness while fighting for your own life. Trying to keep track of medical bills that look like phone numbers when you can barely remember what day it is. And after all of this…to realize you yourself got off “easy.” At least I wasn’t…the young guy next to me in the ICU on a ventilator; at least I wasn’t the patient who tried to kill herself in the hospital next to me; at least we weren’t the family who just buried their mom when last night she seemed to be doing just fine. At least, at least, at least…
Where Gold Meets Broken Places
Ever heard of kintsugi? It's this Japanese art where they repair broken pottery with gold, making it more valuable than before it was broken. That's what happened to us, but our gold came in human form:
A life group from church showing up with $1,500 wrapped in a napkin
A pastor handing us the night's offering with a puzzled "I don't know why, but this is for you"
An insurance case manager stepping between me and aggressive collectors like a warrior angel in business casual
Friends bringing meals, cleaning our house, watching our kids while we gasped for air
Family truly acting like family: moving in, driving to appointments, managing our homeschooled kids, and praying us through our darkest hours
The Doors That Death Opened
When the doctor said "one week to live," I thought that was my ending. It wasn't. When my organs began failing years later, requiring emergency heart and lung surgeries, I thought surely that was it. It wasn't that either. Instead, these moments became my greatest teachers, showing me a path to presence I never knew existed.
Today, I'm living a life I never expected to have, and I'm savoring every second of it. Each moment feels like a bonus, an extra helping of time that makes everything taste sweeter. I find myself:
Laughing longer
Loving deeper
Living fuller
Teaching others how to find this same freedom
This is why Epic Comeback exists. Because transformation isn't just about surviving – it's about discovering a quality of life you never knew was possible.