Right Beside Me
A Story of Faith Written by Dan’yell Reynolds
I pulled up the sleeve to her hospital gown and saw she had a tattoo on her arm I had never seen. “Time waits for no one,” it read. I was standing in a hospital, with a woman I’d been disconnected from for years, who I hadn’t allowed to meet my child, and she was dying. My mother was dying. Quickly. She was losing her almost forty year battle with addiction. I had mentally prepared for this day most of my life, yet here it was and I needed time to pause. I needed time to wait. I had so much more left to say.
Every image of my childhood was racing through my mind. Me, as a four-year-old little girl sitting outside of a locked bathroom door, shaking in fear that her mother, the woman who was supposed to protect her, would never come out as she sat on the other side, high on heroin, fighting off sleep. The fear that would take over my body as we hid under the bed when the drug dealers were banging on the door, and wondering if we would live another day. Waking up in an empty home as a toddler and crossing a heavily-trafficked road as I went to the neighbor’s house, seeking an adult or a safe home. Walking the streets of one of the most crime infested-areas in the perfect dress, not a hair out of place, and scared beyond belief.
By the time I was six, we moved in with my great-grandmother, one of the greatest blessings of my life. My mother was unable to care for me on her own. My great-grandmother’s home was in a middle- to upper-class area of suburbia. Until the day it sold it looked like a flashback to 1960, down to the iconic blue stove in the wall. It was a home where everyone gathered. Memories made. Holidays celebrated. It was also the home where my mother would create havoc. Her addiction would spiral out of control and my great-grandmother would work tirelessly to portray all was well, and safe, in our home.
Surely it looked that way. I was dressed to perfection in the boutique clothes my mom would dress me in, a straight A student, and one who never missed a Sunday mass. It was also the home I would leave for school from, walking by her mother in the kitchen, high, whose face was lying in her dinner from the night before. It was the same house we would place the dresser in front of the bedroom door so she couldn’t get in as she went on one of her nightlong tirades in the highs that were fueled with anger. The house police siren lights flashed into one too many times as she landed herself in and out of the jail, a broken system, one that had no place for the struggling addict.
I spent nearly my entire younger life wondering why my mother’s love for her child wasn’t enough to make her stop. Not enough. It was the soundtrack of my twenties as I sought out relationships that triggered those very feelings. Almost intentionally choosing people to validate that statement, over and over.
I’ll never forget the first moment I felt like God wasn’t with me. That, quite possibly, he loved others but maybe not so much me. Maybe I wasn’t enough for His love either. And if He did love me, why did He deal me this hand of cards? I clearly remember, at eight years old, walking through the long gate you had to enter and exit to get to my elementary school. My best friend and neighbor was walking beside me. I was telling her I would be moving. My mother had decided we would leave my great-grandmother’s, which thankfully didn’t work out. I had a feeling of tightness around my neck and difficulty swallowing, a feeling I now know to be anxiety. I remember that being the first moment I thought that maybe I didn’t want to be here anymore, that maybe this life was too overwhelming. I wondered if there was a God, why was this the life He gave me and where was He?
I asked myself that question more times than I would ever care to admit.
One weekend, many painful years later, I met my now husband in a chance encounter, during a time I was nearly hopeless that I would ever have the opportunity to be a wife, mother, and have the life I dreamed of. God placed him there, in a location he had never before been—a man who would be my greatest protector. A moment that would change my life and prove that His plan for me was greater than I could ever have envisioned. He was everything I had prayed for. My life shifted. Through my answered prayers, I have felt God’s love in my life and I am now able to look back and recognize God in every step.
I recognize that He was there the nights I waited outside of the bathroom for my mother to wake up out of her high, sitting with me so I wasn’t alone. He was there when my great-grandmother saved my life, opening up her front door and working tirelessly to give me stability, while also not giving up on my mother, her first grandchild. She was doing His work in my life.
He was there the day I left for college, giving me the most normal years I had ever felt up to that point. When my then fiance walked out the door six months before our wedding, triggering every feeling of worthlessness I had ever known, though it was crushing, God was there pushing him out the door, knowing that was not my plan. He was there in the dark moments, full of unbearable anxiety where I was certain this life was too painful to live.
He gave me the gift of allowing me to rewrite my own story as a mother, giving birth to a beautiful little girl named Ella Rose—the little girl I had always dreamt about, but almost lost hope in having. He was there telling me my mother’s story wasn’t my story.
My husband and I were countries apart during a deployment when we fell to our knees after losing our second pregnancy, again triggering overwhelming feelings that this life was too much to bear at times. Although this was one of the greatest heartbreaks I’ve ever known, this time I knew we were not alone. Clinging to my faith with all I had, He was there as we struggled to conceive our third child, falling so short on hope that we would have the family we dreamt about.
God has a plan for my life. His plan was so clear as our rainbow baby, the most gentle, perfect, little boy was brought into this world. He has a plan for all of our lives. It can be so hard to see at times. God's plan is there to provide us with hope when the path feels too painful. His plan provides the miracles we need to become who He has always known we could be.
His miraculous plan enabled Daniel to survive a lion's den. For David to defeat Goliath. His miraculous plan allowed me, a scared little girl full of trauma, to heal, have a beautiful family, and create a life so different than the one I knew.
He knew I could handle the life he gave me, because He would be there with me each step of the way. The life of pain was preparing me for the beauty. He trusted me with the pain I was dealt with. He trusted I would take it and keep believing in His plan. He trusted I would turn the pain into empathy, into a life I could be proud of, leading the way through the relationships He blessed me with.
I feel His presence so often today when my battle with anxiety sneaks its way in. I feel His presence when my inner child sneaks up on me, trying to control her surroundings in fear. When He removes people from my life and I can’t understand the reasoning, I know it will make sense one day. I know I will get to another day and it will be better because He has proven that to me endlessly.
At times I forget how much God and I have been through together. I forget the strength we have together and how far we’ve come from the little girl in the perfect dress, scared beyond belief and I feel the worry creep back in. But when I do, He reminds me. He reminds me this is the life I fought for, the life I am so worthy and deserving to have. The life I dreamt of having. This is His plan.
We look for the big miracles, the life saving miracles, but sometimes it’s in day-to-day life we experience them. My miracle is my great-grandmother, my husband, my children, the chance at this life and to do it a different way than the one I saw.
I held my mother’s hand as she was taken off life support, finally making peace with her path in life, and the overwhelming impact it had on my own. I felt forgiveness, what she had always hoped for from me, and what I was finally ready to give her as I said goodbye.
And where was He then? Right beside me.
