When My Body Remembers, I Will Remember Too

If you’ve read my second book, Still Living Still, then you know some of the journey I’ve walked with my heart.

What began in 2014 with the discovery of a large pericardial effusion became a journey that, in different ways and different seasons, has woven in and out of my life for more than a decade.

In those early years, there were so many tests as doctors tried to understand why the fluid was there and why it continued to grow.

Bloodwork. Scans. MRIs. Ultrasounds. Heart tests. Multiple stress tests. Even the fluid itself was eventually drained and tested.

And there were some scary words along the way.

Cancer.

Autoimmune disease.

Infection.

One by one, things were investigated. And one by one, the testing continued to come back reassuring.

My heart itself was healthy.

My bloodwork didn’t reveal an answer.

The fluid they tested didn’t reveal an answer.

My stress tests were fine.

My blood pressure was beautiful. My oxygen was good. I didn’t have the symptoms they would normally expect.

And still, the fluid remained.

It continued to grow.

Eventually, one of my cardiologists told me she had exhausted her resources trying to determine why it was there. The effusion was considered idiopathic—essentially, they couldn’t find a cause—and because my heart was functioning normally and I wasn’t experiencing the symptoms they would expect, she told me to go live my life.

So I did.

As a military family, we eventually moved to another duty station, which meant new doctors and a new cardiologist. And with that came a very different perspective about the potential seriousness of carrying that much fluid around my heart.

There were years of doctors, different perspectives, testing, monitoring and unknowns.

And eventually, in 2019, the fluid my body had somehow compensated for over all those years became large enough that the pressure was compressing my heart.

Cardiac tamponade.

I needed emergency heart surgery.

But surgery wasn’t the end of the journey with my heart.

There were more echoes afterward. More testing. More monitoring. Another medical team once again tried to understand why the fluid had been there, running extensive testing—including things that hadn’t been checked before.

Still, no answer.

Eventually, there was a season when I was released from that close monitoring.

And again, I went on living my life.

Then, almost two years ago, something happened that felt very familiar.

I wasn’t having some dramatic symptom that sent me looking for an answer. There wasn’t something obvious telling me I needed to have my heart checked.

It was a leading.

A quiet whisper from God that I needed to go look again.

So I listened.

I had another echo.

And that’s when we discovered that some fluid had returned.

Thankfully, it isn’t presenting the way it did before. It is contained in a pocket rather than surrounding my heart the way it once did, and it has remained unchanged through multiple echoes.

I’m incredibly grateful for that.

But every time another echo gets closer, I can feel myself brace a little.

Is it still the same?

Has it grown?

Is there more fluid?

And underneath those questions is the one that has followed this journey from the beginning:

Why is it there?

They looked.

And looked.

And looked.

And no underlying cause was ever found.

Most of the time, I’ve been able to let that question rest quietly in the background and live my life.

But echoes have a way of bringing it closer to the surface again.

And right now, there’s a lot of looking under the hood happening all at once.

Tomorrow I’m having another large panel of bloodwork done. Part of that is simply being willing to look again—to see if anything has changed or if there is anything that might finally shed some light on why the fluid has been there.

I’ve also been experiencing a faster heart rate and more palpitations lately. Neither is entirely foreign to me, but when something with my heart feels different or becomes more noticeable, it can turn the volume up on all those old questions.

I also happen to have some completely unrelated imaging coming up for other things I’ve been dealing with—one MRI this Saturday and two more the following weekend. They have nothing to do with my heart, but they’re still medical tests.

And then there is another echo coming in October.

So here I am again.

Bloodwork.

MRIs.

Another echo.

Testing. Waiting. Unknowns.

And lately, the noise has gotten a little loud.

Those old words sometimes creep back in.

Cancer.

Autoimmune disease.

Illnesses that can develop later even when earlier testing was reassuring.

Words doctors spoke years ago while they were trying to solve the mystery.

They’re not diagnoses.

They’re not what I believe is happening.

They’re simply part of the noise my body remembers.

And when my body feels different, that noise can get louder.

What if something has changed?

What if there’s finally an explanation?

What are they going to find?

I’ve walked this road with a steadiness and strength that I know God has given me. I’ve lived with an unanswered question for years without allowing it to consume my life.

But I’ll be honest.

Right now, I feel a little unsteady.

The unknown feels heavier.

The memories feel closer.

My body remembers.

It remembers years of tests and waiting.

It remembers frightening possibilities.

It remembers the relief of another normal result followed by the lingering question:

Then why is the fluid still there?

It remembers being told to go live my life.

It remembers another doctor later telling me how serious this could become.

It remembers cardiac tamponade.

The ICU.

Emergency heart surgery.

And as I step back into testing again, I can feel some of that rising closer to the surface.

I’m noticing it.

And instead of trying to push those feelings away, I’m meeting myself there with compassion.

Of course this feels heavy.

I’ve carried a lot of unknown.

But today, God left me a breadcrumb.

And it wasn’t an answer to why.

It was a reminder of Who.

A gentle reminder that while my body remembers what frightened me, my heart can remember what carried me.

I get to remember too.

Because when I look back over this story, there is something far greater than the testing and the unknowns.

God was there.

In fact, He was reminding me of that before I even knew the journey I was about to walk.

I remember lying on the table during that very first echo—the one that discovered the pericardial effusion.

I didn’t know yet what they were seeing.

I didn’t know the words that would soon be spoken.

I didn’t know about the years of testing ahead of me or where this journey would eventually lead.

And there, lying on that table, I heard Him whisper to my heart:

I’m always with you.

Before I knew, He knew.

Before the storm had even really begun, He was already reminding me of His presence.

And He was there.

Through every test.

Every unknown.

Every frightening possibility.

Every doctor’s appointment.

He met me through Scripture that came at exactly the moment I needed it.

Through those sacred echoes that reminded me He was near.

Through moments of peace in the middle of uncertainty.

Through encouragement that gave me enough strength for the next step.

And years later, when the time came that I needed to know something had changed, I believe He spoke again.

He gave me a vision.

He impressed upon my heart that I needed another echo.

Once again, I wasn’t experiencing the symptoms that would have told me how serious things had become. Everything on the outside still looked remarkably normal.

But I listened.

That echo showed cardiac tamponade.

The fluid had grown to the point that it was compressing my heart.

And He carried me through what came next.

The hospital.

The ICU.

The emergency heart surgery.

The recovery.

All of it.

That’s the story I’ve written about.

That’s the story I’ve lived.

I know this.

But sometimes the raging of the storm gets so loud that the beautiful little details of how faithfully we were held can become quieter.

And today, with another round of testing in front of me and my body remembering what all of this has felt like before, it was almost as though God gently turned my attention back toward the whole story.

Remember?

I knew.

I was there.

I spoke to you.

I encouraged you.

I gave you what you needed for each step.

I carried you through.

The tears came.

Because yes.

He did.

This isn’t a new revelation.

It’s a truth I know deeply.

But today I needed to remember it again.

My body was remembering the storm.

God was reminding me how He carried me through it.

When nobody else knew, He knew.

When the tests couldn’t explain it, He knew.

When the doctors didn’t have the answer, He knew.

And even now, when I still don’t have an answer to the question that started this journey all those years ago, He knows.

I still don’t know why the fluid was there.

I don’t know why some fluid is present again now.

Maybe one day I’ll have that answer.

Maybe I won’t.

But I have more than a decade of history reminding me that I don’t have to know everything to be held in the unknown.

And that’s where I found myself anchoring today.

Of course I would love for tomorrow’s bloodwork to be beautiful.

I would love for the MRIs to show nothing concerning.

I would love for my October echo to show that the fluid is still exactly where it has been—unchanged.

But my peace doesn’t have to depend on any of those outcomes.

I don’t have to know what the test is going to say in order to be okay today.

I can receive information when there is information to receive.

I can deal with what is actually true when I know what is actually true.

Whatever tomorrow contains, I don’t have to live it today.

Because the God who was already present in the things I didn’t know then is already present in the things I don’t know now.

And He sees the deeper layers underneath all of this too.

He sees that I’m a mama to an autistic, non-speaking son who depends on me.

He knows Shia cannot call 911 if something happens to me.

He knows Tim is frequently gone with the military.

He knows we don’t have family nearby.

He knows the vulnerability underneath some of these fears.

And today, that whisper from all those years ago came back to my heart:

I’m always with you.

Even here.

Even in this.

Even in the unknown.

And suddenly I remembered:

I am held.

I am seen.

I am not alone.

That one broke me open. 😭

Because He has never left me alone in the unknown.

He has met me there.

He has provided what I needed.

He has encouraged me along the way.

He has given me strength for things I didn’t know I could walk through.

He has faithfully carried me.

And today, it felt like He was reminding me:

I haven’t stopped.

So even when Tim is gone, I’m not alone.

Even when my son can’t call for help, I’m not alone.

Even when I don’t know what is happening inside my own body, I’m not alone.

I’m not alone.

And remembering that doesn’t make me want to hide from what’s in front of me.

It gives me courage to face it.

So I’m going to be courageous and look under the hood.

I’m going to get the bloodwork.

I’m going to climb into those MRI machines.

I’m going to show up for my echo.

And when that wave of uncertainty washes over me, I’m going to meet myself there with compassion.

I’m going to let myself feel it.

And then I’m going to remember too.

Not just what happened.

But Who was there.

Not just what I didn’t know.

But Who did.

Not just the storm.

But the One who faithfully carried me through it.

I still don’t have the answer to the why.

But I know Who has been with me every single day that I haven’t had it.

God knew then.

God knows now.

He carried me then.

And He will faithfully carry me through again. 🙏♥️