Rebekah McAnally

I was born into a Christian family and my dad was a pastor. When I was three months old my dad was diagnosed with a disease called Multiple Sclerosis. It is a disease that effects your nerves and most of the time it will get better and just sometimes you will have the symptoms. That was not the case with my dad. He got to the point where he couldn’t preach anymore when I was about one.

As the years went on my dad got worse. He went from walking, (which I don’t ever remember him to walk) to a walker, to a wheel chair, to just sitting in bed and not moving anything but his fingers on his left hand.

This was a very difficult time for my whole family, what was great to know was that no matter what happed we had God by our sides. God always managed to get dad out of the hospital or get him better when not even the doctors could. He would always be in and out of the hospital and I even remember one year my grandma had to be in charge of my birthday party because my mom and dad were in the hospital. It never seemed to bother me that much though. I knew that he would be out in a couple of days because that is what always happened.

My eleventh birthday was coming up in December and I was so excited because it was my last birthday in grade school and also I was excited because my brother was turning sixteen five days after my birthday.

November of that year was when we took my dad out of the second nursing home which was about forty-five minutes away from where we lived. That December my dad got sick. I thought it would be fine because he would go to the hospital and come back and he was always better.
On December 17, 2003 my dad went in to the hospital. The next day the 18th I went to see him in ICU and he couldn’t talk. When I came out of his room the doctor wanted to talk to my whole family, so she sat us down in a little room and told us that my dad had a 20% chance of living. By this point I was hysterical and was so upset.

The next day was my brothers 16th birthday and it was almost Christmas time and this was just not supposed to be happening. That night I prayed and prayed and I could just feel God just put me in his arms and say everything will be all right. The next morning the person I was staying with woke me up at like 5:30 a.m. and said your mom is going to come and tell you something. At that point I knew. I just started to cry and I knew, my dad had passed away. When my mom finally got to tell me I don’t remember crying. I was at a peace.

I knew what had happened had happened for a reason. At first I was mad and then I realized what God had done in my life. He always gives us two roads to follow and at that point being an eleven year old girl I had to make a decision. I could have gone down the road that would have led me to bad things but I chose not to.

Now four years later, I am able to tell others about how God has changed my life. I am not saying it is easy because losing my dad at eleven was NOT an easy thing. But because of those bumpy roads, I am who I am today. God does things in our lives to make us stronger and to make us have to lean on Him and I really don’t know what I would have done without him by my side.

Rebekah McAnally