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I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home. I attended an Armenian evangelical church and had great parents and a wonderful sister, so I didn’t have much exposure to suffering as a child. I was very “type A” so my full time occupation was chasing gold stars. I always wanted to be a lawyer because I loved public speaking, and years later I ended up at Stanford Law School. After that, I worked for two federal judges and then worked at a big law firm for three years, loving every second.
Fast forward to January 2018, I had just turned thirty years old, and had just been hired at my dream job as a federal prosecutor. But on the second week of the job, everything in my life changed. I fell mysteriously ill with a very rare neurological illness. The doctors threw a million diagnoses at me. I tried countless pharmaceuticals, treatments, specialists. You name it, nothing stuck. None of the treatments worked.
To give an overview, my illness stems from a faulty connection between the vestibular system in my ears, and my brain such that I can’t tell where I am in space at any given time. I have two small holes in my inner ears from birth which can’t be corrected by surgery and which exacerbate the problem. The upshot is that whenever I sit up, the world spins hard around me in my vision.
But back in 2018, eight years ago, at the start of all this, after ten months of trying treatments, nothing worked, so I was forced to resign from the United States Attorney’s office without ever being on the job. The whole thing was incredibly confusing because I really felt like being a prosecutor was my calling and I had even prayed for the Lord not to open the door to that job if it wasn’t His will. And the timing could not have been worse. I had been healthy as horse for the first thirty years of my life.
However, the Holy Spirit was powerfully with me at that time. Ironically, the day before I had to either go back or resign, I opened my Christian devotional app and the words were something to the effect of “Does it feel like God’s plan is turning out completely opposite to where you thought He was leading you? Does God seem to be opening a door only to close it? Move blindly in the dark with faith when God doesn’t make sense.” Right there, I was just tears. I just knew God was saying: “Look I know this doesn’t make any sense, but trust what I’m doing in your life. Even if you have no clue why.” I’m sure that’s how Abraham felt when God called him to leave his homeland.
From there, after I quit, things went from bad to worse. I was strictly bedridden for three straight years with my eyes completely closed with my mother nursing me full time. I’m talking literally bedridden. In other words, I could not lift my head one inch off of one pillow without dramatically spinning harder or the world around me spinning harder. The situation was completely debilitating. My mom bathed me on a bed, took care of all my needs. I was basically completely disabled.
Over the course of those three years, I was hospitalized twice without any answers, I lost thirty-six pounds, we hired countless private doctors, tried maybe 150 treatments and 37 pharmaceutical drugs, western treatments, eastern treatments. You name it. No answers. We even consulted experts in the UK who said my case was the most severe they had seen out of thousands. I felt like the Lord was leading me from one closed door to another, while we were begging the Lord for healing. You can imagine how heartbreaking and exhausting this was for my parents and I, and my entire church and Armenian community was praying for me.
My parents and I frankly would have gone mad if it weren’t for my dad reading the Word to me every night in their master bedroom where I was laying down. Psalm 119:92 took on a brand new meaning: “If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.” That was so true during that time.
But fast forward to today, I still haven’t healed. I spend about seventy percent of each day flat on my back in my bed, with my brain spinning chronically, nonstop. Day in day out, the world around me is still spinning, whether I’m laying down or sitting up. It never stops. The big difference though, is these days my blood pressure is at least stable when I sit up and the doctors have no idea why, but because of that one change, I’m able to force myself to sit up and be functional despite the spinning for an hour or two maximum, and record a skit or sing a song for social media because I’m an actor/singer. But then I slam back down on my bed because that stimulation and spinning is all my brain can handle.
I’m really grateful that I’ve been able to force myself to sit up intermittently throughout the day the last three and a half years, compared to those first three years. But I’m now eight years in without any diagnosis or healing of the neurological pain itself. And I can’t get in a car but for a few times a month and only eight miles maximum for each car ride. So I take every single trip to the outdoors like a big celebration that’s super special for me.
But the bottom line is: four years ago in January 2022, after trying some 150 treatments, none of which worked and many of which made me worse, the Holy Spirit explicitly called me to acceptance by communicating to me that it’s His plan is to heal me in eternity. As you can imagine, I scoured scripture because I was thinking, “No, God always delivers after a season….” But the Lord communicated to me that this was kind of like Paul’s chronic thorn in the flesh which God expressly chose not to heal, because God’s grace was sufficient for Paul. God gave me Christian friends and mentors to walk through all that grief. But that word from the Lord has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to reckon with in my life.
Because obviously this illness has changed my life dramatically. I went from a lawyer to a professional “bedridden person,” if you will, who has a Christian ministry of sorts on social media by singing and acting and sharing theological insights, just as a means to give myself joy amidst my pain.
As you can imagine, I’ve spent the last eight years wrestling with one very obvious question which I’m sure all of us have faced at one point or another in our own grief in this fallen world: Why does God allow such intense suffering in our lives? Does God really have a good purpose for all of it? What does Romans 8:28 actually mean in practice? Can’t that good be accomplished some other way, Lord? How can God be good when His answer to my desperate prayers for healing has been no?
So I want to ask you to reflect just in your own heart: What do we do as Christians when God doesn’t say yes, or wait—but clearly, heartbreakingly, answers no? Even after years of prayer? If he asks us to come to acceptance or surrender to His plans for our lives, not our own? Do we walk away? Do we give up on our faith because Jesus let us down? Or do we have a theology that can withstand that kind of fire?
I’ll tell you my story. Before any of this suffering, I never subscribed to the false prosperity gospel but I think in function I had a prosperity gospel light: this idea of “oh, God is good, which means He’ll heal you if you wait for His timing and His change in season. God is good, so why wouldn’t He deliver you every time in the end. You just have to be patient in the valley.” That sort of logic.
Christians, I think, in the normal day to day of life in normal seasons, often assume that if we’re praying for good Godly things and desires of our hearts—whether it’s restored health, a spouse, children, career—God must and will eventually answer yes. Because after all, they’re not bad requests—it’s not like we’re asking Him for a Ferrari or fame right?
But here’s the truth: we don’t follow the false prosperity gospel. We follow a take up your cross gospel. A “sometimes God answers no” gospel. Jesus warned us: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” It’s the hard truth but the truth nonetheless: we will all face trials. And some very serious trials. Jesus also said: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Eight years ago, I didn’t even know this was in the gospels. I mean, Jesus actually said take up your cross. Deny yourself. And sometimes, His sovereign plan involves a daily cross. Not just a season of suffering, but a daily life-long cross. Don’t hear me wrong: the Lord gives sustaining grace moment to moment, but it is a cross nonetheless.
I’ve found that sometimes it’s very difficult to accept God’s will, and I really struggled personally, but the Lord gives us ample space to grieve these emotions. Just read Psalms for ten seconds and you’ll see a beautiful picture of what it means to lament. And God has honored my own lament by always meeting me with open arms after my own questioning and doubts. I never really understood the extent of his forgiving and abiding grace before all this. He truly understands that we are dust and have a hard time surrendering to His will when the path is so difficult. Though obviously the Lord does want us to grow and get to a Christlike space where one day we can in fact say, with childlike abandoned trust, “Not my will but thine be done.”
More importantly, I want to emphasize that the Lord has never left me this entire journey. I don’t think I would be a Christian today after eight years of this neurological pain and spinning if the Holy spirit had not comforted me in timely moments, almost day in day out. He’s just kept showing up for me in like the most surprising of ways, whether through His word, a coincidental verse, a devotional that said the same thing that was on my heart that morning, or a timely word from a friend. I have kept a very long diary for eight years so I have receipts of every time He has spoken to me through repeated coincidences of the same theme over and over again.
Most days I feel like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego because Christ is right here with me, whispering comfort in some way in this furnace of spinning.
And God always provides miracles and comfort in the darkest dungeons, right? Resurrections where we would never imagine them, right? Well, I’m about to tell you that God didn’t give me healing, but He did give me a man!
Basically, four years ago, right after God called me to acceptance, I was demoralized that it wasn’t His plan to heal me. And this was just as I was starting to force myself to sit up off the bed and start moving again despite the world spinning harder when I was sitting up.
Right then, God brought a man named Matt into life. He was an acquaintance from church from years back and he just called my mom and said, “Your daughter is isolated in there; it’s been four years; can I come visit her to just encourage her in Christ?” Matt was a biomolecular engineering PhD, a medical diagnostics professor, a cancer researcher, a part time missionary to Haiti, our church’s lay youth pastor, a backup preacher to our pastor, and honestly the most Christlike person I had ever met. In Armenian Christian circles he was known as the engineering and theology genius.
So Matt swooped into my parents’ home and started visiting me and giving me a theology of suffering. He was incredibly wise on the topic of suffering because he had healed from cancer before as a kid. But there’s a plot twist: he had just been diagnosed with a very rare terminal cancer at age 38. A different kind of cancer than his first one.
So I’m would lay flat on my bed in my home in pajamas, and he would sit next to me on a chair with his chemo pump attached, all the while telling me he’s not scared to die and telling me God is good despite his terminal diagnosis. And I was thinking, “Who are you and why are you so Christlike and can you please tell me why you are not bitter at God for possibly taking your life young, because I’m desperate for hope in my own valley,”
And the shocking thing: over the course of the first like eight visits, we literally just realized that we were falling in love! He would crack a joke then I would crack a joke. He did have a killer smile; what’s a girl to do! Not to mention the fact that I had longed for a Godly spouse for so many years in singleness, and here was this brilliant PhD who I had chemistry with and the only problem was he was dying and I was on a bed. I mean you can’t write this if you tried. After much prayer, the Lord answered us to take the gift of one another as joy in our mutual grief. In fact, our wedding verse a year later ended up being Isaiah 43:20, which is about how God gives us refreshing streams of water in our times of desert suffering.
Long story short, Matt entered glory exactly one year and three months after our wedding. I will confess that I felt like Job at that point, struggling with great bitterness despite the miracle of even being able to get married amidst both of our severe illnesses. At that point, I had lost my health, my career, then my husband. But even after countless seasons of struggle with the Lord, I finally do believe today that God has been faithful to me. Even despite all my losses. It’s taken me eight years, but I’ve finally come to realize that being “blessed” does not mean having all the typical earthly blessings.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are those who are persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. James even says “we consider blessed those who have persevered.” Turns out, God’s economy is way different than ours. Christ’s kingdom is upside down in almost all respects. The first will be last, the weak will be strong, the meek shall inherit the earth, and we find our lives by losing them and denying ourselves, and taking up our crosses.
I’ve changed a lot, clearly! I went from a prideful, goal oriented person who idolized getting good grades to being a bedridden person who is excited about eternity. A person who now believes God does want what is best for me and His ways are perfect as scripture says, even if it makes zero sense to me from an earthly perspective. Isaiah 55, the verse that says “His ways are higher than our ways,” is something I cling to every single day when Satan plants doubts in my mind that God is not good or has withheld from me.
By God’s mercy, a month after Matt died, God called me to write a book on my journey. I spent eight months laying down in bed with my laptop on my knees with my head spinning just cranking out a manuscript. I wrote it kind of like a screenplay and made it funny because I’m a comedian and I love comedic writing. And it can’t get much funnier than God giving you a husband while you’re strapped to a bed. I published the book two months ago and by God’s grace, it became a #1 Amazon bestseller in three Christian categories. It’s called Singing Through Fire, partly because I’m a jazz singer but also because it’s a metaphorical message of finding joy in Christ even in extreme adversity.
My memoir is also a deeply romantic love story, for the ladies who love a good hilarious clean romance. In our one year marriage, God gave us so many victories even amidst all Matt’s hospitalizations. Matt and I gave two testimonies and three jazz performances at church even though it was impossible for me to get in a car without spinning harder, we raised 13,000 dollars for a missions ministry in Haiti on our one year anniversary three weeks before Matt started hospice, we filmed a comical movie about being christian newlyweds who are suffering, and we even started a music and theology YouTube channel. We would record Matt preaching with his chemo pump or I would get up off the bed, sing a jazz song or do a comedy routine, and then I would slam back down on the bed.
Our ministry to our church community became this simple message: God gives us gifts of joy in the fire just like he gave us to one another, and more importantly, God calls us to have joy in the fire. Not just after. Christians always focus on the deliverance, and the deliverance is wonderful if there is one in an earthly sense, but Christ calls us to have joy while we’re still in the fire. It’s all over the New testament. Paul says “sorrowful, but rejoicing.” Give thanks in every circumstance. Paul and Silas are singing in a rat infested prison. So even though Matt and I were either in a hospital or on effective house arrest for every day of our one year marriage, we did our best to sing through the fire so to speak.
My book is also brutally honest because I wanted to comfort anyone who’s ever shaken their fist at the Lord asking, “Lord, why?” My favorite part of my book is that it explores all the many theological reasons for suffering that I’ve wrestled with. God gave me so many surprising insights which I had never understood from scripture before, and I felt called to share those.
Today, I know my life has not been wasted just because I have a chronic illness. God has used my weakness to give Christ a big spotlight, especially through my book. My book release has been incredibly healing for me emotionally precisely because it has proven to me that when God calls us to suffer, He always has a redemptive purpose for it. My husband’s main legacy was preaching that some purposes we might never know until eternity, but God always has a purpose, and He gives us sweet glimpses of at least some redemption here so we can keep trusting Him when it comes to the tragedies too. The stories where it just doesn’t seem to make sense from an earthly perspective alone. God always redeeems. Praise the Lord.
2 Corinthians 4:17: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” The Lord pressed this verse on my heart during the most difficult nights. It reminded me that my suffering is never in vain. The Lord has purposes, both temporal and eternal.
“Because He Lives.” This was my husband’s favorite song and it slowly became mine too! I even learned it on violin and played it during Matt’s hospice by his bed!
The church was such a comfort to us. Literally like Jesus’ hands and feet. Our church community brought us food, sent nonstop emails and text messages to comfort us with scripture, and even cleaned our home. Two church members even planted flowers in our backyard! After Matt died, friends sent flowers and letters and gifts, and those sweet gestures sustained my heart so powerfully. Every time I got something in the mail, it felt like a little love note from God himself.
Things to avoid:
Things to say:
Jesus has repeatedly assured me that not one ounce of my suffering is wasted. God has even sent me so many signs of comfort about how Matt is indeed alive in Heaven, in the tender and sweet way the Holy Spirit does when we lose someone. Our loved ones are alive in Glory and there is nothing to fear!
It was an incredible honor to be on this podcast. Emily’s questions were so insightful and I literally just watched about 20 episodes in one streak yesterday when I was crying and it helped my heart so much. Emily’s book is also such a powerful collection of real life testimonies. It touched my heart deeply and stiffened my resolve to trust God amidst unbearable pain and loss.