Finding God in the Shittiness of Life

Turning Upward, Even When It Feels Like Life Sent a Bird to Shit on You

Life can sometimes feel like a big ass bully. Imagine feeling as free as you have ever felt, then while you are deep in that blissful moment of freedom, where the sun is glistening and the waves are gently crashing and the sand is massaging your overworked feet, a bird flies over and takes a big fat shit on you. But while you are cleaning all the bird shit off, you remember everything happens for a reason. So you try to look for all the possible reasons the bird shit on you, and it’s easy to get deep and philosophical when you’re looking for good reasons that shit happens. And in your research you find a book titled Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler. Then you learn that life can sometimes be shitty for no reason at all.

The Dream of My Dreams

I spent good portion of 2021 planning a trip I thought would define the rest of my life. I worked my ass off to pay my debts and save as much as possible. I would spend hours in my car driving for Lyft and Uber, even after I got off my regular 9–5 job. But this trip was going to be worth it. I was finally pursuing my dreams of living out of my backpack. 2022 was going to be the best year of my life. I spent hours researching all the eastern European cities I was going to visit. I talked my friends ears off about this trip. I told every Lyft and Uber passenger, with exquisite detail about my life-changing travel plans. I even sold and donated almost everything I owned. With a smile on my face and a feeling of liberation, my roommate and I carried all my belongings to the front yard of our San Diego flat. I let some of my most prized possessions go at a fraction of what I paid for them. I just wanted it all gone as quickly as possible so I’d finally be free to travel the world.

The Shittiest of Shit

But one November day, just as I was concluding my last week in San Diego, my plans came to a screeching halt. This is when life decided to be a bully and send a bird to take a big fat shit on me or at least it felt that way. I started having difficulty swallowing my food. Ironically, it started on Thanksgiving Day. It was so bad it hurt to swallow my own spit. After a few days of this I decided to go to the emergency room just to be turned away with no help and no answers. So I did what any millennial would do in my situation and researched my symptoms. The causes for dysphagia were frightening to say the least. Dysphagia, if you don’t already know, is the medical term for difficulty swallowing, and there are many causes for it, most of them being real fucking scary.

After my extensive research on dysphagia, I was convinced I had esophageal cancer while hoping it was achalasia. Achalasia is when your esophagus slowly becomes paralyzed, typically caused by an autoimmune disorder. Both are awful diagnoses. But I didn’t want to be diagnosed with esophageal cancer, so I was praying it was achalasia. The only way to know for sure was to get an upper endoscopy. After calling numerous gastrointeroligists, I finally found one who would take me without a referral. After explaining my symptoms, they put a rush order on my upper endoscopy. My telephone appointment was on a Friday and my procedure was scheduled for the following Tuesday. I was finally going to get the answers I needed. And the procedure was scheduled before my flight to Budapest, so I told myself that if it wasn’t too serious I was going to continue on with my trip and learn to cope with the difficulty swallowing.

Procedure day had finally arrived. I was an anxious mess. I knew they would find something, and that something was not going to be good. My sister brought me to the appointment, and I remember looking at her and apologizing to her beforehand. I wanted to say sorry before the bomb dropped. Being young and single, my biggest fear was that I was going to have to completely depend on my sister and her family if it turned out to be something serious.

The attending nurse could tell I was wrecked with fear. She was so sweet and so patient. She held my hand and comforted me before I was sedated. The first words I heard when I woke up from the procedure were from the doctor himself, “No cancer — there is no cancer.” My first reaction was to start crying. I hugged the nurse with tears running down my face while thanking God for the good news. But I still didn’t know why I was experiencing difficulty swallowing. I still didn’t have the answers I wanted, but I didn’t have cancer, and that’s all that mattered in that moment.

In the coming weeks the dysphagia would come and go. Some days my esophagus would get so full I’d have to regurgitate and other days it was like nothing was ever wrong. By this time I had lost over twenty pounds, so on the good days I would eat as much as possible. I decided with the good news from my specialist, coupled with my coping strategies, my trip was still on. Nothing was going to stop me from going. Well, almost nothing. I tested positive for Covid the day before my flight. Perhaps there was a higher reason for this, perhaps not.

I spent the weeks to follow recovering from Covid and binge watching Grace and Frankie. While I should have been exploring every corner of Budapest, enjoying cute cafes and admiring architecture that doesn’t exist in the United States, I was laid out in my sister’s living room floor, filling Ziploc bags with snot-filled tissues and letting Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda make me forget about the shittiness of life, and they do a really good job at making people forget about the shittiness of life by the way. Laughing is sometimes the best medicine and them two serve it up real well.

Fast forward to a full recovery from Covid, and my intermittent dysphagia persisted and more symptoms began to pop up. Dysphagia, digestive issues, globus sensation, and the most odd pains I have ever felt — all over my body. After an upper endoscopy, colonoscopy, swallow study, CT scans, MRI, stool tests, and numerous labs, I still do not have answers. I have heard of medical mysteries, but I never thought I would be one. I went from being terrified of cancer to hoping they would just find something that would explain why I feel the way I feel.

Finding God in the Shittiness

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how bad the bird shit on me or give you a happy ending filled with bright reasons for my dark times, but what I can tell you is even in the waiting and even when it feels like you are trudging through the deep part of life, there is beauty and light. Even if it feels like life is serving up the shittiest experience and even if you can’t find the reasons for the shittiness, you can find solace in knowing we have a Creator who loves us relentlessly and without condition, and you can find confidence in knowing you carry the power to brighten dark rooms.

Before all my troubles started, I referred to myself as a skeptic, sometimes even an atheist. A shitty church experience along with my mom’s passing made me pissed off at God. I was mad that God let me feel hated for being gay and I was mad that God allowed my mom to pass away at such a young age. And truth be told, I should be even more pissed for God allowing me to go through such awful health problems at only 31, but the truth is I have never felt closer to God. I went from feeling shame, anger, and utter ambivalence when it came to the possibility of a Higher Power to feeling intimately intertwined with the Creator of the Cosmos.

Final Thoughts

There are many lessons you can take from my story. Perhaps the lesson is to not search Google for medical advice or maybe it’s to avoid getting ahead of your doctors. Maybe the lesson is to be your own best advocate when you are forced to navigate the healthcare industrial complex or maybe it’s to just accept the shittiness of life when it comes. Maybe you’ll take with you many lessons. But one thing I hope you take from my shittiness is that when you are experiencing shittiness in your own life is that you know we have a God who loves us deeply, without condition.