Amy’s Journey

Amy began her journey with cancer back in 2007, and she began a blog (if any of you haven’t yet read it and would like to follow her diary.)  Her first entry was called “Cancer is like a box of chocolates” and contains the lines “You have the chocolates you like and the chocolates you hate.  On a good day it’s as if you’ve picked a good chocolate, on a bad day, a bad chocolate.  The only thing is that the chocolates are disguised in colourful wrappers, wrappers that represent life, represent the day that has started.  You don’t know if it’s a bad chocolate or a good chocolate until you unwrap it.”

Amy spent the remaining time she had on this earth unwrapping the days one by one and along the way, she touched the lives of so many people, through her Blog, through the way she was with all the many care professionals with whom she came into contact, through the way she acted with and around her many friends, with the way she grew her faith quietly, then announced it to the world at her baptism.

The amount of stories that are coming in relating to the way Amy touched people’s lives is simply a testimony to her and the way she allowed God to use her to reach others.  Her testimony - reproduced from her baptism in last month’s Bethel Mag - has gone all over the place - to Churches up and down this country through Bethel contacts who have asked if they can reproduce her words in their own Church’s magazines.  How many people have read of her faith and her encouragement to others to put their faith in Christ we will never know this side of heaven.

What we do know is that Amy will bring more people to faith through her dying than ever she would have through her life.  (That’s a quote from God.)  While that doesn’t help us at all with the loss of not having her around in the way that she was, it might help a little bit when things are not quite so raw, in being so very thankful to God for Him allowing us to have had the privilege of knowing her and having her in our lives.

Amy’s last Blog, posted on Sunday February 1st,  was called “What to hold on for now”, and it’s reproduced here:  “People said I seemed well at Christmas and then again at my baptism a few weeks later.  Was I well?  Not really, but I guess I felt it at the time.  I know since then I’ve got a lot, lot worse.  My breathing is my slow killer and it doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon.  One person in my Church got upset the other week as they thought me being dunked when I had my baptism had been the cause of my rapid deterioration…it really wasn’t.  I think since the news of me not being around much longer started, there were certain things, not really made public, that I knew in my mind I really wanted to try and be around for.  Two of the more recent events were those mentioned above...Christmas and my baptism.  I think that’s why I’ve got worse since then, I haven’t really got any more things, planned or unplanned, to really focus on.  Sure, everyday I should focus on, but it’s not the same.  I recently got to my 20th birthday.  I wanted to make it to there and I achieved that.  I knew I wouldn’t make the milestone that is 21 but to me, 20 has been a bigger milestone than any that have passed or will have done.  I made it, and for that I couldn’t be happier.”