GO LIVE!
I wrote this post from my car while sitting in my car, still parked outside the cardiologist’s office. I’d just received the results of a final screening that was part of a cardiac workup and was sitting with the weight of what it all means.
Back story…
My father passed from hATTR amyloidosis and congestive heart failure. He also had high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
My mother had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, renal failure, a heart attack, and triple bypass surgery. She ultimately died from a stroke that took her brain function almost immediately.
My brother—my only sibling—died from a heart attack at 44.
And, all of this happened within three years. 😢
With that kind of history, I needed to know what I was working with. I go to the doctor regularly for physicals. The usual flags show up—high LDL (mostly from food), prediabetic, low vitamin D—but nothing alarming. Still, I wanted to be sure.
So, I went to my father’s cardiologist for genetic testing to see if I carried the hATTR gene—the ‘h’ is for hereditary. I don’t.
I had a full cardiac workup with my personal cardiologist, including an EKG that showed some signs of a cardiac activity. He told me not to worry because I showed no other symptoms and then recommended a coronary calcium scan to learn my calcium score. On this visit, we discussed my calcium score of 0 and what that means.
Unlike math test scores, 0 is perfect! Statistically, I now have a five-year guarantee of no cardiac events.
Then, my cardiologist looked at me and said, “I just want you to do one thing.” He then gives this super awkward pause and I’m thinking, “Yeah, I know: lose weight, eat fewer honey lemon pepper chicken wings, or something similar.” Nope.
He says, “Go live!”
And it freed something in me.
I didn’t realize how much fear I’d been carrying. Fear of something happening to me. Fear of my kids being without their mom. Fear of my husband having to face life without me. If all of this could happen to my parents and my brother, then surely it could happen to me too.
But that day, I exhaled. I realized that I can let those fears go.
I think in that moment, I understood David’s position when he declared in Psalm 118:17:
I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done. (NIV)
Of course, I will physically die one day—that’s part of life. What my cardiologist was really telling me was to let go of my fears and anxieties about my health. He helped me realize that my portion did not have to be tied to to those of my parents or brother.
He freed to … LIVE!
You want to know something interesting? There was a flag in my genetic testing. There was a single marker they couldn’t identify. Not bad, just different. Uncommon. They have no clue what it means because not enough people have the marker for it to have been researched and declared scientifically significant.
Yet, I like to think that God marked my heart as special. So unique that science can’t define it.
So I’m going to take this special heart that He gave me and LIVE.
For God.
For my family.
For me.
If you’re reading this, maybe He’s telling you to do the same.
Because what we inherit is just the beginning…
What fear, expectation, or weight are you carrying that’s keeping you from fully living?
What might it look like to release it today?