Praying...
and God's impeccable sense of humor
It started with a prayer. There’s something about praying on your knees while crying on the bathroom floor. Something religious, sacred, and comforting about the bathroom floor. My friend Nightbirde expressed it best in her poem titled, “God is on the Bathroom Floor”. When I read it for the first time, I was shocked to learn I wasn’t the only one who goes into the bathroom to turn off the lights, crawl into a little ball and cry… or pray… it seems, oftentimes, one doesn’t come without the other.
I connected with Jane, or Nightbirde as most knew her, sometime in 2021. She was going through a tough battle with an aggressive type of breast cancer and I was led to her page through my friend Maya, who had passed away in 2019 from a different type of aggressive cancer. Since her passing, Maya has continued to sprinkle magic into my life through sunflowers and sunsets and even by connecting me with people that I can share my grief with. To summarize, that is how I ended up on Jane’s Instagram; watching her viral America’s Got Talent video and messaging her in admiration. Next thing I knew, she wanted to work with me.
We began dreaming together and collaborating on ideas for her next album and I did a deep dive into her music and her words. My God, she had a gift for words. Jane had so much wisdom in her tiny frame, and I believe God used her to heal and inspire people to dream and look for the magic in their lives. God’s timing is perfect because He can equip you with resources now, that you won’t know you need for another 3 years. You can have tools and resources and information stored away in your head for years and then one day, you suddenly understand what it’s for and why you needed it.
When I first got diagnosed with cancer, my doctor told me not to even bother racking my brain trying to understand how or why it happened. These slow growing tumors had probably been developing for years, maybe I was even born with them! Maybe it was exposure to some weird chemical, maybe it was genetic, maybe it was just luck of the draw. I’ve made peace with knowing I may never figure out “how”. What I do rack my brain trying to make sense of, is that while I was sitting in hospital rooms with Maya in 2018 as chemo dripped into her veins, as Jane and I were building dream Pinterest boards in 2021, I had cancer too.
Both times I lost my friends, I remember thinking about the unfairness of it all. Why two of the brightest and most colorful souls I’d ever known had to go through those battles; how young they both were; how similarly they impacted my life; the WHY of it all. Maya taught me the words: “trust and surrender” and Jane: “you can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy”. I realize now those concepts mean different things as a spectator, and as a participant.
In hindsight, God was always preparing me. Honestly, he’s probably been preparing me for this season my whole life. I choose to see it this way because the alternative makes me feel hopeless and frantic. Suffering and especially suffering from sickness, has a way of making us feel isolated and alone. But if I learned anything (and trust me I’ve learned enough to fill an encyclopedia) from my two brilliant friends, it’s that we are never alone.
Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book Eat Pray Love, references a Sufi poem that, as she writes, says “God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now.”
I thought I was the only person that went to the bathroom floor to cry my deepest prayers. I thought I was the only person that heard God’s voice the clearest in the smallest corners of my bathroom. But Jane was that way too. And if there’s two of us, I know there has to be more. It gives me solace to think about this.
Recently, Jane’s family and team put out her new album posthumously. I wasn’t able to be a part of it like we initially had planned, and though I was disappointed and confused in the moment I learned it wasn’t going to work out, I understand now that I couldn’t have built the world Jane wanted because I needed to save my strength to rebuild my own, when it came crumbling down in the weeks after.
But all of this started with a prayer. From a young age I felt I had so much to say inside of me, I was afraid of what would happen if I didn't let it out. So I prayed for an opening. I prayed for a stage. I prayed for an audience. I prayed to be useful and valuable and light. As a child, I turned to crayons, markers, and books as outlets for my creativity. As I grew older I turned to performing, singing, and memorizing dance routines. Then I discovered how to make art with a camera and I began to create worlds and characters and bring them to life in still pictures, until those pictures weren’t saying enough. So then I started to make videos and tell stories in pictures that moved. And just as I was gaining momentum in that new medium, God told me to SIT DOWN.
My whole life has been about me creating, and making, and doing. So I didn’t take it too kindly when God slowed me down last Fall. It all happened so quickly and seemingly out of the blue. I was busy planning some upcoming projects, and a month later, I’d been diagnosed with cancer and all of my jobs had fallen through. I felt stunted. Frustrated. Confused. Alone. I imagined myself at the center of a rainbow wheel. Each color, a different facet of my life. All the things I love and know how to do, surrounding me, but no direction in which to move.
I used to say that I wasn’t good at sitting still. I’d say it with pride like it was a talent. Being still seemed like a magnificent waste of time when I had so much I could be doing instead. I realize now, that is such an unbalanced way of thinking. Life can’t be just do, do, do, and no rest. That leads to burn out and resentment and regret. I never wanted to sit still and I would often pray to stay in motion; to always have things to do so I wouldn’t get bored or become useless. Sometimes God gives us exactly what we prayed for. And let me tell you, I’ve never regretted praying for something more.
After my second surgery in February, I promptly went into calcium deficit, which is exactly what it sounds like: my body didn’t have the amount of calcium I needed. The short but incredibly scientific explanation of why this happened is that there are these little baby glands next to the thyroid called Parathyroids, and they produce calcium. They work with the thyroid to keep your body hormone levels balanced and when my thyroid was removed, my Parathyroids threw a fit because their leader was gone. They basically went on strike and halted production of calcium and this manifested itself by giving me a wildly uncomfortable full body twitch that lasted almost 7 hours.
Now, when I say “twitch”, let me paint you a picture: it started in my right eye, and it was a tiny little thing that I could barely feel but my nurse noticed it and squinted her eyes at me in suspicion. She asked me if my arms or legs felt weird and sure enough, they felt numb and heavy. That was when they started monitoring my calcium levels; it was around 3 PM. The tiny eye twitch quickly progressed and then my whole face was spasming and it looked like I was aggressively winking at everyone around me. Then it moved into my arms, which looked like short spasms but then turned into an uncontrollable flailing of my limbs. My left shoulder was the worst. I couldn’t keep it flat on the bed so it just looked like I was trying to dance to Thriller while having intense hiccups. That was around 5 PM. Finally, around 6 PM, my legs joined the party, so my whole body was uncontrollably twitching; none of these body parts syncing together, all just spasming at random intervals of time. So fun.
As the twitch began progressing, I knew it must have looked CRAZY because I remember asking my doctors why everyone was freaking out and staring (I had no idea at that point what I looked like from an outside point of view) and they told me “we know what this is and what it’s called, but we’ve just never seen it before”. coolcoolcoolcoolcool.
I laid there (well not really…) with my body rebelling against my will for 7 hours. They gave me what felt like a hundred calcium tablets and ended up having to give me two calcium drips before the twitching started to ease up and eventually stop. At the 3 hour mark I remember dramatically wondering if this was going to last forever. I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be still anymore. I was also going in and out of anxiety attacks because my mom had no idea this was happening and I was alone in the open recovery room. By the 5 hour mark I had been crying for hours, not because I was afraid, but because I was angry at God.
I had never realized I needed to be so literal and hyper specific when I prayed…. “God, you know damn well this is NOT what I meant when I asked to keep me in motion.” When I had prayed that prayer I was talking about my career and about traveling and hanging out with my friends. I was talking about changing the world and being a vessel for hope. Instead, I got to experience what it feels like to literally STAY IN MOTION. It was exhausting and terrifying and it made “stillness” seem like a luxury resort vacation that I had stupidly turned down countless times before.
The more I begged my body to be still, the more I twitched, and the more I twitched the more I regretted every time I’d had the opportunity to lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling or sit in meditative silence or veg on the couch and watch tv (I’m not proud to say I usually only watch TV while I’m also working). The anger I felt turned into despair, as I bargained with God and apologized for cursing at Him earlier. The idea of “keep me in motion” no longer appealed to me now that I had tasted its bitter jelly center.
Once the twitching fully stopped and I realized that my body was finally able to relax and be at ease, I felt like I had tapped into an enlightened zen garden oasis hidden in my mind. My thoughts spoke to me in a low, yoga instructor voice and said:
“there will always be chaos and loud noises and people bustling and tasks to accomplish because life keeps moving and you’re not the one pulling the strings. when life gives you the gift of rest, take it boldly.”
Enlightened Valheria is very wise and chill. What enlightened Valheria said to me at 2 AM in the hospital, while I was trying to get back to sleep after being woken up for routine vitals monitoring for the billionth time, is 100000% true. Amidst all that I cannot control, I can control when I exercise my ability to sit my body on a chair or lay it on the ground and breathe. What a luxury that is. It’s so good and I never want to take it for granted again.
Having an experience like this is like getting a trial run at your dreams; “if you don’t like it you can get your money back guaranteed!!” In our heads we can come up with some pretty great sounding ideas and dreams. But sometimes what we want isn’t really what we need.. or even what we actually want. I actually don’t want to stay in motion all the time. I want balance. I do want to have an exciting career and I want to travel and make things and change the world. But I also want to learn how to watch TV without feeling guilty for wasting my time. I want to travel and leave my laptop at home. I want to meditate, to sit and stop talking long enough to hear the voice of God. I want to lay in my bed and think about absolutely nothing. I want to REST.
So I’ve really leaned into resting more; and letting my days be slow. I’m recovering from cancer so honestly, what is there to rush about? Even then, rest has not been an easy thing to assimilate and receive. I constantly fight feelings of guilt and catch myself moving too fast for my own good. Sometimes I make myself physically dizzy from spinning around like a little hurricane trying to get things done. And for what? So I sit my ass on the floor and breathe. Then I get up and do it slower. I’ve also been reading Eat, Pray, Love, and marveling at how the pages I read reflect what I’m living, in a weird and universe-is-synced-with-me way. Reading this sacred text (as it’s quickly become for me) has me wanting to meditate and as they say on TikTok, be in my Eat, Pray, Love Era. I was very intrigued by the idea of silence in the Pray section but found it terrifying to actually do. What would I actually hear if I shut up long enough to listen? Would it be the voice of God? Because usually when I try, I just hear panicked voices telling me things I need to start worrying about.
My friend Savana said to me the other day, “you survived cancer and you’re afraid to sit in silence for two minutes??” ooof.
Maybe this is about how the universe uses people to guide you to the magic. All these people… from Maya, to Jane, to Savana, to even Elizabeth freaking Gilbert, and so many more that I can’t even begin to name them all out of fear I’ll sound like one of those chaotic Oscars acceptance speeches (no shade to those Oscars winners, I’d probably choke on my own spit up on that stage)… all these people that have played a role in my life in, both directly and indirectly, have been pieces to a puzzle I didn’t realize I was putting together. All the things I’ve learned from them are tools I’ve been collecting for years, keeping them in the tool box that I’m using to build the magnum opus of my life. And it all started with a prayer.
