I love words! Once you begin a conversation with me, you might as well sit down. I love the way you can move words around and say the same things in different ways. I love that you can communicate time, location and intention with how you say something. I love words, because only through words can you truly understand. Our eyes and our feelings get so much wrong, because we impose our own frame of reference on what we see and how we feel. Through words, other perspectives are brought to life. Isn’t perspective—the point of view from which we perceive—the key to understanding? Allow me to illustrate with a few stories from my life.

I grew up the middle child with two brothers in the projects in Beaver Falls, Pa., not far from Geneva College. My mom occasionally took us to a Catholic church, but my parents have not shown any abiding interest in God. They had us when they were still children themselves, with little support from either side of the family. My dad lost his job when the steel mills went under, so my parents had plenty to do just to keep a roof over our heads. They had very little time to be involved in our lives. If only we had been a closer family, or had a little more money, more support, my life would have been different.

The weekend I graduated from high school, I left home. I had no money, so I lived with my grandparents for three years. I bounced from job to job for another seven years, before I went to Geneva College full-time and got my teaching degree. If only I could have gone to school right away, my life would have been different.

When I finally went to school, I got very sick halfway through the first semester of my senior year. What I thought was a simple case of bronchitis was actually adult-onset asthma. It was so bad that I spent most of two months in the hospital, including a scary five-day trip to the ICU when the doctors couldn’t get my lungs to open up. I had to take the rest of the year off from school and work to heal. If only I hadn’t gotten sick or if only I had gone to the doctor sooner.

When I finally graduated from college (the first in my family to do so), I met a guy online I was crazy about. With all due diligence and the blessing of everyone who was important in my life, I moved to Connecticut. The first week I was there I was fired from my job because of the way I looked. I got another job, which I lost two years later because of a change in management. The following summer, after a year at a third new job, I was fired because I asked for a medical leave when doctors thought I had cancer. After three surgeries, the doctors cleared me to go back to work.

I substituted in one of the worst inner city school systems in the country and was about to begin a full-time job when a car accident left me with little hope of ever walking again, at least not without several more surgeries. I felt alone, because the man who said he was going to marry me had gotten involved in a financial cult and stopped coming to church while we were in premarital counseling. If only I had stayed in Pittsburgh, or gone back sooner. If only I hadn’t taken that shuttle to the airport that morning. Oh, the if onlys I have from the Connecticut debacle.

One day, while I was sitting in my apartment after the accident, unable to walk, not knowing what to do, I had a friend call attention to all my if onlys. “Michelle,” she said, “I feel so bad for you….Your life would be so different if only you had known a loving family growing up…blah, blah, blah.…Your life would have been so different.” She was right. I knew then, as I know even more so now, that my life would have been different, but as I told her that day, I wouldn’t have traded my life for another—not one second of it.

I know that long before my life even began, a plan was made for me—a plan that brings glory to the God that I serve; a plan that will make me the person He wants me to be; a plan that cost Christ His life to redeem me out of my sin and misery. Whether it was in a Bible school in the projects, or sometime in my late teens when I discerned it and became a member of a church, Christ took a hold of me. Despite my kicking and screaming since, He has never let go.

I’m committed to serving and bringing glory to a God who is perspective changing. He has turned every one of my if onlys into becauses.

Because I lived in the projects, I heard the gospel in Bible school as a child. Because my mom perpetually forgot to pick me up from band practice in high school, I became friends with the daughter of an elder at Eastvale RPC, where I recognized Christ’s call on my life and began to learn about His Word and His promises to me.

Because I bounced around in jobs for 10 years before college, I had amazing experiences where God convinced me that He was working through my life. I spent 4 years working at a residential facility for handicapped kids which has garnered me much experience in working with children in their developmental stages. I have been able to help so many people because of the knowledge I gained there.

Because I needed a job, I spent a year of that time at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary as the cook/den mother. As a member of the seminary/CUBM community, I grew more that year as a Christian and as a person than at any other time in my life. I formed some of the most incredible and lasting relationships of my life.

Because of the asthma attack my last year at Geneva, I learned to submit to God in the most amazing way. As Reformed people, we talk about trusting God for every breath. That is just words until you try to breathe and your lungs don’t work. The morning I was rushed to the ICU, as the pulmonologist ran around trying to figure out what to do next to open my airway, I felt moments of utter helplessness. I knew that I couldn’t save myself, the doctors couldn’t save me, and the only reason I would continue to breathe was because God allowed me to. It was a precious and terrible feeling that I would never wish on anyone, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. There has been a peace in my life, because of that moment, that is sometimes shaken, but has never deserted me since.

Because of the shaking of my perspective received in Connecticut, I learned that Christ in me makes me stronger than I ever thought I could be. As people who I thought loved me disappointed me, as I lost job after job—I knew God was there, somewhere in the mess. I saw Him provide for me time after time after time as I just kept going. When I lost my job the day after doctors said I most likely had either leukemia or breast cancer, God raised up a handful of unbelievably loyal friends in Connecticut to support me. When what started out to be a short and simple needle biopsy under conscious sedation turned into surgeons removing several large lumps from my breast while I was awake, I sang Psalms aloud to the entire operating room the whole way through it.

In recovery, the doctor seemed encouraged by the long-term prognosis, but was sure that there was a malignancy because of the eight lumps they found. Dozens and dozens of people prayed and waited a long week alongside me as the doctor first tested and then retested the biopsy. He looked dumbfounded in his office as he told me a week later, “I’m sorry to have scared you, but I’ve never seen such extensive tissue abnormality not be cancer.” He thought it was a coincidence. I knew that God had healed me.

Because of a car accident a year and a half later, I learned about the power of God working through His people. When I realized I wasn’t going to be able to walk for a long time, if ever, I finally gave in. The few friends I had gathered in Connecticut, along with the ones who drove 9 hours from Pittsburgh, packed my stuff and brought me home in a blizzard the weekend before Thanksgiving. A contractor had been working for a month to build an accessible apartment in the home of Sam and Meg Spear. I found so much love and healing in that little apartment. It was like the Prophet Elijah’s cave where the birds brought him food. I studied the Scriptures, prayed with friends and fought through some of the most painful times in my life. I was surrounded by half a presbytery of people willing to do all they could to help me to heal physically and emotionally.

With that healing came a spiritual growth spurt of epic proportions. I adopted this prayer for my own:

Take the full possession of my heart, O Lord. Raise there Thy throne, and command as Thou dost in heaven. Being created by Thee, let me live to thee. Being created for Thee, let me ever act for Thy glory. Being redeemed by Thee, let me render unto Thee what is Thine and let my spirit ever cleave to Thee alone! –John Wesley

I remember finally saying to God, “Apparently You’ve got me and You’re not letting go. So I guess I can. I have no idea what You are thinking but I’m all in. I trust You to know what is best for the rest of this life You’ve given me.”

As my legs inexplicably got stronger and stronger, I began attending worship again at North Hills RP Church. I was doing 2-3 hours of physical therapy 4-6 days a week and taking a large number of pain killers just to be able to move. On Feb. 27, one my best friends nursed me through yet another birthday as a single girl with no prospects. I was not only 36 years old, but now I was truly “broken,” with legs that did not ever seem like they would work right again. In my heart, I knew the truth of Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” I went to sleep resigned to the fact that, for some reason, God was calling me to be alone for the rest of my life.

The next day, like any other Sunday, I got up and went to church. I probably would have spent a little more time on my hair had I known my future husband was going to show up there and sit down next to me! Two weeks later, I went off of pain medications entirely. Four weeks after that, I was able to walk across the Smithfield Street Bridge in Pittsburgh, ride the incline to the top of Mt. Washington, and dance on the lookout platform as Michael proposed. Because I was forced by that crippling accident to return to Pittsburgh, I walked down the aisle and became Mrs. Michael Fulk less than a year later. I have found the place God wants me to be.

If onlys are regrets that I can have. When I am afraid that I have just missed out on something I need to accomplish my plans for my life, I can become really discouraged. Oftentimes what I want and what God knows I need to accomplish His plan for me are two different things, and it is so hard to see that. I am learning to look with better eyes—eyes that have seen Christ, what His love has done in my life, and the peace that His blood bought for us on the cross. These eyes have seen the truth of 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” My new eyes give me a new perspective that influences everything I am.

I am a new person now with a new vocabulary. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). I don’t have if onlys. Not that I’ve figured out the ends to all of my becauses. But I know the One who understands my becauses, and I trust Him to finish the sentences in His time and for His purposes.

—Michelle Fulk is a wife, writer, teacher and proud puppy-momma. She and her husband, Michael, attend the Southside Indianapolis, Ind., RPC.