Lost and Found

( a.k.a. Uni Daze ) 

Life can be beautiful. Life can be messy. 

During my second year at medical school my father was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour and we were told he had 6 months to live. We were a single parent family – my mother left us some years previously and never returned. The news and effects of my dad’s illness torpedoed our world. He was to survive bravely for a further 18 months but died during the end of my third year at medical school. (side note- uni didn’t even grant me dispensation to postpone my end of term exams!) 

By the summer of 1981, my two sisters and I found ourselves living on our own. My sisters were then seventeen and five and I had just turned twenty one. We were suddenly keepers of a home with all the responsibilities which accompanied that, although these had already been mounting during the preceding months when my dad was in the palliative care hospital. I had been continuing my studies and also dashing to the hospital at break times to see him, then collecting my youngest sister from school late afternoon. On occasion I had to take my little sister to lectures with me when school was off. It was a wild time. When he died it felt like the end of my world. I felt lost. Not just in the practical sense but in terms of it impacting my emotional world hugely. We had been very close – he was an amazing man, full of fun, talent and encouragement. He had held us together as a family and he truly loved us girls. We knew that deeply. 

At around the same time, while my emotional heart was quietly in turmoil but my mind and body ‘just kept swimming’ and juggling the many responsibilities, various people came into my life who changed it for good- both in the sense of making it better but also in a ‘forever’ sense. 

An American family moved in across the road from us. This was during the time of the North Sea oil boom when Americans were flooding into the UK via the oil industry. They were so open and friendly, quite unlike all my reserved Aberdonian neighbours. They helped us in practical ways and also introduced us to their church family at International Baptist Church, now known as Hillview Community Church. We had not been church goers at all, though my father had come from a church-going background. 

Simultaneously, a fiery young Irish medical student in my class was making a big impact on me and many others by her unapologetic talk of her Christian faith at every opportunity in class. And a milder but equally enthusiastic young medical student ‘fae the Broch’, was also talking about his faith boldly and passionately with all who would listen. One story I remember was when he shared that every evening he would go out for a walk in his neighbourhood and pray for the people in each house he passed. I couldn’t believe someone would actually do that. Two things struck me- firstly, his thinking of others so caringly, and secondly- believing his prayers would have an impact! I had so many thoughts and questions about God and several of us spent lunchtimes debating things from different angles. Gradually it became less about knowledge and facts, and more about the experiential aspect of God’s reality in my life and particularly about the living reality of Jesus as someone who cared about me and the details of my life. I had always believed in God but had never contemplated the relevance of Jesus to me in the here and now. Over the course of the months that followed I decided to pray and ask Jesus to become keeper and king of my life. I knew for sure I couldn’t do life on my own with the weight of so much on me, and decided to take hold of his promise to share and carry my burdens. And I must say, this has been my reality ever since. 

Yes, life continued to be a huge challenge, especially in those early years after my dad died and I was completing my medical degree with a teenager and a baby sister in my care and guardianship, but I was no longer alone in it all. I truly felt God’s love, protection, comfort, guidance and goodness in my life and saw it in the lives of my sisters too. 

Yes- I could question why we had to lose my dad in the first place, and in general, why ‘bad’ things happen to all of us at some stage in life. And it’s ok to question these things. Life is hard. But God is real and present. He doesn’t promise us an easy life but he promises to be with us in amongst it all in palpable, tangible ways. And that continues to be true for me. 

I also felt the practical love and care of a new family around me – a faith family – disparate but not desperate, peaceful but not perfect – and they helped to carry us. In fact we carried each other at different times and still do. Those family ties are as deep, strong and vibrant as ever and they stretch around the world like a giant hug. 

In the words of King Solomon; ‘A three stranded cord is not easily broken.’ 

In the course of that year, in my extreme lostness, I felt profoundly found.