Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

The appointment that changed everything

December. Doctor’s office. Hands wrapped around a paper cup of water. I was trying not to read into every raised eyebrow from the nurse practitioner flipping through my chart. I’d been here before; too many times. But this time felt different. The labs looked solid. My numbers? Better than they’d ever been. I could feel my body cooperating in ways it hadn’t in years. I was full of absolute cautious hope. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t bracing for bad news.

And then she said it.

“There’s one thing that’s off—it’s your thyroid.”

I froze. That word again.

But this time, it wasn’t the usual diagnosis. I didn’t hear “hypothyroidism”, my old enemy, the lifelong condition I’d fought for decades. No. This time, it was hyperthyroidism. The other side. The one I’d secretly wished for. The one I’d whispered about to God, wondering if maybe, just once, my body could run fast instead of slow. Maybe I could get a metabolism that did me a favor for once.

Look, I know how that sounds. It’s irrational. But if you’ve ever felt like you were dragging your body through life with a thousand-pound weight strapped to your back, you’d understand. I didn’t want to be sick but I did want to feel like the rules weren’t rigged against me. And somewhere deep inside, I thought this might be it. I wanted to imagine for a moment what it felt like to have a body that worked fast instead of slow. 

The hyperthyroidism miracle I thought I was getting

I walked out of that office like Tom Hanks in Castaway, proudly waving my metaphorical palm branch. If I had a volleyball, it would’ve been a whole scene. “YES! I have made fire!” This was it. The miraculous side effect I’d always heard about; unexpected weight loss. The blessing in disguise. I was ready.

Except… the disguise was hiding something else.

Days went by and then weeks followed by months. I kept waiting for the scale to drop unexpectedly. Not because of my own efforts but because of all this double-overtime my body seemed to be working. 

Instead, I got insomnia. Wild temperature swings. Crushing thirst. Restlessness that buzzed under my skin like static. All the textbook symptoms of hyperthyroidism showed up except the one I’d secretly prayed for.

When reality didn’t match the prayer

So I sat down with God.

“Really?” I asked. “Was there a mix-up in the prayer request department? Because this feels like you hit ‘reply all’ with the wrong attachment. After years of pleading and pushing and showing up, is this a joke?”

I laughed. Like, a real laugh. That slightly unhinged, ironic, are you kidding me laugh. Because how else do you respond to this kind of plot twist? You pray for breakthrough, and the heavens hand you a puzzle wrapped in irony.

That was the moment I went from Tom Hanks to Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump, climbing to the top of the boat in the middle of the storm, screaming at the sky, asking if that’s all God’s got.

I thought I was getting a shortcut. What I got was a storm.

The fire that refined me

But maybe that’s the lesson for this journal entry.

Maybe the fire wasn’t meant to burn off the weight. Maybe it was meant to burn off the old narratives. The ones that told me things had to happen on my timeline. That healing should be fast, weight should drop quickly, and that if it wasn’t happening now, it wasn’t working. The ones that made me believe that progress only mattered if it was immediate and measurable, especially after decades of living with hypothyroidism where every ounce of change felt like a war.

I expected FedEx miracle; same-day shipping and everything. We think answered prayers should come with clarity and ease. But sometimes, they arrive as disruptions. As diagnoses. God is far more concerned with healing your heart. He gave me what I asked for, but in doing so, He exposed what I really needed.

An even deeper faith, broken expectations, and a mirror to the parts of me still tangled in old definitions of worth. No, I didn’t get what I wanted, but I got what would grow me. And I’m still walking, still figuring it out, still showing up in this body, this story, this wild, unexpected version of answered prayer. I’m still moving; not because I’ve mapped it all out, not because the storm has passed, but because I trust the One who walks beside me. And that’s enough light for today.

I’ll just take my vollyball here… and…………