by Sarah Browning, Staff Writer
Senior Anna Leigh Morrow had what she describes as an “enchanted” childhood. She grew up on a farm in Lancaster, Kentucky, and she and her four younger sisters were homeschooled by their two loving parents.
“I had a sheltered life as far as being protected from bad things and hard things,” Anna Leigh said. For her, coming to Asbury was a similar experience to her happy childhood on the farm; it was a small, Christian college somewhat removed from life’s rough edges.
But in July of 2016, Anna Leigh’s baby sister, Verity, was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a very aggressive form of brain cancer. Being 13 years older than Verity, Anna Leigh always felt very maternal and protective towards her little sister. Anna Leigh babysat for her, changed her diapers and rocked her to sleep at night.
“I noticed she was a lot like me in a lot of ways: very passionate about reading and learning, very interested in things and curious and exploring,” Anna Leigh said. “We have always had a really special bond.”
It took two surgeries to remove all of Verity’s tumor before she went into intense chemotherapy and radiation. Anna Leigh said, “When all of that started, I went through a very dark place of questioning God, because it was the first time I had ever hit against anything in my life that didn’t make sense.”
Anna Leigh, her sister and the rest of their family were covered in prayers by many faith-filled people, and it started to look like their prayers were being answered. The doctors said the tumor was benign, but when they removed it, they discovered it was cancerous. “There was a lot of give and take,” she said. “It felt like God was laughing at me.”
“It was never really a question of whether God existed or whether he was powerful, because that’s ingrained in me,” she said. “It became a question of why do I bother when he doesn’t care about me or about my little sister.”
Anna Leigh returned to school feeling depressed, lonely and isolated. She was angry at God and afraid of what might happen next. “I was afraid to stop praying because I was afraid that if I did, [Verity might die].”
Spiraling deeper into darkness, Anna Leigh finally realized she needed help. She decided to go to Asbury’s counseling center. “It was very humbling for me, because I always felt like the person who didn’t need that, who could take care of [my] own problems,” she said. “I always felt like it’s not a bad thing to go to that, but I don’t need it.”
Counseling was not what Anna Leigh had expected. “What I expected was for someone to try to shove God down my throat,” she said. Instead, they began to help her to understand her own feelings towards her circumstances and God.
“The most helpful thing they had me do was to write out everything that I knew to be 100 percent true about God,” she said. “He is present. He loved us enough to die for us. He gives us life after death. They were things I didn’t want to be comforted by, but they were still there, and I couldn’t get around them.”
Being at Asbury was helpful to Anna Leigh at such a challenging time in her life. She had friends, students and professors praying for her and her family. She said, “I had friends who prayed with me and just let me cry. In their rooms. On their shoulders. They didn’t ever accuse me or judge me for where I was.”
“Verity’s struggle is ongoing, and my faith is an ongoing thing, too,” Anna Leigh said. “I still have a lot of sadness and a lot of questions, but I also have a lot more hope than I did. And I have a different perspective on the type of peace that we’re promised and the type of life we’re promised. It’s never guaranteed that this life will be easy, but it is guaranteed that it can be full. We are promised that temporal life is not all that there is.”
Anna Leigh says she has learned that “God’s love keeps growing to meet whatever challenges we face. It’s bigger than any anger we feel towards him, and it’s a love that follows us no matter how far we run away. Because I was running from him and telling him to leave me alone, but he wouldn’t. He loves us enough to follow us into the darkest places we go and hold us there.”
The sadness, difficulty and questions have not disappeared from Anna Leigh’s experience; it has not gotten easier, but she has faith in God. “His healing is something we can’t understand when we’re standing in the midst of the darkness, but it transcends it.”
Photo by Brody McKinnon