The Diagnosis Didn't Change Me

At eighteen years old, a doctor looked at my bloodwork and told me I would never be thin because I had PCOS.

Years later, another doctor burst into a room and announced that I wasn't pregnant—I had diabetes.

Then came Moyamoya disease, brain surgeries, and years of learning how to navigate diagnoses, labels, assumptions, and stories that never seemed to tell the whole picture.

In this deeply personal episode, we're exploring the difference between what explains us and what defines us.

Because labels come from many places. Doctors. Family stories. Church experiences. Other people. Sometimes even ourselves.

But none of them tell the whole story.

If you've ever felt defined by a diagnosis, a mistake, a family narrative, or a label you've carried for years, this conversation is for you.

A diagnosis can explain what is happening without defining who you are.

A label can describe a chapter without becoming the title.

EXTENDED SHOW NOTES

What happens when a diagnosis becomes part of your identity?

In this episode, Kim shares personal stories of receiving diagnoses like PCOS, Type 2 diabetes, and Moyamoya disease while exploring a deeper question many of us face:

What happens when labels begin defining how we see ourselves?

Through stories of infertility, chronic illness, family narratives, grief, faith, and healing, this conversation explores the difference between information and identity.

Together we discuss:

• The weight of labels handed to us by others
 • When diagnoses become predictions about the future
 • Learning to advocate for yourself when no one explains the whole story
 • The labels we quietly give ourselves
 • Inherited stories and misplaced shame
 • What happens when the label isn't even true
 • The difference between what God calls us and what the world calls us
 • Why the chapter is not the title

Whether the labels came from doctors, family stories, church experiences, relationships, or your own inner critic, this episode offers a reminder that God sees far more than any diagnosis, assumption, or chapter of your life.

CONTINUE THE JOURNEY

💛 Episode 25: Some of What You Call Personality Began as Survival

💛 Episode 26: What Has Been Shaping You?

💛 Episode 27: Health Became Different When It Stopped Being About My Weight

💛 Episode 28: Some People Share a Season. Some Share a Life

Resources: Available at www.healerhopegiver.com

📖 More Than the Story They Told (Reflective Workbook)

📖 What Has Been Shaping You? (Reflective Workbook)

📖 Who Helps Carry Your Life? (Companion Guide)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:27

I was still in high school when I received my first diagnosis. I was sitting in an OBGYN office with Lynn, checking off all the preventative appointments you're supposed to have before heading off to college in the fall. It was supposed to be a routine visit. Nothing dramatic, nothing life-changing. At least that's what I thought. The doctor looked at my blood work, walked in the room, and said something I will never forget. Don't worry about your weight. You'll never be thin because you've got PCOS. And that was essentially the entire explanation. No discussion, no roadmap, no conversation about what that even meant, no explanation of how it might affect my future. No mention of hormones, no mention of insulin resistance, no mention of diabetes or infertility. Just a diagnosis and a sentence. And at 18 years old, I didn't really know what to do with that information. Honestly, I don't even think I knew enough questions. I mean, I knew enough to ask better questions. I just assumed the adults in the room had told me everything I needed to know, and so I filed it away and moved on. A few years later, shortly after John and I got married, I found myself sitting in another doctor's office. This time I thought I might be pregnant. I was nauseous, exhausted, having symptoms that seemed to point in that direction. The home pregnancy test had been negative, but I wanted to be sure. So I went in for blood work. The doctor burst in the room and announced, you're not pregnant, you've got diabetes. Kind of like. I mean, he literally looked like Kramer bursting in the room and saying that. And I just immediately burst into tears. Not because diabetes was the worst thing that could have ever happened, but because I understood everything that diagnosis would mean. But or not because I understood everything that diagnosis would mean, but because, once again, my life had just been interrupted by a label that I didn't fully understand. A diagnosis, a category, a new reality, and almost no explanation. Then years later came Moya Moya. And somehow that experience wasn't much different. We had already lived through the small mini strokes while we were living in Memphis. We knew something wasn't right, but nobody seemed particularly concerned. We were told I had small blood vessels in my brain, and life simply continued. Then after we moved back to Houston, a month-long migraine led to a series of scans. The Friday before my follow-up appointment, the neurologist's office called. I asked a simple question. Why does the doctor want to see me? And the nurse paused and asked, Have you ever heard of Moya Moya? And that was all the information we got for the entire weekend. So John and I did what most people would do. We opened up Google and we spent the next two days reading everything we could find. And by Monday, we were terrified. Then we walked into the neurologist's office and she handed us the scans, pointed to the images, and said, This is what you've got. You need to find a neurosurgeon. And that was essentially the entire meeting. Three different diagnoses, three different seasons of life, three different doctors, but the same experience. Being handed a label without being handed the whole story. And over the years, I've realized something important. The diagnoses were real. The diagnoses matter, but none of them were ever the whole story. Because that's the thing about labels. They tell you something, like a data point, but they rarely tell you everything. And somewhere along the way, I think many of us begin confusing the two. We start believing that the label explains who we are, not just what we're experiencing. And those are very different things. The longer I've lived, the more I've realized that labels are strange things because labels aren't usually lies. They're just incomplete truths. PCOS was real. Diabetes was real. Moya moya was real. The diagnoses were weren't wrong. The problem was never the diagnosis themselves. The problem was what happened when the diagnosis became the entire conversation. And honestly, that's not just something that happens in medicine. It happens everywhere. We do it with other people all the time. Sometimes we do it with ourselves. A person becomes the divorced one, the anxious one, the difficult one, the addict, the special needs parent, the homeschool mom, the church lady, the successful one, the failure. The label becomes the headline. And eventually people stop looking for the rest of the story. I've experienced that more times than I can count. Sometimes the labels were medical, sometimes they weren't. At different points in my life, I could have been described as the abused girlfriend, the daughter of an adulterer, the infertile woman, the diabetic, the moya moya patient, the homeschooling mom, the weird Christian. One of my personal favorites was being called a walking cliche. Oh yes. I still laugh about that one. Because apparently being a white suburban homeschooling Christian mother meant that my life must have been completely predictable. Picture perfect, simple, neat, as if somehow checking a few boxes on the outside explained everything on the inside. And honestly, that's what labels do. They create the illusion of understanding. They convince people that they know the story when they've only read the title. Because if you only knew me as a homeschooling mom, you wouldn't know about the infertility struggles. You wouldn't know about adoption. You wouldn't know about brain surgery. You wouldn't know about the mini strokes. You wouldn't know about the grief. You wouldn't know about the years spent trying to understand what was happening inside my own body. You wouldn't know about the hard conversations, the losses, the fears, the miracles, the healing, or the faith that has carried us through it. The label might be true, but it isn't the story. And maybe that's why I've become increasingly cautious about labels over the years. Not because they have no value, they do. A diagnosis can help us understand what's happening. A label can help us communicate the experience. A category can help us find resources, support, and community. Those things matter, but they become dangerous when they stop being descriptive and start becoming definitive. When they stop describing part of the story and start replacing the story. Because once that happens, we begin seeing ourselves through the label. And when we see ourselves through the label long enough, we begin believing that the label is just who we are. I think that's one of the reasons God spends so much time in Scripture speaking about identity, because He knows how quickly we attach ourselves to the wrong things. We define ourselves by our mistakes, our wounds, our struggles, our successes, our failures, our diagnoses, our circumstances, and before we know it, we're introducing ourselves by the chapter we're currently living in instead of the person that God created us to be. I've done that, and maybe you have too. Maybe you've spent years introducing yourself through the hardest thing you've ever experienced. The diagnosis, the divorce, the addiction, the anxiety, the grief, the betrayal, the loss, the thing that changed everything. And while those experiences absolutely matter, they were never meant to become your entire identity. Because you are always more than the hardest thing that you've lived through. You are always more than the diagnosis written in your medical chart. You are always more than the chapter you're currently walking through. And I think that's something that it took me a very long time to learn. Because for years I thought understanding the label would somehow explain everything. Instead, what I discovered was that every answer simply revealed another question. Every diagnosis revealed another layer. Think of an onion, and that's just another layer. Every explanation uncovered another piece of the story. And eventually I realized something surprising. The labels explained what was happening, but they never explained who I was. Looking back now, I think one of the most damaging things about labels is that they rarely stay in the present. They often start making predictions about the future. And sometimes those predictions become the stories we tell ourselves. I was 18 years old when a doctor looked at my blood work and said, Don't worry about your weight, you'll never be thin because you've got PCOS. And I don't think he intended for that sentence to become significant. In his mind, it may have been a simple observation, a statement, a fact. But when you're 18 years old sitting in a doctor's office preparing to leave for college, those words land differently. Because what I heard wasn't information. What I heard was this is how your story ends. And you will always struggle. You will never get there. This is simply who you are. And whether I realized it or not, that sentence has followed me for years. Not every day, not constantly, but it lingered in the background, quietly shaping expectations because that's what labels often do. They stop describing the present and start predicting the future. Years later, infertility entered our lives. And suddenly that PCOS diagnosis wasn't about weight anymore. It was now a part of a completely different story. A story filled with doctor's appointments, questions, disappointment, waiting, hope, fear, prayer. The diagnosis that had once seemed like a simple explanation suddenly carried new weight. And if I'm honest, there are moments when it felt like another prediction. Maybe this is why becoming a mother will be difficult. Maybe this is why things are happening that aren't happening the way that we had hoped. Maybe this diagnosis already knows how the story will end. But here's what I've learned. Diagnoses make terrible fortune tellers. Because while PCOS was part of the story, it wasn't the whole story. The same diagnosis that sat in the doctor's office with me at 18 years old also sat quietly in the background while God wrote a completely different ending than I could have ever imagined. The infertility was real, the waiting was real, the heartbreak certainly was real, but so were the miracles, so was the adoption, so was the surprise miracle pregnancy, so were the two little boys arriving within within months of one another and completely changing our lives. And if you had asked me during the hardest parts of that journey whether that was where the story was headed, I would have had no idea. Because labels can explain obstacles, they cannot predict outcomes. The same thing has been true throughout my life. Diabetes didn't predict the years of healthier numbers that would come later. Moya Moya didn't predict survival. It didn't predict brain surgeries that would go remarkably well. It didn't predict the life that would continue afterwards. And neurofibromatosis doesn't predict who our son will become. Because every diagnosis carries possibilities, but only God sees the entire future. I've spent enough years walking with diagnoses, labels, and uncertainty to know this. The moment we start treating the diagnosis like a prophecy, we've given it authority that it was never meant to have. Information is helpful, understanding is valuable, doctors matter, medicine matters, treatment matters, but no diagnosis has ever been qualified enough to tell you who you're going to become. Only God knows that. And thank goodness he has a much better imagination than any diagnosis ever could. One of the things that surprises me most when I look back at is how many years I spent collecting pieces of information without anyone helping me connect them. I had the PCI PCOS diagnosis, then later came infertility and insulin resistance and diabetes, then more conversations about hormones, then years later, at a women's health doctor who looked at the whole picture and said she wasn't entirely convinced that PCOS was the complete explanation, that there might be something else happening higher up the chain, possibly even at the pituitary gland level. And when she said that, I remember thinking, wait, what? We've been talking about this for decades. How is this the first time that someone has connected the dots? Now, to be fair, medicine evolves, doctors learn more, research advances. What wasn't understood 25 years ago may be understood much better now. But I still find it remarkable that I mentioned PCOS to virtually every doctor I ever saw: primary care doctors, OBGYNs, endocrinologists, reproductive endocrinologists during our infertility treatments, specialists, and somehow no one ever stopped long enough to explain how all of those pieces might fit together. Instead, each appointment often felt like a single puzzle piece. One doctor focused on one thing, another focused on something else, a third focused on something entirely different. Everyone had a part of the picture, but very few people seemed interested in stepping back and looking at the whole puzzle. And honestly, I think that's true in more places than just medicine. We do this with people too. We focus on one piece, one struggle, one label, one chapter. And then we assume that we understand the entire person. But real life is rarely that simple. Real life usually is a thousand interconnected pieces, creating a story that can't be understood by looking at only the corner piece of the puzzle. I've learned that lesson over and over again through our son as well. He has neurofibromatosis. And if you've never heard of that, you're not alone. Most people haven't. What makes it particularly challenging is that it can look dramatically different from one person to another. Some people develop tumors, some have vision issues, some get cancer, some experience neurological complications, some face challenges involving the brain, spine, or other some systems. And then there are kids like our son. His primary challenges have been autism, ADHD, and learning disabilities. That's his story. But it isn't everyone's story. And that's one of the first things you learn as a parent navigating a diagnosis. The diagnosis tells you something, but it doesn't tell you everything. In many ways, we've spent years learning as we go researching, asking questions, meeting specialists, therapists, advocating, trying to understand what applies to our son and what doesn't, trying to separate information from assumptions, trying to understand the difference between possibility and reality. Because once again, the label wasn't wrong. It just wasn't the whole story. And if I'm honest, I think that's one of the biggest lessons all of these experiences have taught me. Whether we're talking about PCOS, diabetes, moya moya, neurofibromatosis, or any other diagnosis. The diagnosis is often the beginning of understanding, not the end of it. A diagnosis can tell you what you're dealing with. It cannot tell you who you're going to become. PCOS couldn't tell me that I would eventually become a mother. Diabetes couldn't tell me that I would go from an A1C level of 12.1 to 4.9 at my healthiest. Moya Moya couldn't tell me that I would survive two brain surgeries. It couldn't tell me that I would still be here today. It couldn't tell me that I would launch a podcast. It couldn't tell me I would spend years helping other people navigate healing, faith, and identity. And neurofibromatosis can't tell us who our son will become. Because that's the thing about labels. They can describe today's reality, but they cannot predict tomorrow's story. And maybe that's where we get into trouble. Sometimes we treat a diagnosis like it's a prophecy. We assume that it has already been the ending is already written. We assume it has already determined what has been what will be possible. We assume that it has already defined our future. But over and over again, life has shown me that God has a way of writing chapters that no diagnosis could ever predict. And for that, I'm deeply grateful. One of the unexpected gifts hidden inside all of these experiences is that they forced me to become an active participant in my own story. Because when you're repeatedly handed information without context, eventually you start asking questions. Lots of questions. Questions doctors don't always think to answer. Questions specialists don't always think to ask. Questions that require digging a little deeper than the surface explanation. I didn't become that person overnight. In fact, I would say that younger Kim assumed that if someone had a medical degree, they automatically knew everything there was to know about the situation. If the doctor said it, it must be the whole story. If the diagnosis existed, then that must be the complete explanation. If no one mentioned anything else, there probably wasn't anything else to know. But life slowly has taught me otherwise. Because doctors aren't bad and specialists don't not care, but because every person sees the world through the lens of their expertise. And I also learned that doctors don't get a whole lot of nutritional training, so they only get the pieces that they need. The neurologist sees another piece. The endocrinologist sees one piece. The OBGYN sees a different piece. The primary care physician sees another. And sometimes no one is standing far enough back to see the entire puzzle. That's not a criticism. It's a reality. And once I understood that, something changed. I stopped looking for someone else to hand me the answers. I started learning. I started researching, asking questions, keeping records, paying attention, trying to understand how all the pieces fit together. I've done that with my own health, with moya moya, with diabetes, with PCOS, and I've definitely done that as a parent of a child with neurofibromatosis. Because when your child has a condition that can present a hundred different ways, you quickly learn that nobody cares more about understanding the picture than the people living inside of it every day. We've spent years learning alongside our son, meeting with specialists, researching, advocating, asking questions, trying to understand what applies to him and what doesn't, trying to separate possibility from probability, trying to understand the difference between a diagnosis and a destiny. And honestly, I think that's one of the most valuable lessons any diagnosis has ever taught me. A diagnosis should make you curious, not defeated. It should help you understand what questions to ask, not convince you that there are no more questions worth asking. Because every diagnosis I've ever received has eventually led me to discover something important. There was always more to learn, always more context, always more nuance, always more story. And isn't that true of people too? The more I know someone, the more I realize how little a label tells me. The more I understand their story. The harder it becomes to reduce them to a category, which is probably why God never does that. God doesn't see labels, He sees people, He sees stories, He sees context, He sees history, He sees possibility, He sees all of the chapters at once. And maybe that's why He invites us to keep learning instead of assuming we already understood everything we need to know. A few weeks ago, I found myself frustrated with the scale. Now, if you've listened to episode 27, you already know some of the story. I have gained weight. Some clothes don't fit. I saw a photo that I don't like. And for a moment, I felt like all the progress of the previous few years had somehow disappeared. The scale was telling one story. And if I only looked at that number, it wasn't a very encouraging story. But then something happened. I stepped back and looked at the whole picture. Not just one measurement, but the whole picture, and suddenly I realized how incomplete that single number really was. Because during that same year, I had survived emergency surgery, walked through the loss of my dad, launched a podcast, undergone two cataract surgeries, grown in my faith, strengthened relationships, built resources that were helping people, learned some new skills, became more comfortable with my voice, and experienced growth in dozens of ways that can't be measured by a scale. And yet for a moment, I had allowed that one measurement to tell me the entire story. And that's when it hit me. The scale wasn't lying, but it wasn't telling the whole truth either. And the more I've thought about it, the more I realize that's exactly how labels work. They're often true. They're just incomplete. Diabetic? True. Moya moya patient? True. PCOS? True. Grieving daughter? True. Homeschooling mom? True. Christian? True. Podcast host? True. Every one of those labels describes something real. The problem is that none of them describe everything that is real. And maybe that's one of the reasons we struggle so much with identity. We're constantly trying to squeeze a whole person into a single category, a single diagnosis, a single accomplishment, a single failure, a single chapter. But people don't work that way. Life doesn't work that way. God certainly doesn't work that way. And the older I get, the more convinced I am that the more than one thing can be true at the same time. You can be grieving and grateful. You can be healing and still hurting. You can be strong and still need help. You can have a diagnosis and still have hope. You can carry scars and still have a purpose. You can be living through a difficult chapter and still be deeply loved by God and by people. More than one thing can be true. And maybe that's why labels often feel so inadequate. Because labels usually reduce complexity. God expands it. Labels flatten the story. God tells the whole story. Labels focus on one chapter or one data point. And God sees the entire book. When I look back across my life, that's what I see now. Not a collection of diagnoses and events, not a collection of labels, not a collection of struggles. I see a story. A complicated one, but a beautiful one, a painful one, but also a redeemed one. A story that God has been faithfully writing all along. And the more I understand that, the less power labels seem to have, because I know they are only describing a small part of something much bigger. If labels aren't the whole story, then what raises, and that raises an important question, who gets to define us? Because something will. If we're not careful, we'll allow our diagnoses to define us, our failures or our wounds, or our accomplishments, or our titles and careers, or other people's opinions. Human beings seemed wired to answer the question, who am I? And if we don't immediately answer it, we'll eventually allow someone else to answer it for us. I've certainly done that at points in my life. I've carried labels that were given to me and carried labels I've given myself. Some were painful, some were limiting, some were simply incomplete, but all of them had something in common. They focused on a single part of the story. And when you focus on a single part of the story long enough, it becomes easy to forget that there are other chapters. I think about the woman who receives the fertility infertility diagnosis, how easily it would be to start seeing herself through that lens, or to think about a person struggling with depression or addiction or chronic illness or grief, anxiety, divorce, failure. These experiences are real. The pain is real, the struggle is real, but none of those things are entire are the entirety of who that person is. Because if that were true, then some of the most important people in Scripture would have been forever trapped inside of their labels. Moses would have remained a murderer. Rahab would have remained a prostitute. David would have remained an adulterer. Peter would have remained a denier. Thomas would have remained a doubter. Paul would have remained a persecutor. Yet God consistently looked beyond that label, beyond the chapter, beyond the mistake, beyond the diagnosis, and saw the whole story. Not only who they were, but who they were becoming. I think that's one of the things I love the most about God. He has never looked at me and seen only a diagnosis. He's never looked at me and only seen my weight. Only the infertility, only the diabetes, only the moya moya, or the grief, or the mistakes, the struggles, or the labels. He sees all of those things, but he also sees everything else. He sees the parts that are still growing, the parts that are still healing, the parts that haven't happened yet, the chapters that are still being written. And honestly, I think that's one of the reasons the identity, healer, and hope giver has impacted me so deeply. Because when that phrase first entered my life, my reaction was, really? Are you sure? Because if I'm being honest, I could have listed a dozen other labels that felt more obvious. Patient, overthinker, strong one, survivor, homeschool mom, ministry worker. Well, podcast host wouldn't have come up at the time, but I can think of it now. You can pick almost anything. Yet God wasn't speaking to what I had experienced. He was speaking to who he was shaping me to become. And that's very different. Because identity in Christ is never limited to our current circumstances. It's rooted in who God says we are. It's not who the diagnosis says we are, not who the world says we are, not who our wounds say we are, not even who our past says we are. It's rooted in his perspective, and his perspective is always bigger than ours. That's the good news for all of us, because every one of us carries labels. Some visible, some invisible, some medical, some emotional, some spiritual, some self-inflicted, some given to us by other people, but none of them have the authority to become the title of our story. Most of them are chapters. Important chapters, meaningful maybe, sometimes incredibly difficult chapters, but still only chapters. And that's something that I've had to learn over and over again throughout my life. The diagnosis mattered. The diagnosis changed certain realities, it affected certain decisions, it required treatment, it required adaptation, but the diagnosis didn't change who I was, and it certainly didn't change who God is, which means that it never had the power to write the ending. One of the things I've learned over the years is that not every label comes from another person. Some of the most powerful labels are the ones we quietly give to ourselves. No doctor has to say them, no teacher has to say them, no friend has to say them. We decide that they are true and start carrying them around like facts. I think I've done that more times than I care to admit. Sometimes the label was the strong one, the person who could handle it, the person who would figure it out, the person who didn't need help, the person who could always carry a little bit more. And for a long time, the more that label almost I wore that label almost like a badge of honor until I realized how exhausting it was. Because the strong one still gets tired, they still get overwhelmed, they still need support, and they still need community. And sometimes the label that once protected us eventually starts limiting us. I've carried other labels too, the peacemaker, the responsible one, the one who keeps things moving, the one who figures it out, the one who doesn't make things harder for other people. Some of those labels contain truth, but even true labels can become dangerous when they become the entire story. Because eventually they stop describing behavior and start defining identity. And identity was never supposed to rest on performance. I think that's one of the reasons I've become so passionate about healing. Healing isn't just learning to let go of the labels that other people place on us. It's learning to let go of the labels that we've also placed on ourselves. The stories we've repeated, the assumptions that we've carried, the conclusions we've drawn, the things that we've accepted as permanent that God may only see as temporary. Sometimes the hardest labels to change are the ones we've been living in our that have been living in our own heads for years. The ones that sound like I'll always struggle, I'll never change, this is just who I am, this is how my story goes. This happens is what happens to people like me. And if I'm honest, I think that's part of why episode 27 impacted me so deeply. Because I realized I was still allowing one measurement to carry more authority than it deserved. I wasn't just fighting a number on the scale, I was fighting a story. A story that suggested one measurement could somehow summarize an entire year of growth, and yet it couldn't. Just like one diagnosis couldn't summarize my life, just like one label can't summarize my identity, just like one chapter can't summarize the entire book, the older I get, the more I realize that healing often looks like replacing incomplete stories with truer ones. Not pretending the struggle doesn't exist or that the diagnosis isn't real, not pretending that the chapter didn't happen, but refusing to let any one thing become bigger than the story that God is writing. Because the truth is, I'm not just the strong one, I'm not just the survivor, not just the patient, not just the grieving daughter or the homeschooling mom. I'm not just the woman with PCOS or diabetes or moya moya, and neither are you. You are always more than the labels that you carry. And God has always seen that, even when we forget it. One of the reasons I've become so cautious about labels is because I've watched how easily people can mistake perception for reality. Sometimes labels are incomplete truths, and sometimes they aren't true at all. Growing up, one of the stories attached to my family was that my father had been unfaithful during my parents' divorce. And over time, that perception became part of the narrative, part of the explanation, part of the way some people understood what had happened. The problem was it wasn't true. It was only perception, a story, an assumption that somehow became accepted as fact. And when you're young, it doesn't really matter whether the label is accurate enough when people treat it like it is. I mean, if enough people treat it like it is. What I didn't realize at that time was how much of that story I was carrying myself. Not because I believed my father was defined by it, but because somehow I felt defined by it. I was called and carried that label of being the daughter of an adulterer, even though my father wasn't one. And looking back now, what strikes me the most isn't just that the label was false. It's that even if it had been true, what did that even have to do with me? Why was I carrying the shame that wasn't mine? Why was I allowing someone else's perceived failure to become part of my identity? I was his daughter, not the decision maker, not the participant, not the person responsible, just the daughter. And yet for years that label lingered in ways that I didn't fully understand. That's the thing about labels. They don't just attach themselves to the people involved. Sometimes they spread. Sometimes they get handed down. Sometimes they land on people who never earned them and were never meant to carry them. And I think we've all experienced that in one way or another. Maybe not through a divorce story, but through a misunderstanding, or maybe a rumor, or a stereotype, or a family wound, a parent's choices, a spouse's decision, a church conflict, a narrative that somehow became attached to us, even though it wasn't ours. The reality is that people are complicated. Stories are complicated. Families are complicated, and most of the time, the truth is far richer than the headline. Because if you know or knew about my father, what you would know that that perception wouldn't have categorized him at all. You wouldn't know the way he loved his family. You wouldn't know how fiercely he loved his children. You wouldn't know the grandfather that he became. You wouldn't know the relationships that he nurtured. You wouldn't know the kindness, humor, loyalty, and generosity that shaped so much of our family culture. You wouldn't know the man that I know. One of the greatest gifts of my life was being his daughter, not because he was perfect, because he wasn't. None of us are, but because I had the privilege of knowing who he truly was, not the rumor, not the assumption, not the simplified version, the real man. The man whose loss still leaves an ache in my heart because he loved us so well. And maybe that's part of what I've learned about labels. Sometimes they don't just leave things out. Sometimes they tell the wrong story entirely. Sometimes they reduce a human being to a headline. Sometimes they ask us to carry burdens that never belong to us. And one of the most freeing moments in healing is realizing we don't have to keep carrying them. I can love someone without becoming responsible for their story. I can honor someone without carrying their labels. I can acknowledge what happened without allowing it to define who I am. Because my story and my father's story was never my identity. One of the things that I've learned over the years is that life has a way of handing us chapters we would have never chosen. If someone had asked 18-year-old Kim to map out her future, I can promise you that Moya wouldn't have made the list. Neither would infertility, neither would diabetes or brain surgery, or years of trying to understand what was happening inside my own body. Those weren't chapters I would have volunteered to write, and yet they became part of my story. Just like grief became part of my story, just like church hurt became part of my story, special needs parenting became part of my story, just like all the beautiful, difficult, surprising things that none of us can predict that eventually become part of our story. The question isn't whether we will have difficult chapters because we will. The question is whether we'll mistake the chapter for the title. Because those are very different things. A chapter tells you what's happening right now. A title tells you what the entire story is about. And somewhere along the way, many of us begin confusing the two. We experience something painful, something difficult, something life-changing, and before we know it, we've allowed the chapter to become the lens through which we view everything else. The diagnosis becomes the title, the divorce becomes the title, betrayal becomes the title, addiction, grief, failure, even becoming a victim can become the title. And eventually we stop expecting anything beyond the chapter because we've convinced ourselves that that chapter is the whole book. But it isn't. One of the reasons I know that is because I've lived long enough to see God keep writing. The PCOS diagnosis was not the end of the story. Neither was infertility. Diabetes, moya moya, surgeries, grief. Every time I thought I understood the shape of the book, another chapter appeared. Some joyful, some painful, some unexpected, some deeply beautiful. And every one of them reminded me that God wasn't finished writing. I think about all the labels I've carried throughout my life, some given by doctors, some by other people, some I gave myself. And if I'm honest, some of them felt incredibly heavy because labels often come with assumptions. People hear a label and think they know the whole story. Sometimes we hear a label and think we know the whole story, but God has never been limited by assumptions that we attach to our labels. He has never looked at a diagnosis and said, Well, I guess that's all there is. He's never looked at a difficult chapter and decided that that story was over. He has never looked at a person and reduced them to a category, because God sees what we often miss potential, growth, healing, redemption, possibility, future. He sees the chapters we haven't lived yet. And maybe that's one of the greatest gifts of faith, the ability to believe that the current chapter is not the final chapter. Not because we deny reality, not because we ignore the difficult things, not because diagnoses aren't real, they are, but because we serve a God that has a long history of doing meaningful work in the middle of stories that look unfinished. And sometimes that meaningful work isn't even about us. It can be for somebody else. Stories that looked broken, stories that look impossible, stories that seem defined by a single chapter until God revealed there was more to come. And if I'm honest, that's one of the reasons I have so much hope today. Not because every question has been answered, not because I suddenly understand everything about my body, and not because every diagnosis has been perfectly explained. I still have questions. There are still things I don't understand, still pieces of the puzzle that don't completely fit. But I no longer need the answers in order to trust the author. Because I've watched him write enough chapters to know that he sees more than I do. And if he sees more than I do, maybe I can stop allowing a single chapter to carry more weight than it was ever meant to. Maybe I can stop treating labels like endings. Maybe I can stop assuming that today's reality automatically determines tomorrow's possibilities. Maybe I can trust that there are still pages that haven't been read yet. Maybe you can too, because whatever label you've been carrying, whatever diagnosis you've received, whatever chapter you're currently living, it may explain something important, it may explain a struggle, it may explain a reality, it may explain a season, but it does not have the authority to become the title of your story. Only God gets to write that. As I've reflected on all of this, I've realized that labels come from all kinds of places. Some come from doctors, some come from other people, some come from difficult experiences, some come from assumptions, some come from wounds, some come from stories that we've quietly repeated to ourselves for years. Over the course of my life, I've carried a lot of things. PCOS, diabetes, moya moya, strong one, survivor, homeschool mom, walking cliche, daughter of an adulterer. Some of those labels were true, some partially true, and some weren't true at all. But every one of them had something in common. None of them told the whole story. And maybe that's the lesson I've spent years learning because the danger was never the label itself. The danger was allowing the label to become larger than the person carrying it, allowing the diagnosis to become an identity, a chapter to become the title, a moment to become destiny, allowing someone else's opinion to become my truth. And if I'm honest, I think we all do that sometimes. We take one thing that happened, one thing someone said, one diagnosis, one failure, one wound, one disappointment, and we begin viewing our entire lives through that lens. But God never has. God has never looked at me and only seen the diagnosis, only the struggle, only the grief, only the mistake, only the label. He sees the whole story. The chapters that have already been written, the chapters that are still being written, the chapters I can't even see yet. And maybe that's why I have so much hope. Because when I look back across my life, the labels were never the most important part of the story. Not the PCOS, the diabetes, the moya moya, infertility, grief, not any of it. The most important part of the story was God's faithfulness through every chapter. His faithfulness when I didn't understand, his faithfulness when I was afraid, his faithfulness when I was carrying labels that felt heavier than they should have, his faithfulness when I couldn't see what he was doing, his faithfulness when he was writing chapters I never would have imagined. The girl with PCOS became a mother. The woman with diabetes learned that health is about more than a number. The Moyamoya patient survived brain surgery and kept living. The grieving daughter learned that love is bigger than loss. The homeschooling mom launched a podcast. The woman carrying labels discovered that God has a different name for her. And if there's one thing I hope that you remember today, it's this a diagnosis can explain what's happening without defining who you are. A label can describe a chapter without becoming the title. And no matter what label you've been carrying, God is still writing your story. There are still pages ahead, still chapters ahead, still growth ahead, still purpose ahead, because the author is not finished yet. And the author always has the final word. If this episode resonated with you, you might find these conversations helpful. Episode 25, Some of What You Call Personality began as survival, exploring how many of the traits, coping mechanisms, and behaviors we assume are simply who we are may have started as adaptations to earlier experiences. Episode 26, what has been shaping you? A deeper look at the influences, experiences, and patterns that quietly shape our lives and identities over time. And episode 27, health became different when it stopped being about my weight. An exploration of why a single measurement can never tell the whole story of a person's growth, healing, or health. And episode 28, some of what people some people share a season and some share a life. Discover how God uses relationships to shape, support, and carry us through different chapters of our lives. And then there are resources that have been built to help with these, more than just the story they told. And it's a guided reflective workbook designed to help you identify the labels you've carried, examine the stories attached to them, and discover the differences between what you've experienced and who God says you are. What has been shaping you? Another reflective workbook to explore the experiences, beliefs, and survival patterns and influences that have shaped the person you are today, who helps carry your life to reflect on the people God has used to support, encourage, and sustain you throughout different seasons of your life. All of them are available on the website. One thing that is new is that each episode now has its own conversation page on the website. If you visit healerhopgiver.com, click on the podcast page, you'll find links to the current conversations. From there, each episode has its own page where you'll find the audio episode, the YouTube version, related conversations, companion resources, and additional ways to continue exploring the themes that resonate most with you. If you're brand new to our space, you'll also find the Start Here page designed to help you find a few single, gentle starting points based on where you are right now. And coming very soon, you'll be able to explore episodes by topic and theme, making it easier to follow specific healing, faith, identity, grief, health, or relationship journeys throughout the podcast. My hope is that it makes it easier to follow the connections between these conversations and discover the next step that feels meaningful for your own journey. Hey friends, thank you for spending part of your day with me. One of the things I've learned over the years is that labels have a way of shrinking stories. They reduce people to diagnosis, to assumptions, to mistakes, to a single chapter, a single moment, a single piece of information, but people are rarely that simple. And neither are the stories that God is writing. As I've reflected on my own life, I've realized that some of the labels I've carried were true, some were partially true, and some weren't true at all. But none of them were ever the whole story. Not the stories that other people told, not even the stories I sometimes told myself. Because every chapter, God was always doing something bigger than I could see at the time. And maybe that's true for you too. Maybe you're carrying a diagnosis or a label someone gave you years ago. Maybe you're carrying a story that you've quietly accepted as your identity, or carrying something that was never yours to carry in the first place. Whatever it is, I hope you'll remember this. A diagnosis can explain what is happening without defining who you are. A label can describe a chapter without becoming the title. And no matter what the story is that you've been handed, God is still writing the rest of it. There are pages still ahead, still growth ahead, still healing ahead, and still purpose ahead. Because the author isn't finished yet. If this episode encouraged you, I hope you'll share it with someone who may need this reminder today. And if you haven't already, I'd love for you to follow the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast app. Following the show helps more people discover these conversations and become part of our growing community. As always, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for allowing this space to be one where healing, faith, and honest conversations can coexist together. I'll meet you back here on Thursday for our devotional episode as we continue exploring what it means to find our identity in the one who sees the whole story. Until next time, keep practicing healing, keep holding on to hope. And remember, the chapter is not the title. I'll see you on Thursday.