Scarred but Strong: A Journey of Faith, Healing, and Hope

Josh Stephens: I did the spring break is over.
Cool, that's what I thought.
But man, we get to come back, and we do.
We get to come back to campus.
We get to see people.
We find out love is in the air.
Elena Whittle got engaged.
Way to go, Elena.
[APPLAUSE]
I don't know if we congratulate Braxton or not,
but we congratulate you.
That's good.
That's good.
We're happy for both of y'all.
But I'm really excited.
As you heard Braxton talk about Chapel this week,
there's a lot of really wonderful things
that are taking place.
We got breakout chapel tomorrow with three great options.
We have best friends leading us in worship on Thursday.
And we're in for a treat today, because we get
to hear from Malori Rogers.
If you know Malori, you know that her story really
isn't her story.
Her story has God written all throughout it.
And so she's an alum-- her and her husband are alum from LCU.
Tyler and the kids are over there.
So I've got 50 bucks as the kids start
running around while Malori's talking,
so it's going to be awesome.
But we're really, really blessed to get to hear from Malori.
I can't wait to hear how the Holy Spirit uses her.
So give her a warm LCU welcome.
Everybody give it up for Malori Rogers.
: [APPLAUSE]
Malori Rogers: OK.
Thank you all so much for being here.
I hope this chapel credit makes it worth the sacrifice
to avoid the penalty of not getting your chapel credits.
Hopefully it's not still a death penalty,
like it was my junior year.
I lost two good friends that year.
I'm kidding.
I'm glad you all laughed, because that
was going to be real awkward.
OK, so I feel so cool to say that I'm Peyton Maddox
and Macy Maddox's sister.
My brother got to play baseball here for Coach Blackwood.
Such a treat.
And my sister is currently in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
with the Lady Chaps.
Is that complete in the Elite Eight?
I'm so proud.
I know!
Woo!
OK, so I would have loved to be there, but Josh said,
you know, Mel, you're already committed to speaking here,
so let's try to keep our word.
So I said, OK, yes, sir.
No, I'm just kidding.
But I love LCU, and I would be lying
if I said I tried to avoid coming back to this place,
to this family.
There is nothing like this in the entire world.
And I love LCU.
I drug my husband, Tyler, and two kids, McCray and Rone.
Watching y'all.
I drug them off the ranch today with me, so we're so grateful.
Tyler got to play basketball for Coach Duncan and Iams.
And again, that's just a lifelong blessing.
So Josh said that y'all have had some testimony-themed chapels.
And as I was once more of a reserved introvert,
unless I'm by my people, I feel like God has just
turned me inside out as an extrovert in my faith.
And it's truly one of my greatest joys
to just tell a little bit of God's faithfulness and grace
that I have generously experienced,
because God is so good.
I would hope that all of y'all believe in Him,
trust in His goodness, and may have experienced
His presence in some way.
But you may not have your own testimony or your own faith
yet.
But to be at this university, you've
sure got everything you need to grow that
and to start a relationship with our Heavenly Father.
So back in the day, I had the opportunity
to play volleyball here.
I was not one of those players that would
catch your eye on the court.
There's no stat of mine that would just knock your socks
off.
But God gave me the blessing of being a part of a team.
And that gave me a cloud of witnesses,
as we just read in that verse today,
a cloud of witnesses around me at this university forever.
In 2015, during my senior year, I
had a brain bleed on the volleyball court.
I was rushed to the hospital, had an emergency surgery
to stop the bleed.
And during that surgery, they sawed my skull in half
and put it in my tummy.
My ponytail was bent to my waist,
and it was all shaved off.
And a nurse came over to bring my mom a gallon-sized bag
of hair, just in case it was needed for a funeral,
she told her.
But during that time, prayer warriors were sought.
People flocked to the fountain on campus to pray for me.
Like, wow, at LCU, God's vessels were faithfully
intervening and interceding for me in prayer.
Our game was in Wichita Falls that night.
But this campus, all they knew to do was pray.
And that's the greatest gift ever.
How special.
So after persevering for six hours using the same techniques,
the neurosurgeon, Dr. Cometh, came out and told my family
that the brain bleed just finally stopped.
It just stopped.
It's just small detail.
I would love to know--
let's just get to be--
what did campus look like at that moment?
Was God waiting on one person to pray?
I love that thought.
So God, he showed me so much grace to be alive.
And I will never deserve or understand why.
But a lot of details.
I was flown to Dallas to continue therapy
till the next surgery to put my school back together,
put all Humpty Dumpty back together again.
But praise the Lord, it was successful,
and I was released to go back home to Lubbock.
I was in a lot of therapy from 9 to 4 all day.
I had short-term memory loss.
Pretty bad.
I couldn't move the right side of my body.
And I lost--
I can't see till right here.
I don't have any right periphery in my vision.
So I worked hard every day to get better and smarter
and to get out of there.
Because it was humbling to be a college volleyball player
and then struggle to play balloon
volleyball in a therapy setting with my buddies in wheelchairs.
One specific moment I remember being frustrated with
was when I turned in a worksheet in OT,
and my therapist said, good job.
That was a third grade level.
And I didn't have memory, but comments like that
just stuck for some reason.
It's just a month prior, I was working on my senior research
project, taking classes like physics.
I never made a B in my life.
And that encouragement from my therapist,
if you'd call it that, that just ticked me off.
And I started getting frustrated.
I couldn't drive.
I felt like a mouse stuck in a cage,
and I wanted the reins on my life again.
During this time, my then boyfriend, Tyler,
showed me a level of faithfulness
that I have never even heard of.
We had dated since high school, and now we
were upperclassmen in college.
And one day in April, he got down on a knee
at half court in the rip, and he asked me to marry him
with my little bald head.
We got married in July, just a few months after,
and then a new story started.
Now, just a few months prior to that moment,
I had rolled into brain surgery, just waving at the nurses
and smiling when anesthesia hit, because I had
so much peace in God's hands.
But when I got to what looked like the good stuff, a proposal,
I had anxiety.
Why?
Now, it was a crazy little nine months.
Watching the new stories, it might
have seemed like a little fairy tale.
But if all of the wounds of struggle, spiritually
and mentally, were visible, I would be standing up here,
black and blue.
But by God's rich favor and mighty intervention in my life,
I get to stand up here and say that he is so good, so good.
Now, newlywed bliss for us included
waking up alone in an apartment on campus
while Tyler finished his senior year of basketball.
And I was just fighting like a hamster on a wheel
to finish my classes.
But my brain and my mind were just in such a spiritual mode.
I feel like God gave me a little pearl of wisdom to share.
I've said it before.
I've lost vision, but with all my right periphery,
but I feel like I've gained perspective.
So I just try to live and see everything
through a spiritual lens.
For example, when I was in physics at LCU, Scott Young--
I don't know if you're in here--
I was trying to finish up my senior year with him,
obviously, teaching.
And I was lost in that class.
But he drew the graph of the sine function on the board.
Along the horizontal number line,
the graph crossed the origin and just went up and down,
up and down, up and down, all down the horizontal number
line.
And I've had that image stuck in my head,
thinking it symbolizes the hills and valleys of life.
In the good times, we still want to hover close to that line,
to the origin, which is the Lord,
to not ever get too far up, thinking
that glory is from ourselves.
Or in the rest of life, if we stay close to that line, which
is Jesus, we won't get too far down in the pit.
Hebrews 13:8 says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday,
and today, and forever.
He is constant, even though I'm all over the place."
And it's important to stay close and rooted
to that source of eternal life in Jesus.
Now, waking up during my senior year at LCU,
there was a stranger in my mirror.
There was a ring on my finger.
And I had to tell myself I was married,
what I was doing at LCU.
I knew I had to finish, even though it seemed impossible.
I didn't want to hold Tyler back.
I thought, how in the world am I going
to finish my senior classes with a brain injury?
Physics was hard when my brain worked.
Now, with all these loose screws, no shot.
The aftermath of my stroke was sharper than any knife
that they used to cut through my stubborn, thick skull.
I just felt awkward getting on my feet again.
But I learned that there is so much freedom in humility.
Now, I'm not speaking because I finished the race.
I'm speaking because I'm still seeking.
Storms create and renew and refine us
when we look to God through it.
When God allows something to break us down,
it's almost a reason to rejoice.
Now, that may not be a knee-jerk reaction,
to rejoice in hard times.
But when I was about to have my second brain surgery
to repair the AVM that ruptured in my brain,
my teacher, my preacher, came to Dallas
to encourage my family.
The morning before surgery, he gave me some advice.
He asked what I did before games.
And he said, "Do that pre-game routine before your surgery."
And I said, "Okay."
And as weird as it was, I hadn't even processed
the loss of self or my athletic career or anything.
But I knew my pre-game routine,
and it was saying my folder of verses.
It was about eight of 'em.
Just to skim through a few.
"Be strong and courageous," Joshua 1:9.
"With God, all things are possible.
Be strong and do not give up,
or your work will be rewarded," 2 Chronicles 15:7.
And Colossians 3:23, "It's working for the Lord
and not for man."
Ephesians 6: 10 and 11,
about putting on the full armor of God.
I press on toward the goal to win the prize
for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
It's Philippians 3, and we all know Philippians 4:13,
and Romans 8:31, "If God is for us,
who can be against us?"
And you know what?
Those verses are not my game day verses anymore.
I don't have another game day.
No more game days for old Mal.
But those verses, I let my kids know.
And it's the best thing ever to hear them say those to me,
and they finish them for me.
Now, a couple years ago, I was sitting in the floor
doing Rone's hair, and McCray was trying to be patient
for us to go play outside.
And he was just looking at my head and felt my little divot.
I've got some kind of rough spots in there.
And he said, "Mama, what's that boo-boo on your head?"
And I said, "It means God is good."
I love scars.
The huge one on my stomach,
from where my skull was stored in there.
It's not the prettiest thing you've ever seen,
but I love it.
I love reminders of God's fingerprints.
And we've all got some in some form.
Now, the tower of, insert your name here, will fall.
The tower of Malori Rogers falls down every single day,
multiple times.
But my base has never once been washed away,
because my base is Christ.
We can all be graciously rebuilt every single day.
So, I'll try to hurry this,
but I hope you can go home with this message.
I had no idea that on November 10th, 2015,
that'd be the last time I'd ever get to put on a jersey.
Because I was about to be messed up that night.
But what are the odds that the timing correlated
so exactly with me being a bride?
Tyler and I had dated for almost five years before that,
and we had started talking marriage in the future.
He was getting ready to ask my dad,
and right before I had my stroke.
And I believe that all of that happened
because of this message.
We are the bride of Christ.
All of us, the church,
and he is ready to give us a new name.
Even when we're at rock bottom.
Especially when we're at rock bottom.
Tyler told me that if he had known,
he told me that if he had known
what was gonna happen to me on November 10th,
he would have married me November 9th.
Now that shook me.
Because you know why?
That's the story of Jesus.
That's spiritual.
My anxiety stopped when I related my life
and my story to Jesus.
Wherever you are in your faith walk,
evaluate yourself.
Evaluate your story.
And how does it relate to Jesus?
You know, God is so good.
He gives us opportunities
to keep dressed up in something different
every single day.
At LCU, you're surrounded by a cloud of witnesses,
like we talked about.
My sister and I were just talking about that
the day before she got on the bus last Friday.
What their team has the opportunity to go do right now
is amazing.
They are competing for a national championship.
That is so cool.
What you have the opportunity to do
and grow here at LCU is amazing too.
There is truly no better place.
It means so much to my family.
There's a stone on campus by the fountain
where everyone gathered to pray for me that night.
And it says, "With God, all things are possible."
And it's a marker for my family
that serves as a reminder to keep your eyes upward always.
Because miracles happen here.
Because of who sits on the throne up there.
And God is so good.
If our spiritual walks are a snowball,
we never want to stop pushing it.
As I mentioned before, my family lives on a ranch.
We've got spring works coming up,
which means we'll have a crew out, gather all the cows,
work their calves, brand, vaccines, ear tags, all the things.
But with a spiritual lens,
imagine our closeness with God
as the analogy of being roped.
I guess my mind goes to ropes
because with Tyler as a cowboy,
McCray ropes everything.
He always wants that rope tight
to whatever he catches on a stick horse.
Whether it's his sister, his dog, or my ankle.
He is yelling and hollering when he's got something caught.
He is excited.
Now in a little different sense, God has roped us.
A calf can walk and fight a little bit
when there's only one foot caught.
But when both feet are caught,
that thing isn't going anywhere,
except closer to that cowboy dragging it on his horse.
With God, he wants that.
We can't move until we submit, buy in,
and let him drag us and tag us.
Sometimes that ear tag, it might be a scar,
it might be an incident or a moment.
As Christians, that tag is the Holy Spirit
that God gives us through baptism.
God keeps that rope tight with that Holy Spirit in our hearts
as he pulls us closer and closer.
Just like a calf fighting and pulling and yanking, that's us.
'Til eventually we think,
if I just give in and let him pull me in his direction,
I can breathe.
When God tags us, our plans change, our lives change,
our desires change because of his Spirit at work in us.
After Jesus died on the cross
and was resurrected to life again,
he walked with new scars after being resurrected
from the most horrendous tragedy in history.
But how awesome that must have felt
for people to notice those scars
when they saw his hands
during his time on earth after the cross.
That's a level of tough that no one can relate to.
But because of Jesus' example,
we get to smile at our scars.
Last thing, Deuteronomy 33: 27 says,
"God is our refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms."
This LCU community is part of those everlasting arms.
I thought graduating college meant getting a degree,
but at LCU, that doesn't read,
that degree doesn't just get you a job,
it gets you a family.
And those everlasting arms are right here.
Okay, so y'all get out of here,
go swipe your card for your chapel credit.
Love y'all, God is good.