(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Faith Story. This sounds very loud in my ears, so that's a lot.

Well, good morning. My name is Matt Sefko. I'm introducing our speaker this morning.

McKenna Schultz has attended Faith Church for one and a half years. She has been married to Daniel for five. You've been married for five years already? OK.

And then McKenna works as a global segment marketing manager. And here at Faith, she serves on the production team. She's been back in the booth with me before, running slides and while I'm running sound.

And she's part of a community group. She has a fourth degree black belt in taekwondo. And in her spare time, she enjoys knitting, baking, and reading.

If you haven't yet seen the questions on the table, there was an icebreaker. If you haven't done that yet, you could also use that after she's done talking and continue the conversation. But I'm going to pray, and we can get started.

So Heavenly Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you that McKenna is here, and that she can share a bit about her journey in faith, both at our church and her personal journey. Just pray that you would bless her now, bless us all in our conversation afterward, that it would be glorifying to you and constructive.

In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you. I don't usually use microphones, so bear with me as we're adjusting here.

But hi, everybody. My name is McKenna Schultz. I think I've gotten to meet quite a few of you in the room.

But if I haven't yet, hello. So my title for today's presentation is Where God? Finding Jesus Amidst Chronic Illness. I cannot, unfortunately, take credit for this title.

Actually, a couple of months ago, my husband and I were on the phone with an old pastor of ours from Ohio, getting advice on a different challenge that we were having. And some advice he gave us at the end was, you know, when I'm going through a challenge now, I've really been trying to step back and ask, where God, instead of why God? As in, Jesus, where are you in this? Because I find that I rarely am going to get a definitive answer of why he chose to do something. But I can find him in a struggle, whether it's with me or working through someone else.

I said, wow, Joel, that sounds very wise. And then precisely two days later, I got an email from Claire saying, hey, McKenna, seriously, we need your title for your presentation, like, now. So I did plagiarize this a little bit.

Apologies. But you can all thank Joel Treanor at Three Creeks Church for the topic. That being said, for today's kind of outline, I'm going to do a quick introduction to myself and then kind of walk you guys through my life story a little bit.

But I want to stop at three kind of key points where I felt like Jesus was really speaking to me, primarily through lessons taught through my condition. I honestly really identify with the Israelites walking through the desert, where it's like they've been told what to do. They've been told how to have faith and show their faith.

And they keep going astray somehow. And then God just kind of has to smack them over the head to get them back on track. And unfortunately, that is a bit of a life story for me as well.

So that's going to be our kind of flow for today. So for a quick introduction, I am 27 years old. And I grew up in northern Indiana in a small town called Goshen.

I am the middle child of three girls. My older sister Ashlyn is on the lower steps here. And my younger sister Kendall is beside me at the top.

We are the Mays family. So if you hear me say Mays a couple of times, that's my maiden name. And then these are my parents as well and our family dog Zach, who is a little gremlin that we all love and adore.

My dad was a OBGYN growing up. So he was actually outside of the house quite a bit. We still had a great relationship.

When I was young, he did whatever he could with the time he did have at home to spend it with us and play a lot outside. But he did just have quite demanding hours that were inconsistent. That being said, my mom was a stay-at-home mom.

So I got a lot of love from her when he wasn't present as well. As of now, I am married to Daniel. And we have two dogs, Cinder and Ash.

And I work in marketing as a segment marketing manager. And you are welcome to ask me about that later. But I've come to find it's a lot of corporate jargon that can be quite confusing to explain.

So we can chat later. So starting with early life, I was born in a town called Independence, Missouri. However, my mom grew up in Georgia.

And my dad quickly transitioned to working in Emory Hospital. So we moved there when I was still a baby. When I was about four years old, though, my dad decided to go into private practice in Goshen, Indiana.

So we relocated from Georgia to Goshen at that point. I was homeschooled with my older sister, Ashlyn, all through elementary school. And we started going into public school in middle school, about seventh grade, for us to start preparing for college and getting used to a schedule like that.

Because of that, my sisters and I were all very close. We were pretty close in that family just because we spent a lot of time together. I did grow up in the church.

So it was a little bit of a unique situation. My dad grew up Catholic. And my mom grew up Southern Baptist, which was a very interesting combination to bring into the household.

We tried the Baptist church for a few years. We ended up going non-denominational after like two years there. So we grew up on the non-denominational front.

That being said, I also, outside of homeschool, I was really active in sports starting at three. My parents kind of stuck us right in. Since we went for the homeschool route, that was really our time for socialization and getting to see people.

And I just quickly fell in love with sports. It was always a meditative thing for me and something I really enjoyed. So as you can see, I was a early dancer, mainly because they gave me cookies after class.

We did soccer, t-ball, and then probably around fifth grade, my dad started to realize, oh, I got a six-footer here. So he promptly put me in volleyball and basketball as well. So hey, I really thrived in that environment.

But that is also when we started to notice something was a little bit off with me compared to some of the other kids. Naturally, it was my mother that noticed it first. I often would be trying to ask my coach if I could sit out because I was feeling dizzy.

And that was really the only way I could describe it. And I will say, if you have a young girl asking, hey, coach, can I stop doing push-ups? Or can I stop running laps? I'm really dizzy. That usually is given a slap on the wrist until to stop being lazy.

However, thankfully, my mom knew how much I loved activity and I loved running and doing all these things. So she thought, hey, something here's not quite right. It wasn't until years later that it really escalated, though.

I was in public school in the middle of a volleyball game. And honestly, you've got to appreciate the comedic timing. It was our tournament.

And I was going up to spike a ball in the season. And suddenly, the second I went off the ground, the ball just split in two. And by the time I came back down, everything was in two, like every single person, every line I looked at.

And I thought, oh, no. So I went to my mom. And for the next few weeks, this did not correct.

I would be reading a book. And the words would split, homework, everything. So we naturally decided, hey, maybe you need glasses.

We went to an eye doctor for a couple of rounds. And on one of my last visits, a resident was there doing my initial inspection. And he actually stopped before the doctor came in and said, hey, I do not mean to pry here, but my older sister has this condition.

And I'm seeing some similar symptoms. Have you ever heard of something called myasthenia gravis? And that will lead us to our medical condition here. So I am not going to read the full definition here for anyone.

I just kind of kept it up in case there's any medically inclined and curious people in the room. But I was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis when I was 13 years old. This is essentially a neuromuscular condition that affects the muscles in my body.

Mainly the ones that are attached to bone. So face, throat, arms. It's basically a lot of stuff that I need to function day to day gets severely weakened and can stop working for short periods of time as well.

So usually when I say that, people go, what does that mean? So for me, common symptoms can include weak limbs, double vision. I get a bit of a lazy eye, slurred speech, fatigue, and trouble breathing. I am not experiencing these all all the time.

My understanding is that compared to the general population, my muscles are weaker than most people on a day to day basis. But I've always had this, so it's not something I necessarily notice. These symptoms will flare up at a worst case, and that's when it is more something I notice here.

So I got diagnosed with this in middle school, which is a lovely time for any young girl to get something like this. It was a bit of a challenging transition, but my parents did their best to keep things normal for me. I was told that I needed to switch into a private school system for a little while because I was having to miss so much school at a time due to adjusting to my medication that we needed something with a more flexible attendance policy.

But that was really our one big change that we made. I also did put this little disclaimer in case anyone here happens to be a neurologist. Since I was diagnosed with this so young, I was definitely not listening to any of the doctors when they were explaining what was going on.

I was just like, oh, cool. I got out of school to go run on a treadmill for some reason. So if something I say is incorrect, this is just based off of my experience of learning as we go over a 14 year period now.

So apologies. So my parents were then faced with a really excellent question. How do I handle my chronically ill preteen daughter? As I mentioned, I love sports.

And if you're starting to think, hey, this doesn't sound like it's a great condition to have when you're really active in sports, you're correct. It was immediately going downhill for me. I was constantly having to hop out of volleyball games and basketball games to get medicine or sit out.

And it was very frustrating in a team sense because a lot of eyes were on it, especially if you're at a game and there's parents there. So it was becoming a little bit embarrassing for me. And I was feeling pretty disheartened.

So my parents were really trying to figure out, hey, we want to keep her involved and stuff. We want to keep her in as normal a childhood as possible throughout this. What can we do? So looking at my interests, we had on one side sports.

And on the other side, if you're thinking, please be into something like art or painting, that was not the case. Outside of sports, I really loved reading. I am a huge movie nerd, watch a lot of TV shows.

At the time, my favorite movie was actually Mulan. And so if you're thinking, wow, how do we combine these interests into a really safe activity for our daughter, we landed on the natural choice of, let's put her in full contact sports because that's a great idea. And so this is where our taekwondo journey begins.

So I started classes at 14 years old. And as much as saying that raises an eyebrow from people, it actually ended up being the perfect pairing for what I was going through at the time. Martial arts is a very individual activity, so it's kind of all on you.

Even within class, you're all practicing together, but you're practicing your own thing. You have your own personal improvements you need to go through that you're working on. So any time I needed to hop off of a mat, it was not a big deal whatsoever.

So this is really great. When I was 15 years old, I actually got approached by one of the school owners, Mr. and Mrs. Berkey, who are in this first photo with me. And they asked if I wanted to work with them behind the counter more on the business front.

And I, of course, said yes. I could probably do a two-hour conversation on just how much of a deciding chapter working for these two was. We have a running joke in my family that whenever I do something good still, my parents will ask, did we teach you that or did Mr. Berkey teach you that? Because they were just such a big influence in my life.

That being said, it was just an amazing time for me. I learned a lot about running a business through them. I started doing sales, running community events as well that kind of led into my career interests later on down the road.

Mr. and Mrs. Berkey were also really strong Christians. And they really encouraged me to pursue my faith a lot on the side too, which was a huge help. That being said, I got my first degree Black Belt at 17.

And around this time, I was, like I mentioned, starting to teach classes as well, even though the business side of the school was more my interest. And I was starting to get a little bit annoyed. Alongside me, there were two other boys that helped work at the school at the time.

And there was starting to be a bit of a stereotype of Miss Mays is not as good at martial arts because she doesn't teach as much. She doesn't travel for all of the tournaments. She does the local ones.

And when I did outside sales as well, I did have a couple of parents refuse to send their kids because they said that I looked like I should be teaching a ballet class and not how to punch people. So I remember I was talking to Mr. Berkey like, this is sexism, this is so unfair, what do I do? And he just looked at me and said, what are you going to do about it? He's like, well, there's nothing I can do. This is their problem, not mine.

And he gave me some of his excellent advice. He said, McKenna, you're going to find adversity everywhere in your life. And you can't change that, but you can change how you respond to it.

So people do not think you're as good of a teacher or as good of a martial artist. What can you do about that? And I was like, well, I don't know. And finally he looked at me and goes, I think if the back of your uniform said world champion, that would really shut some people up.

To which I was like, hello, the chronic illness, I'm constantly having to sprint off the mat for medication. And he said, I think we can work around this. So of two weeks of going back and forth and arguing, is this possible? I don't know.

That seems like a lot of work. We started to switch into strategy mode. For those who aren't familiar with Taekwondo, there's four traditional categories you compete in in my organization.

Forms, which is, I don't know, think of ballet, but with extra testosterone tossed in it. It's like punching and kicking moves in a sequence. You do weapons, fighting, and fighting with a weapon.

It's a padded weapon. It's not like giving people black eyes. But all that being said, we started to talk through stuff.

He said, you can't get it in forms. You have the coordination of a baby giraffe learning how to walk. Forget forms.

We looked at sparring and combat sparring. And he said, scrap it if that's a very hit or miss thing, because those are the high intensity go, go, go topics that you would compete in. So if you get sick and no match, you're done.

So you do not want to focus on that. So we landed on weapons. And for the next two years, I had written down that I needed to get world champion by 18, right before I went to college.

That would give me a practice year to fail at worlds and then go in. I am someone who likes to build in a failure into my schedules. So that was our plan.

For the next two years, everything I did centered around world championships. I ran nunchuck forms every day. I would swap out my nunchucks for 10 pound weights and just drill in my backyard for hours.

And I probably clocked about 20 to 30 hours a week during the school year in the Taekwondo school outside of school. So it was all there. Finally, when I was 18, I went to worlds and I was feeling so good.

I was actually ranked number one in the world in our top 10 standings. And I was feeling pretty confident. And then I tied for third place in nunchucks.

And I was like, holy crap. But I said, you know what? Third in the world is still pretty good. There's no way I am about to lose this.

So went out for the tiebreaker, fumbled my weapon, lost a point for it, and I got fourth place. And I was like, holy crap, I just wasted two years of my life here. And I'm having my existential crisis, but I had also qualified to compete in sparring and combat sparring, which I was still gonna do, because it happened after weapons.

And so sparring begins. And you know, I fight my first match, I win. I fight my second match, I win.

We're going and going. And then suddenly they're like, hey, you're sparring for first place. And I remember at this point, the thing I mentioned about my stania setting in, because sparring's a very high intensity thing, that was happening.

And they told me, hey, there's this match happening. You have a minute, then you're back up. And I remember looking at my mom across the ring, just going, no, no.

There's nothing left in my body here. I can barely stand up. I'm having trouble breathing.

Like, I don't know what to do. And during that time, I just kind of sat there and just started praying, like, God, please, like, please, this has to be for something. Like, I've given everything to this.

Like, just give me, like, just let me stand up, please. And afterwards, something that I was just kind of mumbling in my head over and over was Psalm 56.3, which is the verse that I actually had on the left side of my belt. When I'm afraid, I will trust in you.

And they called my name to come up, and I just suddenly just felt everything lighten, and I was able to get up and go. And I won the match, and that's how I became a world champion at 18. The lesson in this, though, is I don't usually mention this to people unless I really need, like, a good icebreaker or two truths and a lie, because it's not anything that I did.

I think that if I had won in nunchucks, I would be a lot more arrogant about it because I put in the work, and I put in the time, and I put in the commitment. But the sparring, like, I was lucky I could stand by the end of it. That was all God there, and it's something that I had to be humble about instead.

So I think that that was a big learning moment for me of having reliance on Jesus versus putting my faith in myself and my own abilities. So if this was a sports movie, that would be an excellent conclusion. I go off to college and live an awesome rest of my life.

However, I just had a good, solid intermission for a couple of years. I ended up getting a scholarship to go to Ball State for business school, and so I went there to study marketing, economics, and Spanish. During my time there, I also took another big step in my faith, which was finding my first church by myself.

This was my first time really taking my Christianity in my own hands outside of my family. I found a lovely church off campus that I loved. I ended up joining my first small group for the first time, and I also got baptized my freshman year.

While I was there, I met my best friends, Sally and Alex, who are on the left side of this presentation, and I also got to study abroad for a semester in Spain that really set me up for a love of traveling and languages as well. This tall, lanky kid named Daniel kept showing up wherever I was going, and he just always conveniently had my favorite coffee or his favorite ice cream in my hand. So I kept him around, and five years later, we got married.

And then after graduation, we moved out to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I don't have a ton on the Tulsa chapter here, but it was just a really amazing time. I'm very thankful for it, because it was a great time for us to kind of grow in our marriage immediately when we were kind of separated in 13 hours a week.

We were a few hours away from family. We found an amazing church out there, a great small group, and we have a lot of great memories of Oklahoma. However, our next stumble is going to land us in Ohio.

So enter the Ohio saga. Daniel and I relocated to Columbus, Ohio in 2022 for a promotion for him into a field sales role. This ended up working out very well for me.

I had graduated during the pandemic and had to take the first job I found, which was in sales. And I do not recommend sales if you're a major introvert, personally. Some people can work around it.

It wasn't for me, but I did find my first marketing role. I was in charge of event planning, which was super fun for me. I have an example of what our trade shows looked like in this bottom picture.

But our big thing for Ohio that was a very defining moment was our decision to start attending Three Creeks Church in Gahanna. This is where Joel Treanor, who's accredited to this presentation, was our pastor. This is our first time becoming, I'd say, really involved in the day-to-day life of a church.

Something that was really special about it was it was quite small and also a very young demographic. We actually had church in a middle school auditorium. And so if we wanted to make church happen, we all had to show up and we all had to put in the time.

So I was on production and I'd get there at 7 a.m. and start rerunning the cords every single morning to make sure the mics, projectors, and everything were working. We also were really involved in the community through the school system, so there was a lot of connection as well and outside ministry within the city, which was really cool. So as I mentioned, I did production team.

I helped run events. I was involved in my small group and whatnot. And I think this really helped me develop an understanding of just the beauty of the church and how it's meant to reflect God's image and grace.

This is also where we had our first major Myasthenia flare-up in six years. Lucky Daniel, he was the only one in Ohio to help me deal with this for the first time. So he got initiated to a sick wife here.

I continued doing martial arts and still do. And while I was in a sparring class one day, I suddenly felt everything in my throat just shut down and I could not get any air in. The best way I could describe it was I felt like there was a very thin straw down my throat and I could just get this little pinprick of air.

Everyone thought I was having an asthma attack, honestly. So I stumble off the mat, breathe, this abates after 30 seconds, and I brilliantly said, okay, cool, let's go back in. And so I hop back in, brilliantly, 10 seconds later, happens again, hop back out.

At that point, I called Daniel and he's like, would you please stop and come home? So I came home and this instance proceeded to happen for my next three sparring classes. Along with that, it was starting to escalate a lot at work. I started to give a presentation and my speech would get really slurred.

I was having trouble holding myself upright in the desk and kept having to go home to work from my bed. And honestly, at this point, I was just really, really angry. I was like, you know, God, we had our big movie, you taught me a lesson moment with world championships, I thought we were good at this point, why are you doing this? And I just was getting no resolution and I was very frustrated.

At the same time, our church was doing a sermon series on healing and illness. And it was honestly making it worse. I remember finally, I was at small group one night and I just opened up about it and they asked if they could pray for me.

And I said, I don't want you to pray for me, which was probably not a great answer in hindsight, but I just said, I am so angry, like he could heal this, but he's not healing it. And he, for some reason, wants to just keep slapping this around. Every couple of years, it gets worse and I don't understand and I'm mad.

And they said, okay, in that case, we're gonna pray for a positive attitude here. So love my group, they did pray for me very graciously and continued to check in on me. However, it continued to not get better.

Finally, I was in church one day and we were actually doing a sermon series in Genesis about Jacob and how he was just struggling through the desert, all these challenges he had. And when he was trying to come back home, he gets in a wrestling match with God. And I've kind of included a little snippet of that verse here.

But the whole purpose of the sermon was, it's okay to wrestle with God and it's okay to not understand and to be frustrated about what his plans are. And I remember afterwards, it just had kind of hit me really hard that day. So I went to pray with an elder and we prayed together, I broke down.

That was also one of my first times approaching an elder in a church. I kind of previously saw them as these like high up figures in the background that like I see them, but don't talk to them. So that was honestly, even if that's all that happened, I think that was a big step up.

I became quite close with Tyler after that. But after that day, I kind of went home that weekend and Daniel was out at tennis class and I just went up to my room and I just started screaming at God. And I was yelling at him probably for an hour straight, saying a lot of words that I'm not proud of and just really angry.

But afterwards I felt just such a peace come over me and I did not get better. But I think that at that point I knew like, okay, you have me. And so I think that my big learning from this was I'm once again, not always going to understand why God is doing something.

And it's also okay for me to be angry at him about it. I am not a perfect person and I don't have perfect understanding. I don't need to come to him pretending to be whole and always have trust in his plan.

It's okay to be upset. I just need to have faith that it'll work out in the long run. Okay, back to Indiana.

As you all know, because I'm standing here, Daniel and I moved back to Indiana about two years ago now, I want to say. We relocated once again for Daniel's work and it just brought in a series of blessings. So first of all, I got into finally a role that I really love and I'm still in that's fully remote, which is great for me.

We're closer to Jeff and Amelia, which has been a huge blessing on our family. We found a new church family here. And then I also got to go on my first mission trip, which has been a goal of mine since college about, I just was kind of waiting for something that seemed the right fit for me.

However, the mission trip was also where we had our next major myasthenia flare up, of course. So last year, Daniel and I went to English camp that the Dodrells run in Spain. And as I mentioned, I had been looking into mission trips for quite a while and I was putting a lot of pressure on myself going into this.

I just felt like to make it worth it for the church for me to be going, I need to be having these really great conversations. Like I need to show some kind of a payoff here. I was really nervous and focused on that going in.

And as English camp went on, it was going well until on a Wednesday, I had this brilliant idea. We were doing an activity where we were all dressed up as animals and the kids had to, it was escape the zoo. And so the kids had to run around and find the counselors dressed up as animals and like collect us and do activities from us to win.

And they said, hey, who wants to put on this really fuzzy unicorn onesie and skip up and down the mountain with children chasing them in 98 degree heat. And I said, I am so perfect for that. I should add a side note, heat actually, along with physical activity, heat also makes my ischemia worse.

Did I consider this? No, but I don't think I had a fully developed prefrontal cortex yet. So we're going to blame that. Lo and behold, the next day after this activity, I go to sit down at lunch and take a bite of my food and everything just shuts down and I couldn't chew.

I couldn't get the food out. And so I very discreetly, so not to freak out the children, like grabbed a napkin and like just tried to like tip the food out of my mouth so I wouldn't choke. And then my next thought was, ah, I, the 25 year old, I need to find an adult right now.

And so unfortunately for him, Nathan Kingsley drew the short stick. I went into the kitchen and he's the first person to see. And as serious as this sounds, I would like us to all appreciate the like the comedic timing of this moment.

I tap him on the shoulder. He turns around and goes, oh, hey, McKenna, how can I help you? And I meant to say, Nathan, I feel quite sick. Can I go upstairs and rest? All that came out was, and then dead silence.

And we just stared at each other and Nathan's eyes got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I started sobbing. And so Erin came into the room and saw me crying and Nathan like trying to pat my shoulder.

Then thankfully my husband came into the room and was like, we've got to get her out of here. So they quickly herded me upstairs. And at this point I was realizing, hey, I can breathe.

My arms are fine. I can't talk. And as far as anything that has ever happened to me with this condition, I think not being able to communicate or say what's wrong, especially in what is feeling like a moment of crisis was probably just the most humbling.

And I've just never felt so helpless in my entire life. And so I was sitting up there and I decided to just kind of listen to some old sermons from my old church because they just have a easy podcast access on Spotify. And I was just kind of sitting up there feeling bad for myself.

And I had started listening to the sermon series called Into Your Hands I Commit My Blank. And this was kind of just looking at struggles as a whole of what is giving you anxiety, what is putting pressure on you, but you're not willing to commit it to Jesus for some reason. And I was listening to this sermon and towards the end, he said, hey, we're going to lead you through an immersive prayer experience.

And I've never been super into immersive prayers. Like they're fine. I've just never personally had a big like light bulb moment during them.

So they're playing the slow, nice background piano music. I'm kind of in a dark room starting to doze off a little bit, but the pastor walks you through like, hey, I want you to picture you're at just whatever a safe place is for you. And Jesus comes and sits down next to you.

And he starts guiding you through this kind of call and response.

(This file is longer than 30 minutes. Go Unlimited at https://turboscribe.ai/ to transcribe files up to 10 hours long.)