ANYTHING BUT ORDINARY

"Inoperable brain cancer" was her diagnosis. Essentially, a death sentence for this thirty-two-year-old wife and mom of two little boys. Everything she had known to be true was yanked from her, thrown up in the air, and scattered in all the wrong places. In the mess, she chose to rebuild—reorganize, even—and when it was over she emerged better than before.

Andy will draw you into her story as if you were there the whole time, walking through the storm and the bliss, the broken and the new.

But this isn't just Andy's story. It's all of ours. We've all had to pick up the pieces. Maybe you're still picking them up. Andy shows us how to find life-changing perspective in even the darkest places—a perspective that has the power to heal even your deepest wounds.

INTRODUCTION

You forget how to breathe or speak. Your heart tries to exit your body through your mouth. Consciousness is relative in this moment. Everything is in slow motion, but you can't actually process any of it.

That is what it feels like when you've been told you're going to die. I know firsthand.

There is fear, of course, but my fear in that moment wasn't about experiencing death; I was afraid to leave my family to a future that I would not be part of. I was afraid their memory of me would fade to nothing. That the two little humans whom I had grown in my own body would grow up to be adults without any tangible piece of me to help them navigate life. That the man whose soul was so intertwined with mine would be left broken when my half departed.

I wasn't about to leave a mess like that. My will to survive became primal. Everything that mattered became my why. Everything that didn't matter became insignificant. It was all very clear. If there's one thing a death sentence is good for, it's perspective.

God was there. I saw how He'd been working up to this moment as I tried to guess His next move. He equally comforted and angered me.

This book isn't just about fighting cancer, it's about fighting a battle we all share: the battle to find perspective when we start to spiral. The battle to find intention when we suddenly realize we've been living on autopilot. The battle to live a purposeful life when this world wants to trap us into believing that we are victims of circumstance.

In the thick of it, I couldn't figure out how to be me again, because everything was so different. Then it hit me. I was different. I would never be me again. But that is not a curse. It is a privilege that I get to experience every single morning I open my eyes—with a new appreciation for the new life waiting for me. This is the perspective I had to learn the hard way, but it is also the perspective that healed me from the inside out.

REVIEWS

"Andy pours her heart out to her readers in this book. She opens the door and gives you a raw, honest view of what it was like to be given a death sentence and how she came out the opposite side a changed person, a new person. You can't help but fall in love with her along the way as she offers you the greatest perspectives on facing fear and learning to live again." —Julia Rice, Registered Nurse

"This book made me laugh and cry with moments in between. Andy does an amazing job of bringing you into her story and feeling her feels. This book gave me the perspective that no matter our own story, we each are continually provided the chance to recreate ourselves, start over, and become better than we were." —Amanda Walker, Healthstyle Coach

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