Every Little Thing by Melanie Makovsky
Every little thing…
I’ve wanted to write a book since I was 11 or 12 years old, but I started writing when I was about 6. I received a diary as a Christmas present, and I started writing in it almost everyday. I was so young that my spelling and handwriting were still developing and there are entire entries that I can barely decipher now. But I loved doing it. So after I finished the first one I asked for a new diary, and so on. I now have boxes and boxes of filled in diaries that range from age 6 to about 22. After that my journaling became more sporadic, but it has never really stopped. Whenever I’m struggling with my emotions or making a big decision I still write it out on paper until I feel settled about it.
I read Anne Frank’s diary when I was 11 or 12 and the significance of it blew my mind. I felt connected to her somehow, being the same age. I have one diary entry where I wrote, “I’m going to keep writing in my diary for my whole life. That way, if something important happens, like with Anne Frank, I’ll have it written down and people can read it.” So that’s what I did.
The idea of publishing a memoir just stayed in the back of my mind all the time, but I was always too busy to do much about it. My husband was in the Navy and we moved around every 3 or 4 years, and there were always a lot of adjustments to help my kids through. During that time I joined a support group that existed mostly over the telephone, and befriended a number of other women who I never met in person. Talking with one of them on the phone one day, she asked, “What are you going to do for yourself now that your kids are all gone for a few hours each day?” I told her that I’d always said I was going to write a book about my life, and I felt like God was still calling me to do that. She said, “Well, then I guess you better do it.” The same friend passed away suddenly and unexpectedly a few months later, and part of me knew that it was now or never at that point.
In 2005 my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He was only 50 years old, and his father had also been diagnosed with it around the same age, so doctors took a blood sample from my dad. Within a few weeks they determined that my dad carried an extremely rare gene mutation that causes Young Onset
Alzheimer’s in more than 99% of its carriers. It was devastating news, and it meant that I had at least a 50% chance of being a carrier as well. At the time I had a 2-year-old and a newborn. It was the worst news I could have ever received. For a long time after that I worried and prayed, not only for my dad, but for myself and my children. I worried almost constantly for years that I would get the disease too, and thereby pass it on down to my kids.
In 2017 I decided to do something about it. I enrolled myself in an ongoing study of individuals who have or are at risk for genetic Alzheimer’s, and I indicated that when an investigational drug was available, I was ready and willing to enroll as a research subject. I was enrolled, but the newest study wasn’t ready for test subjects yet, so I spent the next two years being tested regularly and observed for any symptoms. The study also offered me a free genetic test to determine whether or not I carried my father’s gene mutation. It took me some time, but I decided to learn my gene mutation status. I visited with a genetic counselor, who had me spit into a test tube, and the test tube was sent to a genetic testing lab. A few weeks later I came back to receive my results. They were positive.
When I knew that I had Alzheimer’s I knew that there were certain things I had to do. One of them was to enroll in the next available drug trial. I have 3 children, each of whom are at as much risk as I was for this disease. I will do anything necessary to find a cure for this disease so they do not have to experience this, and a cure for me, or a preventative cure for my kids, may be a cure for anyone with Alzheimer’s, or even the end of the disease altogether. But the other thing I had to do, coming in a close second to finding a cure, was writing this memoir.
The book isn’t about Alzheimer’s, though. It’s about the pattern of God’s work in my life, and in all our lives. Even before I learned I had Alzheimer’s, even before I was an adult, my life was never easy or simple. Alzheimer’s isn’t the only hardship I’ve faced. As a kid I thought that there was something wrong with me because living life seemed so difficult, but as an adult I know that it’s hard for all of us, albeit in different ways. The stuff I’ve been through is different than someone else’s, but struggle is struggle. Pain is pain. So how do we reconcile that with a loving Heavenly Father? That’s what Every Little Thing is about – why God allows us to sin, to be sinned against, to hurt and be hurt, when he could have made our paths straight and easy right from the beginning, and why His love shines brighter and stronger when we know the depths of our weakness.
“Every Little Thing” by Melanie Makovsky can be purchased on Amazon and everywhere books are sold online. She can be found online on Instagram and Facebook
