Aly's Fight
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Aly Taylor and Josh Taylor
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First Edition: May 2019
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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ | Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. | Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain. | Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Cover design by Matt Smartt, Smartt Guys Design
Author photo by Angela Groce, Unveiled Radiance
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Taylor, Aly (Alyssa Page), 1987- author. | Taylor, Josh, author.
Title: Aly’s fight : beating cancer, battling infertility, and believing in miracles / Aly and Josh Taylor.
Description: First edition. | New York : Worthy, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019004893 | ISBN 9781683972990 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Taylor, Aly (Alyssa Page), 1987- | Taylor, Josh. | Breast—Cancer—Patients—United States—Biography. | Adoptive parents—United States—Biography.
Classification: LCC RC280.B8 T42 2019 | DDC 362.19699/4490092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019004893
ISBNs: 978-1-68397-299-0 (hardcover), 978-1-68397-214-3 (e-book)
E3-20190924-JV-PC-DPU
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
1. When Cancer Interrupted DESTROYED Our Life Plan
2. Breast Cancer at Twenty-Four?!
3. Walking Out Healing
4. Broken and Healed
5. Cancer’s Aftermath
6. Attempting Pregnancy and Fighting Infertility
7. Adoption: The Best Choice
8. Our Genevieve: Our First True Miracle
9. Our Family Grows Again
10. She Chose Us… Again
11. Kentucky Bound
12. Thy Will Be Done
13. Celebrate the Miracles
14. Embracing Destroyed Plans
15. Life-Giving Resources
Photos
Acknowledgements
Discover More
About the Authors
Praise for Aly’s Fight
This book is dedicated to the most incredible three girls on the planet: our daughters, Genevieve, Vera, and Lydia Taylor. When we look at your faces, we see the heart of God. If we ever question God’s goodness, all we have to do is look at you, and all doubts are gone.
Genevieve—you are our reminder of God still being a God of miracles.
Vera—you are our reminder of God doing the impossible.
Lydia—you are our reminder of God’s incredible faithfulness to us.
You three girls are chosen, loved, and adored. We are completely obsessed with you.
Our greatest prayer and desire for your lives is that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Our next prayer is that you love others as you love yourself. You are so incredibly special. We know God will use you all in amazing ways for His kingdom.
God started an incredible work in you from day one of your lives. We are incredibly honored to have a front-row seat to watching how He will complete the work He has begun in you. Love Him. Trust Him. Love others.
Mommy and Daddy love you forever.
We also want to share a tribute to Aly’s dad, Fred Page.
Daddy, you are missed every single day. How I wish you would be sharing in the joys of life in this current season. I know my girls would just adore you the way I still do. I pray we are making you so proud. I cannot wait to jump into your arms in the presence of our Creator and Healer.
I love you always, Aly.
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I shall not die, but live, And declare the works of the LORD.
—Psalm 118:17 (NKJV)
INTRODUCTION
It has been on our hearts to write this book for years, and we are incredibly humbled to have been given this opportunity to share our story with you.
—ALY—
One day soon after I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I found myself sitting in the café section of Books-A-Million wanting some time to be quiet and to simply be alone. I was hoping to have time to pray and read. I wanted to get away for a bit from all of the people asking questions about my diagnosis. Everyone was incredibly kind, but all the attention was overwhelming at times.
Lucky for me (insert sarcasm), I had apparently picked the day Paula Deen was doing a book signing, and everyone and their momma was there. We live in West Monroe, Louisiana—a small country town where not many authors, let alone Paula Deen, come for a book signing. What were the chances? I had been in the bookstore for only ten minutes before the crowds started clawing their way in.
As I sat in my chair at the front in the café section and the people started lining up, I started to panic. The last thing I wanted was for anyone to see me. It seemed as if everyone in town knew my news. I was the poor twenty-four-year-old girl who had just been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.
To avoid having to talk to anyone, I started walking up and down book aisles in the back. I wanted to stay away from everything cancer related, as I was still in a state of denial, but guess where I ended up—in the aisle with books about cancer.
Despite my reservations, I found myself picking up a few books in this section that looked “faith-based,” written by other women who had walked through breast cancer. I started skimming one book written by a woman with a similar type of breast cancer that I had. As I was somewhat enjoying relating to this woman, I got to a part in her book that made me physically ill. She was explaining a hopeful moment in her journey where she learned that there was a high possibility she would live for five years after diagnosis. She was saying that to be encouraging, as this type of cancer was e
xtremely aggressive, and she didn’t know if she would have that long.
I got the biggest pit in my stomach. If that statistic held true for me, that would mean I would live until I was twenty-nine! I immediately put the book down. How was that news supposed to be encouraging? I later learned that this girl had been told she only had a few months to live, and she had made it five years. So while she had lived longer that she’d hoped, it was not what I needed to read.
As Paula Deen (finally) left and the crowd dissipated some, I resettled in a chair back in the café section and decided to look up my type of cancer on my computer (you know that was a bad idea) and was met with more horrifying information. I immediately determined that I would stop looking up information or books on my type of cancer because everything was negative. Everything.
I prayed right then and there in that bookstore and said, Lord, when I am healed… not if, but when, I am writing a book that someone can pick up and only be given hope.
Well, here I am. Writing the book I promised I would write. Praise my Healer and my Sustainer, through cancer, infertility, adoption, pregnancy, and writing this book!
—JOSH—
Aly and I are two ordinary people who have asked God to use us. I think many people say they want to be used by God, but it is another thing to say yes to Him when the circumstances are trying and scary. The song lyric from “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)” by Hillsong United, “Lead me where my trust is without borders” makes me ponder if I really mean those words when I say them. When I think about those lyrics, my flesh wants to scream (and has screamed), “No, do not lead me where my trust is without borders! Keep me in an easy, safe, enjoyable life where I don’t have to trust You much at all.” That is just the honest truth.
But the harsh reality is that in this life we will have trouble. As much as we don’t want to struggle in life, we will.
And you will too.
We live in a fallen world. So instead of praying for a simple, easy life, I have chosen to embrace the troubles we go through and hold the hand of the One who has overcome them. When we do this, we are living the rich and satisfying life Jesus talks about. Joy in trial. Intimacy with Christ. Peace that surpasses understanding. Let John 16:33 be an anthem whenever you find yourself starting to dwell on the darkness in the world, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
—JOSH AND ALY—
So here we are. We are Josh and Aly Taylor. We are simply sharing our story and praying that our story impacts yours. We truly believe that many people give up in life right before their breakthrough. Most of our breakthroughs came right after contemplating giving up. Thank God we pushed through, depending on the Lord for our every breath. We pray that reading our story of heartbreak and deliverance will encourage you to keep holding on, and keep believing that God is who He says He is. He will come through for you, in His timing and in His perfect way.
We pray that wherever you are in life, and whoever you are, this book will impact you. We are not special, and our words are not special. But the God who has crafted the most beautiful story in our lives is. He is waiting for you to trust Him and completely surrender this crazy, unpredictable life to Him. Want to know how? Come along with us, and we hope that as you read of our complete surrender, you will join us as we choose to live a life surrendered.
CHAPTER 1
WHEN CANCER INTERRUPTED DESTROYED OUR LIFE PLAN
—JOSH AND ALY—
Our lives stopped on October 17, 2011.
Most people have a date in their heads that marks a key change in their lives. A defining moment that gives context to a person’s life story. Maybe it was a wedding, a first kiss, the birth of a child, or a new job. For us, that date is October 17, 2011. No matter what the future holds, we know we will always look back on the events of our lives as pre-October 17 and post-October 17. Everything we had ever been, known, thought, hoped for, or dreamed of before that day came to a screeching halt, and an entirely new life we never expected began. God had much bigger and better plans for us than we ever could have imagined; we just had to go through our worst nightmares to get there.
Our story has been equal parts joy, anxiety, hilarity, pain, excitement, and heartbreak. People tell us all the time that we’ve experienced more life in our first thirty-something years than most people ever do. And with all we’ve been through, it can be hard to figure out where to even begin telling our story. So we’ll start with us. This is a story about two people who are deeply in love and absolutely crazy about each other—but it didn’t start out that way.
YOUNG LOVE… KIND OF
—ALY—
I met Josh Taylor when I was fourteen years old and he was seventeen. Even at that young age, I’d already been through a terrible tragedy. My father—my rock and my hero—had died a few years earlier in a car accident. I remember hearing about my dad’s accident and thinking he’d just broken a few bones; I never even considered the possibility that he could be gone. I was making him a get-well card when my mom walked in to tell my sister and me that he had passed away. I was shocked and started screaming, “NO! NO! NOOOO!” Even now, as an adult, I have a hard time comprehending his death. It was the first time in my life when I longed for heaven, knowing that only there will the heartache on earth make sense. Oh, how I wanted to see my daddy again!
As our family was trying to get used to life without him, we moved from my hometown of Lafayette to Monroe, Louisiana. I was enrolled in a local Christian school and was blessed with some new, wonderful friends there. During my freshman year of high school, one of those friends invited me to a party at another student’s house. It was there that I saw Josh Taylor for the first time. He was super cute in his baggy Abercrombie jeans, and he had a head full of poufy, curly black hair. But he also had an inaccurate reputation for being a bit of a player. We locked eyes a couple of times, and then I saw him heading my way. I remember thinking, Don’t do it. Don’t do it. I’m not into you. Please don’t do this.
He did it.
—JOSH—
I grew up as a pastor’s kid in West Monroe. From prekindergarten on, I was a student at the small Christian school at my dad’s church. Between school, church, and family, I was on the church grounds 24-7. Both my parents worked there, and all my friends were there. I lived and breathed Family Church and Claiborne Christian School; it was my whole world—and I loved it. Then, as I finished my eighth-grade year, that part of my world was shattered when I found out the school was closing. I’d never even thought about any other school, so I didn’t know what that meant for me. My fourteen-year-old brain was overrun with questions like, Where will I go? and What about my friends? To make matters worse, the school closed because of financial reasons and, well, did I mention both my parents worked there? We moved into a trailer on the church property and did everything we could to cut costs.
I was scared, and everything I’d ever known had changed. When it was time to start high school, my parents decided to send my brother and me to a different Christian school about thirty minutes from our house. Thirty minutes doesn’t seem like much now, but at the time I felt like I was being shipped off to another country. Thankfully, some of my best friends decided to go to that school, too, but many others didn’t. I was devastated as I started high school and had to build a new life practically from scratch.
Fast-forward two years. My high school didn’t seem so new and different anymore. I’d made a pretty good life there, and I had made some great friends. One night at a friend’s party, I noticed a stunning beauty across the room. I didn’t know much about Aly at the time, only that she was a freshman and seemed like a fun person to be around. And, of course, that she was incredibly beautiful. I know Aly considers that to be her “ugliest phase of life,” but I’m here to tell you fourteen-year-old Aly rocked some straight-across bangs and braces! My mind was made up. I was going in, and I wasn’t coming
back without that girl’s phone number.
—ALY—
“Do you want to go see a movie with me Sunday?”
Wait, what? Did this “player” really just stroll up to me and ask me out? I was thinking, I’m not interested! Why are you doing this? But those weren’t the words that came out of my mouth. I was young, and I had never been asked out before. Rather than telling him to take a hike, I heard myself answer, “Sure! Sounds great!”
So two days later, Josh Taylor picked me up for my first date ever. Fortunately for us, we have it all documented, thanks to my sister. She filmed and interviewed me as I got ready using her finest fake British accent. I guess you could say that was my first—but certainly not my last—taste of reality television. We’ve probably watched and laughed at that video a thousand times over the years. My favorite part is the image of Josh driving me away from our house. As the car disappears down the street, my sister jokes, “Well, let’s hope we see Aly again!”
Josh was really sweet on that date and did his best to make a good impression, but I just wasn’t into him at all. I felt weird and awkward the whole time. I leaned as far away from him as my seat would allow during the movie, terrified he’d try to hold my hand or put his arm around me. When he took me home, I walked in and breathed a huge sigh of relief, grateful the whole ordeal was over. But then he started calling. A lot. I never answered the phone; instead, I armed my mom and sister with a list of excuses to give him for why I couldn’t talk. I just couldn’t bear to tell him the truth: that we were never going out again. Surely he’d get the hint, right?
Wrong. He kept calling! It’s crazy that he seemed to believe every awful excuse we gave him. While I wasn’t talking to him on the phone, my mom was. And she loved him and felt so bad for him! He and my mom built a lifelong friendship from all those phone conversations he had with her while I was hiding from him!