A Saved Young Life Now in Heaven: The Autobiography and Other Chronological Writings of Stephanie Bell
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Authored by Stephanie Bell, Other compilation by Denise Bell M.D.

Paperback: 156 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Publication Date: May 1, 2012
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1470037033
ISBN-13: 978-1470037031
Product Dimensions: 0.3 x 6.9 x 9.8 inches

Foreword

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” —Romans 8:18

My youngest child, my daughter Stephanie Renée Bell, was on the earth for approximately 654,969,000 seconds, i.e. 20 years, 280 days and 16 hours. At the age of 10 years, she prayed a prayer to accept Jesus Christ into her heart as her Lord and Savior. Total immersion baptism during her teens was her public profession of faith. As a Christian, I know that she went to Heaven on March 25, 2010.

“Jesus said to her: I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” —John 11:25-26

“It’s all about Jesus.” In November of 2009, during a lucid interval in a hospital room, Stephanie was urgently writing on her blanket with her right index finger. When we gave her a pen and paper to decipher what she was writing, she repeatedly scrawled that sentence, superimposing it on one spot on the paper. That was one of the final sentences and the underlying message of her prolific writing career…

In April of 2008, I was reduced for several weeks to sitting in a chair, leaning back; the only position that afforded me relief from continuous, excruciating abdominal pain. This was due to a large liver cyst pressing on my stomach. My appointment with a surgeon specializing in liver disease was weeks away. Surgery was finally scheduled for May of 2008. Stephanie spent the night in a chair in my hospital room the night after my surgery. As time went by I was recovering and requiring less narcotic painkillers. Stephanie had just completed her 1st year at a local community college where she had an “A” average, earning induction into Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society of the Two-Year College.

On June 1, 2008 Stephanie told me that since her May 17, 2008 birthday she had experienced severe headaches. I took her to the local hospital Emergency Room where an MRI revealed a brain mass. She was transferred to Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, where most of the mass was removed and discovered to be a malignant brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme. Stephanie told us that the night before surgery angels came to her in a dream, telling her to do what they said and be very still and they would protect her, not allowing her to awaken during surgery; this had been her fear. The procedure was done June 2, 2008, 1 year to the day after she gave her Middle Tennessee Home Education Association High School Graduation speech.

In July of 2008 my husband William, myself, Stephanie and our 2 sons Sean and Brandon embarked upon the first of numerous road trips (over 1,100 miles round trip) to Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina where Stephanie enrolled in a clinical trial that was to be administered by them in conjunction with the local medical center, where all of the radiation treatment and most of the intravenous chemotherapy would be given. She also took oral chemotherapy at home. Before heading for home after the first trip to Duke, we went to the coast since Stephanie had never before seen the ocean. We ended up on Carolina Beach on the 4th of July. During a later trip we were sideswiped on Interstate 40 in Knoxville, on the way to an appointment; the window next to my seat shattered; my shoulder was injured; no one else was injured and there was body damage to our vehicle; we continued on to Duke.

Stephanie was unable to attend school during the Fall, 2008 and Winter, 2009 semesters. However, as MRIs and PET scan began to show no evidence of tumor, Stephanie enrolled for the Fall, 2009 semester at the only local university where Speech Language Pathology (her chosen major) classes were offered at the undergraduate level. She joined the National Student Speech Language and Hearing Association and maintained an “A” average in her coursework and attended classes even when MRIs started to show recurrent tumor and her left arm began to just hang at her side and flail around. She continued to attend until she began to literally stumble and fall.

During that November, 2009 hospitalization she became bedridden. She was discharged to home where we cared for her between ambulance rides, ER visits, further admissions at 3 different hospitals. William and I spent every day and night in her hospital rooms, including the critical care units; Brandon spent most days and nights there. Low blood counts, platelet counts and aggressive tumor growth caused doctors to stop further chemotherapy. Among her requests, I read to her the book of Luke and other Scriptures; her brother Brandon read to her from the book of Ezekiel and other Scriptures. Her brother Sean and many others also read the Bible to her. Our family, church pastors and members as well as other friends held prayer vigils and worship sessions at home and at the various hospitals. The Lord held us up during those times as He does now. Our Strong Tower Bible Church family provided a tremendous level of support. We played nearly continuous music in her hospital rooms. As far as we could tell, God in His infinite mercy spared her from agonizing pain throughout, because after she recovered from the surgery she denied any pain whenever we or her doctors would ask.

On a breakthrough, wonderful day, at Vanderbilt, Stephanie was alert, talking and able to swallow. She began to ask for all kinds of foods. I fed her for hours on end while she ate ravenously. The next day I fed her breakfast but by lunchtime, she was unable to swallow or talk. In the final throes of the disease, her brother Sean asked her how she was doing. She replied, “Good.” She was semi-comatose and during her final admission at the local hospital she lapsed into a coma, eventually going to heaven on March 25, 2010. Her faith never wavered.

Stephanie attended a private school until the middle of 1st grade; I homeschooled her through high school, except for 2nd grade, during which she attended another private school. She earned many badges as a Girl Scout and was in the National American Miss Pageant. For many years she was a camper and eventual counselor at a Christian camp promoting unity of all people through Christ.

God supplied Stephanie with multiple gifts. An accomplished classically-trained pianist, she also was a guitarist, music composer (copyrighted instrumentals and lyrics, including Christian rap deliberately written in the vernacular of youth, particularly urban youth, for whom she felt a particular burden), artist and dancer. Some of her music included her pseudonyms “NiteLyte” and “AjiaJade”. A petite basketball player with great skills, she played for over 10 seasons in a local community league. She took ballet classes at age 5, stopping because she said it made her neck hurt. When she was older, she attended a church Vacation Bible School and was practicing for a group dance that was to be done during the final day, portraying dancers around the throne of Jesus, but injured her ankle and was unable to be in the final group dance. When we told the nurse at the walk-in clinic the circumstances of the injury, she gave us a card bearing the name of a Christian dance studio. Stephanie subsequently took Christian hip-hop dance classes at that studio, which was owned by that nurse and, along with her brother Brandon, she ministered through dance at local churches, parks, a shopping mall and at the Rescue Mission. Although another injury, a tear of the left knee medial patellar retinaculum in August, 2006 (while doing an exercise routine at home) culminated in open knee surgery and ended her dancing here on earth, she continued to serve as a member and longtime President of the 212 Dance Team of our church where she attended since 1999, becoming a member in 2007. She also served on the church Student Youth Council.

It is, of course, her gift of writing that brings me to this foreword. I have spent much time just trying to find all of her writings and probably still have not found them all. Some were handwritten, others in her computers. Looking back through her home school notebooks I found poetry in spiral notebooks on bound sheets interspersed with bound Chemistry, Biology and Math homework and tests that I had graded. I don’t recall seeing this poetry as I was grading the work. She completed 3 novels and started many others. I was aware of the 3 completed novels but only found the poetry and lyrics to her more than 40 songs after she went to Heaven. She also wrote several installments of “fan fiction” as well as many unfinished stories. In her blogs she speaks of her “secret life” of writing.

The fact that many of her handwritten works included the date and time of day (of course, the computer writings automatically do) caused me to arrange them chronologically. For those whose date could not be ascertained, I inserted them where the subject seemed to fit with the writings around it. The dates as well as time of day, in my estimation, lend to the poignancy and urgency of her writings, in light of the length of her life on earth. Apparently, oftentimes, she wrote well into the night. As I found more of them, I realized that this compilation was actually autobiographical as well. Her works reflect the degree to which she felt ostracized, especially as a result of the way people, adults and students alike, reacted to her as a home schooled student. As many of the writings were heartbreakingly difficult to read, I procrastinated in collecting them and typing the handwritten ones; not to mention my cataloguing the recordings of her keyboard renditions of her instrumental music compositions and my typing of handwritten song lyrics. Reading her works, however, also provided me with inspiration and comfort, due to the Gospel that she proclaimed. For me, this has been a humbling, incredible journey.

Stephanie touched the lives of many people, including her family, through her ministry of dance, as a camper and camp counselor, and in many other ways. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior after seeing my children on fire for Christ. Stephanie’s faith sustained her, supplying strength and courage through a ravaging illness. She walked well in her purpose, which was to glorify God, always acknowledging that her gifts came from Him. She is now perpetually worshipping the Lord, dancing at the foot of the throne of Jesus without limitations. Like the numerous unfinished stories that she wrote, the story of her eternal life will never end.

Stephanie was a gift to us and I thank God for the honor and privilege of being her mother. I’m sure that I did not convey this to her as I should have. These pages are, by far, the most difficult yet joyous that I have ever had to write, their completion facilitated by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This foreword does not encompass everything that I could say about her. Since her transition to Heaven, the Lord has been holding me up more than I could ever imagine; I am much better than I thought I would be. We more than miss her but we grieve with hope, knowing that we will see her again when we, too, get to Heaven.

In “Abandoned” she writes: “Why am I writing poems that no ear will ever hear?” I could not let that happen.

To God be the Glory,
Denise Bell, M.D.

An Excerpt from Stephanie's Blog

The following excerpt from Stephanie’s blog in “A Saved Young Life Now in Heaven: The Autobiography and Other Chronological Writings of Stephanie Bell further elucidates the underlying reasons for my publishing my daughter Stephanie’s writings posthumously.

May 2, 2009

I Have a Secret

I haven’t blogged in a while, mainly because I really didn’t have anything to say. This spring has been busy for me. Lots of traveling, pretty much. Without being in school or working, I’ve had plenty of free time during the week, and since I’m feeling completely back to my old self from recovering from treatment, I feel like I’m racing through slow-motion. By “racing,” I mean that life is moving very fast, even though I’m not really doing anything “significant,” in the world’s standard, that is. Meaning, I’m not in school working toward that degree my extended family would hope I have. Not really doing what most 20-year-olds do. A lot of people ask me what I “do,” meaning, “Do I have a life?” And I answer honestly, explaining briefly that I work on my writing (fiction novels) and my music (songwriting). And the interesting thing is, my writing, my creative communication gift, is really the part of me that used to be buried deep beneath my brainy, Phi Theta Kappa, daughter-of-a-doctor side. Pretty much no one knew about my songwriting hopes and dreams when I was slaving under a full college course-load. Nobody knew that I’d written two novels and was on the brink of sending one off to publishers. But I’m not all that sure that I even have a chance with an audience, sometimes. If I even have an audience. It’s like knowing some big, exciting news flash that I can’t share. It can drive you crazy.

And yet, now that my college, average 20-year-old’s lifestyle has been put on hold because of last summer’s diagnosis, I’ve been able to fully embrace my creative gifting.

But it still feels like a big secret, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

If I had one wish for my creative passions, if someone were to say that they could grant me one dream come true regarding them, my answer would be to make them public. Now, I’ve asked myself lately if that’s a selfish desire. If it’s wrong for me to want to share the things I’ve written with the world, because I doubt if it’s good enough, if anyone will understand it and see it the way I do. I worry because everyone else is satisfied with getting through college and getting married and having kids. I would be too, don’t get me wrong, but it’s so strange sometimes to have such a raging passion for writing and music and being unsuccessful in sharing it. I guess it’s really my fault that I’m stuck like this. The only person stopping me is myself.

But my answer to my question of whether or not I’m being selfish is no. When I write a story, yes, I do it for the joy it brings me, and to please the Lord, to give that gift right back to Him. And I would be just fine if I was playing my music and reading my stories for only His ears alone. But I also write with people in mind. I write things based on dreams I have, on ideas, on things from the outside world. I write to encourage and inspire others.

I just haven’t really released everything I’ve made to those “others” yet, and I wonder what’s taking me so long, what with all of this time on my hands.

So until I make my move, it’s still my little secret.

 

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