Mandy Harvey Story

I want to spoil it I just want her to tell it and so you're going to welcome in just a moment but here's the thing because Mandy lost her hearing so what we do when we welcome someone who doesn't have hearing we don't do this because we look like clapping monkeys so what we do is this did anybody know that and then we just look like Pentecostals and that's close enough right so that's what we do when we're going to welcome Mandy here in just a minute and she's also with her translator who's going to be on stage with us so everybody just join me and welcoming Mandy Harvey there she is okay she gets it welcome thank you have seat you're used to being in front of crowds right yeah but uh not normally sitting in front of them Norma I'm just jamming yes yeah why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do I don't think everybody has that awareness well I was born on a cold chilly morning January 2nd you remember the temperature well listen Ohio I assume it was cold a good girl no I agree with a passion for music I wanted to become a music educator never wanted to perform never wanted to be in this situation where had people staring at me first presentation I ever gave I threw up on the whole front row from nerd so good luck left zone but ya know I I wanted to be a choral director college level I love jazz and so that kind of grew and I wanted to become vocal jazz teacher that was what I wanted went to Colorado State University for vocal music education and in the first nine months or so lost my residual hearing in both ears and was dropped from the music program so I knew what I wanted I had a very clear direct path and then what than a year I had no idea who I was anymore I had nothing that I wanted to do with my life and just kind of had to start all the way over Wow so your whole life leads up to a moment where it's all taken away from you yeah it wasn't a great time I know you tell us about that like emotionally how does that hit you at first when I was losing my hearing I was very doubtful that this was actually happening I I liked the idea of living in this false reality where it was just a hearing problem that was temporary or a bad ear infection or a perforated eardrum that would improve with time but it really just didn't get better and I wanted to continue being a music major it was the only thing I ever wanted to do and so I couldn't separate my identity from my dream and that was a huge problem for me because I lost my dream thus losing my identity and I shattered I woke up in February going to class for the first time you know of the new semester for for an exam and I had no idea that that was going to be the last day that I was I was a music major I had no idea and it just it hit and your of your preacher's daughter yeah so we'll pray for you but you have faith like your whole life you had faith I honestly I don't think I would have survived it if I hadn't because you lose everything I I didn't know who it was I didn't know how to communicate with people I didn't want to look at people I didn't want to leave my room and so I shut myself off from the world and the only thing that I couldn't shut myself away from was God and communication there I certainly tried I got angry enough that I stopped talking to him but I never lost my faith I just consider let's talk about that because I think most of us can relate to getting mad at God that true yeah okay I think we've all had those moments and it's usually because God's will for my life is different than my own in some area so how did you and God hash that out it was an interesting series that took a really long time I initially started talking to him a lot and I would have begged and borrowed stolen I would have done anything to stop this crazy train that I just couldn't be real and I was asking him why why me I mean there's so many things that happen in life and why do so many bad things happen to good people I consider myself a relatively good person I haven't really done anything at that point in time I hadn't even gone out on a first date I hadn't experienced life yet and I was a very quiet shy Churchmouse you remind me a lot of Brian Welch from corn it's the hair right that's what is it no no I I started trying to find any passage in the Bible that could tell me a little clue into well this happens you start flipping around you're like Jobe you're like a little let's skip past that cause I don't want that to be my reality but I started landing in Romans and there's a wonderful verse that does not seem wonderful when you're going through something that hard at the time where it's rejoice in your suffering the suffering leads to perseverance perseverance character and character hope and hope does not fail I was like oh yeah let's rejoice in ourself rolling farm yeah but it's I've also read Romans I would hope so yeah I said otherwise we could switch jobs and I'll interview you except I can't sing jazz Wow I probably should stick with my day job Wow yeah probably so it Romans five fantastic right so I started reading that and one of the pamphlets came out from when I was a freshman in high school I went to see iy and it was all about what do you do during difficult situations and so I'm reading my ninth grade year old self version of what I would do in a bad situation and so it asks you what is your biggest fear my biggest fear has always been losing my hearing so it was losing my hearing so I'm looking at my handwriting like oh this is going to be a fun response and then I keep going and it's like how I would handle this I would trust in God I would continue to pray and all these like really positive like this is no problem things happen and I was just like your stupid little girls and oh man I I lift that sucker on fire I was so angry I was like well here it is and I am NOT that person I am not the person who's just going to wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed being like it's okay Jesus has got it my wife is fine bring it on world know I was shattered and I was angry like why would I have one gift this all I ever thought of myself was one thing that I could accomplish one thing I was good at and it had been very clear I started singing when I was four so the only thing I was good at and I had such passion and all these ducks seemed to line up and this was exactly where I needed to be do you know how rare it is to have that feeling where your dream feels like you're exactly what you're supposed to do like this is it that's very good where I'm supposed to be nope be like huh why then I I prayed until I could not pray anymore the thought of praying anymore made me sick I had just prayed to exhaustion and then I just stopped talking altogether that's where I got to I couldn't think of anything else he had heard it all what did the church do because people often respond awkwardly when you're going through hard times did ever happened to you in terms of support but then it didn't really work I had a lot of people in my life I was going to church at school at a time and their intentions were very good I I would like to say their intentions are very good there was me and another gentleman and he he had lost his wife in childbirth and his kid was 2 years old and she was dying with cancer so we were the two people who the church were praying for at the time and so they they did a lot of prayer circles and so they would surround me and they put their hands on me and pray and pray that God would change us and that everything would be fine that there would be this miraculous movement and I'd be able to just be able to hear again and unlike with return back to normal and then when it didn't happen they blamed us for not having enough faith and I still can't hear and his daughter still died and where did that leave us we were the black sheep that they didn't want to talk about anymore because we hadn't moved mountains that we were supposed to move and they couldn't move mountains for us they couldn't manipulate God to make it work for them that's that's heavy stuff I want to pause for a second because you have to tell us how to say Amen like when they're resonating with your story what should they do amen what they meant is a plant and then you gotta fist with your thumb up payment sermon that's the version I know she okay good that's all I know you knew thank you oh that's right is open don't do this [Laughter] so many people like thank you and it's like hmm okay well thank you Jim okay we can edit that out right this is real life so all right oh no your trust me after last week we're both lucky to be here so no Brian was amazing but this story is so raw and so real and the way you're telling it I think we can all identify with that feeling of it didn't work out like I wanted to and somehow we feel like that's God's job is to make life work out the way we want it to and he doesn't agree with that I wouldn't imagine that would make any sense if he did I mean he's the god of everything in it this is such a tiny blip my life while it's important to me is such a tiny little in in everything I mean is all of the history and moving through time and the big picture that's coming Jesus coming back Mandy's little world might not be top of you no concern to make everything work out it just doesn't make a lot of sense it's not in the book of Revelation Wow your story but Jesus's return is so I hear what you're saying but at the same time God cares about each of us so much absolutely but it's like how do you reconcile that God loves me he's crazy about me and he still lets me struggle and suffer I feel like that's the nature of freewill I can't stop the fact that I have a connective tissue disorder I genetically have one and that's not at a malice that's you know this person married this person and this person married this person it's the nature that it is we are humans we are separated from God this is not heaven this is not supposed to be perfect it's not supposed to be a happy happy time all the time were broken that's being human and we had a lot of discussions my family about what you do how do you trust God why would this happen and I remember a very specific conversation that my dad and I had when we were sitting in the parking lot at CSU and he was just talking and talking and talking and he's you know he's doing the thing that he's supposed to do as a dad supposed to try to buck you up and say anything and anything that would make you like calm a little bit or maybe not ugly cry anymore anything that he could say to quiet the situation just a little bit and it was the first time that I had stopped trying to pretend that this was going to be okay and I just stopped him as like dad I don't hardly remember what to sound like anymore and I can't hear you anymore it was heartbreaking but it was real and I was like this is never going to be the same I don't need it to be the same I just need to know what do i do from here and we talked about it God is unable to be evil he's not doing this out of malice it's not sitting up there laughing go let's see what she can handle today right that's not how it works why would he do that that's not in his nature but we have responsibilities of how we're supposed to deal with these situations so I can look at it as God's a bully with a stick and he's beating me down which I don't believe or I can say no matter what happens in this broken world he's holding my hand and he's never going to let it go and we're going to walk this path together regardless of where it comes hey [Applause] so what's the sign for when a man cries on stage you are you're a normal person okay here but I don't know your things like you what did you call me wolf eyes yeah you're a wolf eyes yes okay I had to break the tension sorry because it's bad when the guy on stage interviewing cries so but it's just I think we're all connecting with your story in such a real way and so here's what I'm thinking like what you were saying how we pray forgot to change our circumstance and often times God gets the most glory when we praise him and we're faithful through our circumstance absolutely why aren't we praying for strength to deal with the situation or wisdom to know that this isn't forever that this is not the end this is not heaven why can't we pray for community that we can rise together through this situation no matter what happens that we know that we're not alone it's like we challenge ourselves past the idea of just thinking that God's a genie that oh well I really wanted Egg McMuffin God right here nope he's not listening or maybe he cares too much to grant that prayer yes Harry it's just like you know you're trying to manipulate God to do things that you want to do on your time and that's not how it works so true okay so your story actually what's amazing is that it gets better with tragedy doesn't prove yes yes because your story could have been amazing if it had gone according to your plan I think my life would have been awesome I never would have sung in front of people I never would have performed probably still would have thrown up on people if I had to give a presentation absolutely so now I mean you lose your hearing and then just talk to us a little bit about the doors that God's opened since then what tell me this how in the world you sing if you can't hear well it's a god-given gift no I it is I I was born with a lot of interesting gifts that really didn't seem important until they really were I have a near-perfect pitch a lot of people would say I have perfect pitch but I feel like that seems arrogant so I say I have near perfect pitch I have an amazing memory for music I can remember songs that I sang when I was 4 every bit of it I remember all of the aspects of the song not just the melody line I remember when I was learning music in high school why I wanted to be a choral teacher I was just really good at memorizing music I would listen through 16 part choral music after listening to it once I understood why all the pieces fit and after listening to it twice I had every section memorized and so it was just like I used to be able to process that information really well now I don't have that benefit of being able to listen so I rely on my muscle memory of feeling the movements thus when people do solfege they know like alright this is a half step and they go up and you can feel it as you sing it you trust yourself so use my near perfect pitch mixed in with muscle memory mixed in with visual tuners so I sing into a visual tuner that gets me to see and then from see I do my scales and make sure I get back to see and then any song I start is like okay my first starting notes going to be here modulate to my starting notes remember what the song is and then just sing it and then stop worrying about the rest of it my plan is to only sing when there are a lot of other people singing your plan should be to sing when there's only me in the room [Applause] when did you figure out you could sing again because your dreams are crushed yeah you're you know mad at God but you'll work through that and you pray through that season and people are praying for you to get healed that doesn't happen and then somehow you decide to keep singing well I mean I stopped I stopped for a long time in my life stopping for a year and a half of just not doing music that's a long time and I went on with life I went to a community college and started taking ASL classes and got immersed in the Deaf culture and then from there I started to feel like a human again and I found a sense of belonging I found I found a community I found people who had like stories and and that gave me the confidence to be a normal person you know not just a person who hides in their dorm room and lives off of the scoop of peanut butter and thanks to themselves it's 23 steps to go to the bathroom that you know that's where I was so I had to get out of that depression at least enough to step out the door right first and that was based off of my faith and my family that's a sermon helping me right there that's a sermon but just take the next step God because God has plans for you but you've got to take a step right and so you take that step of faith and you just get out any start learning sign language and yeah well something dad says all the time is that you stay in your room you know what the results going to be nothing happens what happens is you crack the door open you've already changed your potential outcome but I was sitting downstairs dad was dealing with depression at the same time he was dealing with the death of his father and that was something that we we kind of bonded with the way that we used to communicate when we were when I was a kid was we would play guitar together and so my parents were thinking of different ways to kind of get me back into being a little bit of who I was not necessarily throwing me back into music that was never the intention but it was just playing guitar together it was something that we had done and so we decided to play guitar together and I was watching him and I could feel the rhythm of the guitar and I was trying to keep pace with him and then there was a suggestion that I should learn a song and my younger sister picked a song that she had heard on the radio which was one Republic come home which is not a difficult song to sing so I charted out it's in C and great key especially if that's what I'm doing every day and I set it up and used a guitar tuner to find my starting notes and then the hum different ones and wait for the green light to pop up now I have a cool visual tuner that shows me each thing that I'm doing and I've painstakingly learned the song took me hours and hours and hours didn't think I would going to remember it went sat down with him expecting it to be garbage it was like completely wrong but he's my dad so it's not like he's going to be like well you know like run away like he would be like that's your dad fair yeah if it hurts him you know he's thinking you're thinking and then it I asked him I was like well how'd that go because I kind of wanted it to be a close the chapter moment there's just like all right we tried it let's move on let's stop talking about music I'm moving on with my life and he was just like yeah you sing that write it yeah you sing that right and so I didn't really fully believe him so we recorded it on a little home recorder just just us and showed it to my vocal coach that I'd used to go to and she was like oh that's nice your guarded that before you went to CSU I was like no I recorded this last week she was like whoo and come back we got to do a voice lesson and then she was like hey what do you want to sing so I'm not gonna go to lessons and singing you know opera and stuff that I didn't want to do anymore I'm gonna put that much work in might as well be something I want to do so I'm sing jazz and she connected me with Jays and I started singing there which was a completely weird experience because jazz my club yeah it was like a well at the Jazz lounge whatever that means there was a pianist and people eating dinner and I was clutching onto the piano for dear life and I sang one song my funny Valentine and I did it accurately I threw up right before I did it I got up left threw up again remind me not to feed you tomorrow I'm okay now I've got the control I've got the control life but and that kind of led its way I never intended to do music again I was content with just not having it be completely gone from my life I would have been fine learning percussion or cowbell just as being being Kunal weighted me more cowbell yeah there's never enough never a never enough so okay we talked about dreams being shattered and then this moment where you realize you can again and now you're pursuing that how have you seen God open doors it's weird yeah you know I I stood up as saying my funny Valentine and then as I left I was driving home and I was like I can't analyze myself anymore I can't remember how I sang it to care how I sang it and then my fear of public speaking and fear of singing in front of people went away in an instant it was the weirdest thing only well you know I lived through my biggest fear what you do yeah you're not going to like it oh that's not going to crush me so I mean there are so many different things just about my personality that changed I'm not horribly shy probably to the chagrin of many people I haven't noticed any shyness yeah I used to be really shy but now I can talk to people and I found that this whole experience of going through the worst case scenario and having to start over from scratch has really taught me a lot about understanding people and being able to see people and understand that everybody has their own story everybody else has their own pain and that pain is valid and to empathize with them and the way that I get to bring people joy and encouragement was always what I wanted to do in the first place so I can see God working in my life even even in the small things like I never expected to one day sing at the Kennedy Center or to have three four albums I'm writing a book like I never expected to do any of that stuff and it never is it wasn't in my character to do any of that stuff but it's very comfortable now and I'm happy to do it I'm happy to put in thousands of hours of work to sound clear when I'm talking just for the benefit of somebody else that maybe it'll help them through I imagine I mean as you're inspiring us you've inspired thousands and thousands of people just by being you and that's God at work in us right Len because the story could have been you prayed and gods like oh sorry here's your here's your hearing back and you're like okay today's eat yeah must have fallen asleep at the wheel but that's not the story the story is you had to persevere through serious trial you had to check your heart the door and just fall on your face before God and then how he used your trial and tragedy to glorify Him and inspire others is that's the story of faith that's the story the God's story in there to me yeah well I feel like I trust God a lot more now it you would think that it would be the other way around you know that but regardless of what happens in my life I know that I have a certain amount that I can give and I I don't want to have any of that stuff left over when I die I get it all out praise God in any form I can if that means cowbell it means how about this here you go Lord just for you Romans 8 did you get that far when you're reading Romans did you make it to chapter 8 I did I did I didn't initially I mean I had read Romans 8 before but I didn't at the time when you read it when you read Hermiston that's rough oh yeah and so I just kind of went and set it down and then it opened it up again read it again was like nope still sucks close it it up nope don't like it close it and then later I was like you know what I do have my character has changed I am more willing to persevere now if I fall I I know I can get back up I know that I can keep going forward so I have read further now yeah go for it well I mean and this is a it's a preacher verse so I'm sure your dad's shared it with you at some point but just how we know in all things that God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose yes and the all things obviously includes very bad things at times absolutely but I think we all see that through your story today well I hope if one person it sounds very trite but if one person can say all right let's be honest with myself this is really difficult this is what I'm struggling with I'm keeping it to myself I can't get past this if it's me trudging through the muck to find a path out of it is beneficial so that they can find maybe their first step then it was all worth it it was all worth it and I hope that when those horrible things happen which they will this is earth or human we're kind of designed to crumble when those bad things happen you're inspiring you're going to break get ready for it no but when they happen that if you can believe and trust and have faith I've got hold in your hand the whole time it makes things a lot easier to just not be alone amen any last thing you would tell us just as you encouraged the body at large oh gosh no I I would say that we're all in this together I the the loneliness was the thing that got me and I really do feel like it's okay to cry it's okay to mourn it's okay to be sad whenever you're dealing with a tough situation people are constantly telling you to buck up or to smile through it or it'll get better and at that moment that doesn't seem possible it's okay to feel sad about things that don't work out it's not okay to let that you and just leave you there for the rest of your life you have so many gifts passed just one there are so many opportunities to change the world for the better don't allow yourself to be your biggest obstacle is that jazz hands or okay you don't like jazz we've had this conversation I'm not a fan not a family that's ham no no because you're a jazz singer so we're all right we we have to end there I think the right way to end this would be for you to sing I love [Applause] [Music] [Music] clay [Music] I [Music] my [Music] please [Music] even [Music] [Music] here [Music] little [Music] my [Music] and try [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] Oh thank you and Grayson he Oh [Music] Oh [Music] please [Music] welcome with no [Music] [Laughter] it is [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Fruitful Life Media

Views: 18,899

Rating: 4.9480519 out of 5

Keywords: Mandy Harvey, Home Church Connection, Fruitful Life Network, Chris and Carol Green

Id: 5IjusLZvryY

Length: 39min 15sec (2355 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2017