Chapter 4 Fully Aware

The ride to the hospital is sketchy for me, as I was in and out of consciousness, but I do remember Ches was in the ambulance with me. Looking back at the ride, it seems the ambulance was much larger. I vaguely remember Ches being there with me, except that the paramedic kept reassuring me that he was fine. I mentioned earlier that the roads on the way to Monroe were not all that great, right? Well, as we bumped along at high rates of speed, my oxygen mask kept slipping off of my face and everytime it did, I thought I was going to die. I obviously wasn't able to speak very loud, because I struggled getting the paramedic's attention to put the mask back on. Apparently, the fear I felt was conveyed through my eyes and the paramedic held the mask on for me. That was such a comfort.

When Ches and I made it to the hospital, my husband and Gabi had already arrived and so had many family members. We were spread out all over that emergency room. When they called in the neurosurgeon to look at my CT and MRI, he point blank said, "You need to go to University of Mississippi Hospital where you can get the best surgeon in this area for spinal injury." Well, who was I to argue? I mean, really, I was in no position to say, "I want a second opinion!" So....this meant I would be airlifted to Jackson and my children were left in Monroe.

The flight to Jackson was smooth as far as I can remember, but when we landed! Whew! Those doctor wannabes were all over me like ugly on a monkey! They were trying to "set" my dislocated elbow while I was awake and they were taking me straight to surgery! One sweet little nurse or resident, I honestly am not sure, said, "Can't you wait until she's in surgery to do that?" Bless you young lady (whoever you are!). And, yes, I could feel it. And, yes, that was a good thing.

When I awoke from surgery, the pain was so horrific. They were not giving me pain medicine, because they had not ruled out a brain injury at that point. I tried to tell them my brain was fine, but was about to short circuit without some relief from the pain. I had two children naturally. I have a fairly high pain tolerance, but I don't think people are supposed to live through that kind of physical pain. It was really bad, but they stuck to their guns. Finally, after quite some time they gave me Tylenol 3 with codiene. They should rename that medicine to "itch in a pill!". Oh my word, my mother or whoever was handy stood over me and scratched my ever-loving itching NOSE!

Shortly after waking up from surgery, my mom and my brother, Kevin who lives in Raleigh, NC, came in for the fifteen minute visitation. Ok. Can I just say, in all seriousness, when I saw my brother, I thought I was dead or dying. I knew I must be in bad shape if my brother FLEW in to see me. That just didn't happen. I was crying and begging for some relief, but when I saw Kevin, I asked, "Am I dying?" Kevin had flown in from Raleigh, NC as soon as he was able. He was such a comfort and real source of strengh for my mom and me during that time.

The next few days following the surgery were flooded with medical complications, family, friends, therapists, you name it, I got it. The day that I remember being most cognizant, the head of neurosurgery at the hospital told me I would be paralyzed from my chest down for the rest of my life. Point blank, "You will be in a wheechair for the rest of your life." I don't think they offer "Tact 101" in medical school. But then again, how do you take the sting out of news like that? I guess you "remove" yourself from unplesant news like that when it is your job to deliver devastating information on a routine basis. Nonetheless, it was in the quiet of the nights with mom and other family members that stayed to help that tiny bits of reality began to creep into my awareness. I knew what they were saying. I had just enough medical training to know that a spinal cord injury is a really bad thing.

About the third or fourth night, I remember praying for my children and husband and thinking I would never be able to hold them again. Even now, as I recall that night tears fill my eyes and I can feel the desperation in my chest. I prayed and asked God to please let me at least move my arms so I could hug my babies. My right arm was in a cast from about mid-bicept to my hand and my left arm had just been lifeless. That very night, my nose was itching terribly bad and instintively my left arm went up in the air and fell across my face! God heard AND answered my prayer! I had no control over it, BUT IT MOVED!!!

I have often joked, that I should have prayed that God heal me totally since He was answering my prayers that night. Jesus said we just have to ask and our Father in heaven will give it to us. I am familiar with the verses that say if we ask...believing...in agreement...according to His will...He will grant us our petition! So why am I still rolling around? Why am I still paralyzed? Well, I don't have all the answers to all the hard questions, but I know Who does. March 30, 1993, God began a work in me. He has not completed what He started. I put my faith in the scripture in Philippians 1:6 "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." I know Paul was speaking to the brethren at Philippi and that He knew that their faith in Jesus was being perfected, but I know that the scripture is relavant to me today and I believe God began a good work that day in me. Those of you reading this have had tragedies that have stopped you dead in your tracks as well, but you may not see God's hand at work in those dark hours. Believe this...there are many of us who have suffered abuse, illness, and many atrocities and we cannot see the hand of God in our midst, but...He is there. He is in the middle of your world. You may not recognize Him because the situation is ugly and a loving God would NEVER allow such a bad thing to happen...but He does. I know that I have two choices to make. I can either reject Him because I am appalled at the circumstances or I can say, "OK, what is it that You want me to take away from this?" That is about as simple as I can make it to help you understand where I am coming from when I say He started a process that HORRIBLE day, but He has been in the process of shaping and molding me into the child He wants me to be.

The molding and shaping of our character is really what is happening when "life" comes our way with the speed of a jet airplane. I suppose, spiritually, we are more "prepared" at some times more than we are at others, but James 1:2-4 clearly tells us that it is a process. First the trial, then patience, then perfection, and ultimately lacking nothing. Have I arrived? Oh nooo! Am I close? Oh no, I really don't think so. But am I aware? Ahhh, yes. I am awake! I am fully aware of His presence in my life. And it is in Him that I can and have found PERFECT peace. And it is available to you to!

Chapter 3 The Jaws of Life

Lying there limp and nearly lifeless, I was told that my four year old son, Ches, was out of the car walking around when the ambulance arrived. Thankfully, he sustained no physical injuries. Conversely, he saw EVERYTHING. He saw Gabi with blood streaming down her face and her tears as she was in terrific pain from a broken nose and femur. He heard all the moans and saw all the carnage. He suffered from that mental anguish. They call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Gabi, three, was in a body cast for two months, but she was quite tenacious as she learned to walk around in that full-body armor! How precious they were! And, how awesome they are now.

When the ambulance arrived, they realized that I had a neck injury and so did I. I mentioned that I was in clinicals in Radiologic Technology. Our wreck was on a,Tuesday, but on Monday i was working in the emergency room x-ray department. I had just rotated into this area not long before. On Monday morning, there had been a car accident in town and they brought the patient in to have a C-spine clearance. That's x-rays to make sure the c-collar can safely be removed and there are no neck injuries. On Monday, the patient was cleared...on Tuesday, I was the patient and I didn't clear.

I remember telling them not to move me and put a collar on me. I cannot describe the pain. It was so isolated to my neck. I didn't hurt anywhere else. I had a dislocated elbow and broken wrist, but the only pain I felt was in my neck. The closest anology I can give is to imagine being stabbed in the neck with a red-hot poker! Excruciating! The EMT and paramedics were so careful not to move me an inch without securing my neck, but we ran into a snag...my door was smashed shut from the front side. They had to extract me from the car. Can you say Jaws of Life?

Have you ever felt trapped? Either in a situation or in your heart and mind? Isaiah 61:1-3 tells us that Jesus came to set us free. In essence, Christ is your Jaws of Life. Being removed from that crushed vehicle was piercingly painful, I can assure you. If you feel that your life has crashed in around you and you feel no hope, Jesus Christ can pull you out of the wreckage. It will not be easy. It will not be painless, but it will be worth it!

Chapter 2 My life Flashed Before My Eyes

In that moment, that very brief time in the car, as I lay still, I had no idea what I or my family was about to face and Who I was about to face. You know they say your life flashes right before your eyes as you narrowly escape death? Well, in hindsight, I think you reevaluate your life. I know for me, I've been given the blessing of viewing things as temporal.

Life is short, period, dot, end of thought. Why do we waste so much of our time and energy holding grudges and harboring hate in our hearts. The likelihood that you are one of those people with the dreamy childhood is far from what the rest of us experienced. I'd like to deal with this issue first, as it is the most difficult for me to disclose, but I feel it is definitely worth the effort.

Childhood for me is compartmentalized. I led a double life as a small child. In fact, my family led a double life. My father is an alcoholic. He was a practicing alcoholic until July of 1981, and he has been sober since. I had much to forgive him for and God made a way. I was abused for the most of my childhood, but God made a way for me to forgive my abuser. For those of you that grew up with a parent in addiction, abuse, or neglect, I want to assure you that forgiveness can and will come to you if you pray and ask God to give it to you. I am living proof!

The problem with childhood abuse is that it skews your perception of how things are supposed to be. Your friends and their families act much differently than how your family operates and instinctively you know, you KNOW, that something is wrong! When I said that I compartmentalized, I put all the "bad" things that occurred in a box in my mind and shoved it as far back in the recesses as I possibly could and only opened it when I had to deal with "bad" things. Praise be to God that He has taken that "box", opened it with me and has shown me the "pearls" that have developed as a result of the "bad" times as a child. God wants to reveal to you the tiny grains of sand that infiltrated your life; that became irritants and have left you scarred. Open that box and examine the irritant, the abuse, the neglect. God will walk through the process with you if you invite Him to show you how He can use that pearl for His glory.

I think we were able to separate the things happening to us so much so that when we were placed in public, we knew what to say and what not to say. Many of us carried that trait into adulthood. We only let people see that part of us that is "all put together". I say to you, if you are that person, fall on your face before God and trust Him to replace the pain and facade with healing and realness. That's what makes us pliable in His hands. We MUST become like putty in the Master Potter's hand.

So, you ask,"What does all this have to do with the wreck and paralysis?", well, remember I said that when I regained consciousness immediately after the crash and all I heard was the hissing of the engine? I know God protected me from hearing my children crying. He knew that I would not have been able to keep an ounce of sanity had I heard my babies crying. However, they were crying. I was in a rehab hospital for four months following the wreck and one night I awoke to hearing my babies screaming! I know that was God opening a little box in my mind where that had been stored until I could deal with it. At that point, my family was staying with me pretty much all day and night. I knew they were okay now, but God showed me that He spared me that mental anguish of hearing their screams and being helpless to comfort them.

It may be that God was protecting my mind when I was a child just as He did while I lay there in that car. I can't be sure, but what I am sure of is that He has helped me to see the good that has come from being a wounded child. "WHAT?!" I can hear the questions now. Yes, what Satan intended for harm, God has turned to good. And, He'll do it for you, too.

Chapter 1 The Day My World Stopped Turning and Started Rolling

March 30, 1993 marks the day that my life turned on its ear. That morning as I was getting my day started, I ran a mile for the first time in months as I had been recovering from surgery and had been inactive. It was a cool damp morning, but the run was so invigorating that the elements were of no concern. My then husband, two children Ches 4 and Gabi 3), and I were living about an hours drive from his work, their part-time daycare, and my school. I was in my clinicals at Northeast Louisiana University for Radiologic Technology. I had just over a year before I graduated.

Typically, my cildren would stay with my mother while we were in Monroe for school and work, but my mother had a dentist appointment in Monroe, so the children were with me. We all left Oak Grove at the same time and when we reached a little intersection where you could turn or go straight and both routes took you to the same place; mom went one way and we went the other. The drive to Monroe from Oak Grove was all rural highways, and mostly substandard roads at that. On this partcular day there was an ever so slight mist in the air so the highways were damp, not saturated.

The kids were in the back seat of our small four-door car. I was in the passenger side studying. At my last glance at Ches and Gabi, they were buckled in and I had the automatic shoulder strap in place. At some point I remember my ex-husband making a sound. It was a deep, desperate sound that caught my immediate attention. I looked up in just enough time to see a white flash and try to turn to check on the kids. That's the last thing I remember as an able bodied, independent to a fault, twenty-four year old, young mother.

My next state of consciousness must have been only seconds later, because I heard a loud hissing noise. It was steam off the motors of the little white truck and our little black car that had just collided at a rate of about 55 miles per hour head on. I didn't hear my children crying (then), but I heard my husband moaning and laboring for breath. I think God must have somehow buffered my mind from everything going on around me, because I could not have helped anyone. I lay there, draped over that shoulder strap like a rag doll. The only things moving on me were my eyes and the rise and fall of my chest with shallow respirations. I was paralyzed.

That day marks the beginning of a road of discovery. I discovered just how vulnerable and fragile life is and how awesome and gracious God's power to overcome tragedies is. I'll be sharing God's power to overcome disabilities, mental anguish, abuse, divorce, drug addiction, and lonliness. So...stay tuned.

Taste the Rainbow

Ah, the rainbow! I remember as a child, my mom pointing out the sliding glass door toward the east saying, "Hurry and come see the rainbow!" My first impression was, "How do those colors get up there?" As an adult, I understand about the wavelenths of light and how ROY G BIV makes it "up there".

I wonder if Noah said, "How do those colors get up there?" No, as the Lord said to Noah, this is a promise to you that I will never flood the earth again (Genesis 9:13). Does God give a "sign" for EVERY promise He makes in the Bible or can we simply rely on His Word? Well, I know, I enjoy seeing rainbows, because it reminds me of God's covenant with Noah, but I feel an internal reassurance about all of His promises.

One promise that I hold to is that He will never leave me or forsake me (Hebrews 13:5). This is comforting, especially for those of us that may have been left or forsaken by someone we loved. If you find that you are in this position, try to remind yourself regularly that the God of all creation will never leave you!

If you have never experienced the the salvation and presence of God, then I say to you...Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him (Psalm 34:8). The Lord is good. This is a promise! I say to you Taste the Rainbow!!!

To Be Alone or Not To Be...Is that the Question?

In reading the creation account from Genesis, I noticed two things. One, that God created Eve because He said that it was not good that man should be alone (Genesis 2:18). This got me thinking about Paul. Paul stated in the New Testament that if you can remain single then that is best. He even refers to it as a gift (1 Cor 7:7). If this is so, why would God say that it was not good that man should be alone? Isn't God the same yesterday, today, and forever? Yes, He is. And God knew that it would take ALL kinds to make the world go around. He created male and female, not just for companionship, but for procreation. He told them to go forth and multiply! As a side note, He did not tell two women, or two men to go forth and multiply! When Noah was commanded to take the animals onto the ark, He said to take a pair--male and female-- to keep them alive during the flood. Obviously, God is clear on the whole issue of homosexuality. However, companionship can come to same sex relationships. Paul was a classic example of that with Barnabas and Timothy. He traveled in his ministry with other men, and so, I see that this is a healthy same sex relationship.

The other thing I noticed was that God told Eve that child birth would be hard as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, but He also said that she would want to control her husband and so, she would be ruled by her husband (Genesis 3:16). From personal experience, I can say that this attribute manifested itself in me. I've always said it would take a strong willed man to "rule" over me. In my married life, I was the picture of an obstinate Eve. I have no problem honoring the male leadership in my church, but when it got personal, not so much. So from this, I have deduced that remaining single is a good thing for me. Not that I do not feel the need to be submissive to a man, but because I need to learn how to live single and be submissive to God Himself!

So the question we ultimately should ask ourselves, both male and female, is not whether we are to be alone in this world, but are we submissive? Man should be submissive to God, and his wife submissive to him. My experience has been that the men I married were not submissive to God and I was leary of being submissive to a man that wouldn't trust God. If fault needs to lie somewhere, it ultimately falls to me. First, I should have been aware of the submission princple prior to marriage. I did not choose a mate according to his relationship with God (mistake number one). Second, I should have been obedient to the Word of God and been under my husband, as I am the weaker vessel, regardless; and possibly my husband would have felt the respect he needed and got in line with God.

It all comes down to choices. Single/married or obedient/obstinate. Ultimately, it's all about submission. Whether you are married or single, are you submissive to the Lordship of Jesus Christ? That is the question.