About 7:40am on September 29th, I was in a bike vs. truck accident while on my way to school. My body was thrown into the right turn lane's pavement at an estimated 25mph as I was hit from behind. Just the night before I had prayed to become more Christ-like...and if I would have stopped to think about the implications of my request I suppose I would not have been shocked to have a life changing event occur the following morning.
At the time though, I felt scared, alone, hurt, confused, and ashamed. I wasn't angry at God or the guy who hit me, though I knew that was one of the few perfectly logical emotions in my situation. It was an accident. It could happen to anyone. In fact, why was I even letting it affect me this much? Obviously I was still alive, so couldn't I just get up and go to class?
When I couldn't get up after my hardest try, they took me by ambulance to the E.R.
Everything around me was a blur. I tried to make the best of it, cheering up people and cracking jokes. It felt like even then, God was using me and for that I was glad.
Still, I knew I needed to tell someone, but I was ashamed to do even that. Asking for help was just too much to think about. But the more I prayed, the more God told me this was one of the things I needed to learn from all this and He even told me who to ask. In fact, looking back at it, He'd been preparing both of us for quite a while before this happened.
So about an hour and a half afterwards, I texted Carol to say I'd been in an accident. I didn't want to tell her how bad it was, but God has always planted in me this odd reflex where I end up telling Carol everything, so a few hours after the accident, she knew it was serious, that I would need surgery, and told me she'd be over around 2pm. Even having next to no warning, Carol responded better to all this than I did. She called up Charles to make a ramp for up the front steps as soon as he could and invited me to go to her place (though we thought it would be a much shorter stay than it ended up being).
Though everything was crazy, I have to admit amazing things happened while I lived with Carol. And as strange as it sounds, I look fondly back at that time of growth and love, even with the pain and trials so fresh in my mind.
The first day was hard. I could barely steer the wheelchair around the big areas. I was still too proud to ask for help even from Carol when I really honestly needed it. I was impatient and quite frankly ready to be out of the leg cast already. And I wanted to go home, stop being a burden, and pretend nothing was wrong. It took me well into that night to realize how much needed to change and that's when it started to.
I understood more about praying constantly than I almost ever have. Every trial was a challenge to learn from and I think I sometimes even surprised Carol with some of the solutions. Thanks to her though, I learned how to ask for help mostly just because if we couldn't trust me to not get into trouble, then she had to babysit me constantly (and neither of us really wanted that). So I began to break my pride and learn humility after a mostly self-sufficient existence. And got a good dose of patience while I was at it.
Then I learned about friendship, family, and fellowship. Charles and Emma were great about having me there and helped out a lot both physically and emotionally. Still, I honestly was shocked that Carol would do all this for me. I would not have hesitated to help out someone else in the same way and often did, but this was the very first time I had ever been on the receiving end of needing help.
Days passed and I got used to both the wheelchair and the new rhythm of life at Carol's place. She had a wonderful attitude about it all and it made it a lot easier for me to keep a good attitude about the situation as well. But not only that. The best part was I felt loved, both by God and Carol, and both in a very real sense. I read a fair amount of scripture and “The Screwtape Letters” but mostly simply thought and prayed since that's mostly all I could do.
Then came Tuesday, October 4th, the day of the surgery when everything changed again.
I had some pretty big lessons up until that point, but I think part of their reason for being there were to prepare me for the life-changing ones that were to come.
An idol is anything that you put before God, anything that you say He cannot/should not take away because it is yours and yours alone. I had to deal with that a while back when dealing with people I loved dying. There was an anger there because I had put those relationships above Him and decided that they were not His to take away. Now I understand and know better and thought that that was the last idol I had from my own life.
After surgery, I had an experience I can't say that I'd be particularly thrilled to go through again, but that I've got to say I honestly needed. The one thing that I always thought of as all my own...is my intelligence. I had a hidden idol... a mental idol.
The strong, post-surgery pain medications stripped me of even that. That first night was terrible. I could not formulate a solid thought. I couldn't move since I couldn't identify my limbs or figure out what direction up was. I was helpless as I'd ever been. And through all of this I could still feel. I felt sorry for Carol, that she had to take on so much, though I don't think I quite made the connection that I was the cause of her struggling. I felt scared because I knew I was vulnerable. I felt frustrated because I knew I had been able to think, but could not anymore.
But then as I started to try to pray, I found I couldn't even do that. I wanted to talk to God so bad, but my mind would not say things I wanted it to. I knew I made no sense, so I talked and knew that He'd understand. I tried to tell Him that I didn't understand any of this or why this was happening. I told Him that I finally knew that really I am weak and understood that when everything was taken away, He was all I had.
That's when I knew the point was gotten. God let me know that. And something deep inside me was changed forever. I have had everything taken away and found out that He was still more than enough for me. And He let me know He'd always be there. And for the first time, I let go and really trusted in my Savior.
Everything has not been smooth. In fact, it just got harder from that point on. Maybe it was because of that prayer the night before the crash or the fact that my heart still means it even now, but I've now been put through more and more refining fires. I've seen the dross hidden deep within myself and it wasn't pretty. I now know my worst and even during that, even as God showed me the ugliness inside, He also said, “I love you no matter what.”
There aren't really words to describe what I went through. Both the good and the bad, but I learned more than I ever thought I would.
So though it was an accident, it wasn't a mistake. God knew what He was doing all along and let me in on the secret: That everything that happens, He will make happen for my good because He loves me just that much.
