being life-flighted to a hospital for emergency brain surgery. I began that day carefree, whole, and perfectly healthy and ended it in a drug-induced coma, half dead. My whole life fell apart in a matter of a few hours. I wish I could say that after experiencing that miracle of surviving, I fully recovered and proceeded to carry out my life like I had planned. Instead, confusion progressively built as my health crumbled beneath my feet over the following years, taking my childhood dreams down with it. And though Death did not take me that night in the hospital where I met him, I certainly was introduced to a lot of his friends later on- in doctors' offices, during the years worth of car rides home from physical therapy, in dressing room mirrors, in medicines.
But the thing is- my battles were not mine to fight; oh friends, we were never meant to. And when I finally let them go and allowed my Creator to be a part of my story, He used the rubble and fallen branches of my life, that was the like ruins after a tornado, to spell out words across the devastated city of that life to an incredible song I could not come up with on my own. I may never know what it's like anymore on this earth to not walk with a leg brace or suffer from brain damage, but I surely know what it's like to genuinely be the happiest person alive. I got the healing that I needed, but 100x its size. My body will fail me during the rest of this journey, but I will continue to get better and better. Every day is a miracle and every step a gift.
So today I am a 10-year survivor of brain trauma and a rescued ship that was nearly sunk; and if you're alive and breathing, then you are a miracle too. Let God destroy your demons by allowing Him access to a story much bigger than you, because it will save you from everything you didn't know you were dying from. So REJOICE, beautiful friends, for "as long as we are alive, we still have Hope" (Ecclesiastes 9:4). And if we're not rejoicing, then we're not really living.
