Fifteen years ago today I slipped and fell on a concrete sidewalk while walking into my workplace. It was an unusual pathway. Our building was temporarily being rented for the second year in a row to a large utility company for some of their educational needs and parking spaces were overrun. I had to park far away from the entrance and used the last available spot. Later, I wondered where those arriving after me would park. They were parents with birth to kindergarten age children in tow. 

To top it off, I wasn’t even suppose to be there at the time. I encountered the small melting patch of ice (later reported to me) residing in a large crack in the sidewalk when I arrived to teach a make-up class that had not been scheduled by my supervisor despite emails from his boss which documented the requirement for him to schedule it as previously negotiated. I didn’t really contemplate any of this negligence and lack of common sense about the logistics of parking and arriving at work until later. Later, meaning eight months later when the severely under diagnosed brain injury I had incurred when I fell was confirmed through extensive neuropsychological testing. 

In addition to this late diagnosis, worker’s compensation forced me into the legal system by denying the treatment my doctor had ordered for me to regain my ability to work and function. By the time I was “allowed to go” for treatment I was 18 months past my date of injury which excluded me from optimal recovery, leaving me with an entire second set of inefficient compensations, worsening anxiety and depression exacerbated by isolation and the eventual loss of my ability to do my previous job of 20 years. Physically, I had chronic pain which flared any time I walked on concrete surfaces found in most work and public environments.

This was the first of many life changing events God allowed into my perfect little life. In the next seven years I would experience cancer, the abandonment of and betrayal by my family of origin, my active 51 year old husband’s unexpected heart attack, the death of my father, and the unavoidable decision to go “no contact” with my family of origin in order to step out of generational trauma and abuse. This included my mother who was being lied to about me which caused her to question my worthiness as her daughter. She passed away in 2022 after a nine year separation from me and my family. 

I’ve learned to get up and walk through each of these experiences, better for having suffered them. However, as I contemplate my current situation, unable to walk without help and often experiencing severe pain even getting up to use a walker or navigate a shower chair, I feel challenged far beyond what I think I can handle. How do I move forward when I need such assistance? How do I overcome physical barriers that are common place to most people? Sometimes I even wonder how I can go on at all. Will I ever get back to finishing the book I planned to launch on my tenth TBI Anniversary? Can I manage blogging after being away from that for so long? Failure seems to loom everywhere. 

I have no answers to these questions. I don’t know what God is doing. Most of the time I  struggle to know what to do in the next half day I have before me. I have cried more in the past two months than I want to admit. I pray every day for healing. I thank God for the teeny-tiny healing that does happened every day but in the midst of that, I still ask for a miraculous healing. And that is what I want. I want the cartilage in my knees to grow back healthy and strong. I want my muscles to be ten years younger. I want the pain to stop.  

But, when I look back and see what God did for me in all the painful life changing events in the past fifteen years, I stop thinking about what I want. I never wanted any of those things to happen. I’ve cried many tears over circumstances that were completely out of my control. In each of those I learned to ask, “God what is it that you want me to know because I am in this circumstance?” That is the question He always finally answers for me. It might take a while but He answers. And His answers bring wholeness to the deepest part of who He made me to be. And I begin to thank Him for what I see in the present. 

In this time of waiting I vividly rememberi the first time I started asking a different question around my suffering. I heard a song while driving down the main street of our town. It was right after I learned to drive again after my traumatic brain injury. The song made me tear up and I had to pull over because I did not yet have control over holding back emotion. I knew I would be sobbing soon and unable to continue driving safely. Thankfully, there was a spot right there on the side of the street. 

It was the beginning of me seeing the worst things in life as blessings. God has not disappointed over the past fifteen years. I hope I will be able to finish my book one day so you can read about how I survived but until then know that each and every trial became a starting place for something more. Something I never would or could have planned more perfectly. 

I hope you will trust God for what is next. I hope you will ask Him what it is that He wants you to know through whatever He’s allowing in your life. I hope you will see the blessing in disguise. 

Take a listen to the song “Blessings” by Laura Story on YouTube