Hope After TBI

Are you struggling to find hope after your own heavy trials or those of a loved one? At first, my TBI was emotionally hard for my family but not for me; because I was asleep. 😉 However, things like these were some of their clues that I was still there, inside the vegetable that some said I would always be:

1. When a former boss (Pat Callahan of Laurel Lake Baptist Camp) visited me early on and said he needed me in the kitchen, I stirred and apparently tried to get up so I could go help in the kitchen, lol.
2. One time my brother Caleb was getting clothes ready for me to go take a shower, and he asked me what I wanted to wear. I told him I wanted to wear a skirt, of which I actually had none at the hospital - which was really weird, cause I had decided to always wear skirts when I was five years old....
3. When I became able to eat a little food with my mouth, the hospital put me on a puréed diet. But after someone gave me a letter-board with which to communicate, I spelled out “cinnamon toast crunch” (my favorite cereal since Bible college 6 years previous).
4. When they brought a cake into my hospital room for my brother Caleb’s birthday, I immediately started singing him the birthday song.

My TBI was the result of a major car wreck on October 31, 2012; and I did not fully wake up until March 8, 2013. At first, it was very hard for me emotionally.

1. It was the wrong season. I had gone to sleep in the fall and then woke up the next morning in the early spring, with snow on the ground.
2. My brothers’ and my bedrooms had been switched.
3. My voice sounded funny.
4. My legs didn’t work right, and I spent all day in bed.
5. My mom regularly changed my diapers, which were often dirty even though I never felt like I’d gone to the bathroom and never smelled anything either.
6. I always wore glasses instead of contacts, and my hair looked super-weird (long on one side and only an inch on the other).
7. I feel like I had eaten 27 meals in one day without ever sleeping at all (because of the medicine amantadine).
8. I had tons of homework to do, & work to do at Chick-fil-A; but for some reason I never did anything besides laying in bed. 
9. My parents claimed I had been in a car accident, but I didn’t remember any such thing - so obviously they were just telling me a story to keep me content in whatever horrible nightmare I was living out.

Until they showed me a picture of my car, and of course pictures can’t be argued.

So that was depressing. Turns out the nightmare was real! But it was only depressing for about an hour. Cause who wants to be sad forever? God helped me to see that all the problems were only temporary; whereas Heaven is eternal, and would include full restoration even if I never got any better on earth. So I kinda shook myself, and determined to get back as much  as I could by working really hard in therapy. God alone got me through those early days, because otherwise I’m sure I would’ve been depressed like all the non-Christians who were in therapy with us hopeful Christian “patients.”

And He has given me back so much! Not everything of course, and honestly it’s still depressing at times. I do really wish I could still drive and run and swim and jump and help more with physical chores and play piano well and do other things that require coordinated hand-movements. I wish I had more control of my stress & emotions, and I wish I could be more of the hands-on wife & mom that I always wanted to be. There are lots of things like that, but there are also lots of blessings that have come out of my accident. 

1. I have free time to help with foster care and elder care (more hands-on “social work” than I probably would’ve been able to do otherwise).
2. I have new compassion and understanding for people with special needs.
3. I saw far less legitimate marriage potential in real-life, which made me keep resorting to online dating so that my wonderful Christopher eventually looked at my profile, eventually sending the first message that was the start of our fairytale relationship.
4. Oh, and everybody said I wouldn’t be able to have kids, but our first baby is coming in about 5 weeks!

Yes, TBI’s are hard. And yes, there’s hope after TBI. Hope exists because Jesus exists! “And lo, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20).