Stages of an Accidental Injury

My journey these past few months since my motorcycle accident have been rich in trepidity and truth realized and repeated. Random, parallel sources have influenced my path, informing my fear and eventually leading me out to this side of healing.

I share them here in a sort of journey of four parts.

Some parts are redundant as my fear was fed from different stimuli and needed

the repeated breath of God to penetrate its layers.

Welcome to my

Stages of an Accidental Injury.

The Stages of an Accidental Injury

A Journey in four parts:

Stage one: Broken but not bruised

October’s Optimism: It’s okay. I’m strong I can do this.

Stage Two: Fractured within

November’s Acuity: The Dark Side of Healing

Stage Three: Still Fractured. Still Afraid.

December’s Distance: The Many Layers of Fear and Faith

Stage Four: The Scent of Water

Spring’s Renewal: The Awakening Abundance

By Anne Braudt

Fall, 2018

The Stages of an Accidental Injury

Stage One: October’s optimism: Broken but not Bruised

On the Wings of the King

As the princess and her prince donned their mighty, trusty steed, they rode into the sunset. The cool, fragrant October air surrounded her as surely as her hands surrounded her beloved. It was an ideal Fall day for a ride and so, without a care, she hugged her prince and enjoyed their time away.

It was not long before a stop was required to allow the crossing of the ways. They stopped happily but before they could begin again an unexpected attack came from the rear. It came swiftly and fiercely without a warning as it catapulted the princess from her perch. Into the air she flew until caught by the wings of the King Who softened her flight and her landing. As He kissed her cheek, she opened her eyes to see her prince scooping her up to safety. An off duty white knight happened by and sat and sang songs of his youth as he waited with her for the kingdom’s resources to arrive.

Days later, as the princess considered the pain of her plight. Her texting foe’s spurious attack, did not take her life, as it could have, though it did take her breath, several ribs and a clavicle, a shoe , a sock, some clothes and well you get the idea. Her King’s careful hand averted a much greater potentiality. She could have landed in oncoming traffic and been killed, could have lost her helmet and suffered a brain injury, could have slid down the road and been covered in road rash,… it could have been so much worse… She thinks of this during some of her more unsavory times of distress. Broken but not bruised, it is a small price to pay for a another day to ride into the sunset; to feel the hands of her beloved and her mama as they carry her to wholeness; another day to thank the wings of her King.

Stage 2: November’s Acuity: Fractured Within

The Dark Side of Healing A few weeks ago, I was in a motorcycle accident that fractured both my body and my spirit. Right before the accident, a friend set me a diary of a nun in the 1930s: The Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska. She writes that it was the most difficult time of her life when she grappled with the thought that God might have forsaken her. A few weeks into my ordeal, her words prompted a similar dialogue within me. A part of me, in the grip of pain, emerged from the fracture inexplicably panicked at the notion that I may have been forsaken by God, His promises notwithstanding. The fear chased me in my most vulnerable moments and filled me with intense, remorseful dismay and panic. I was helpless, floundering and terrified, shocked at myself as I continued to switch easily between faith and panic. My pre-accident self knew, without a doubt, that God would never leave me nor forsake me but my fractured self was overwhelmed with the fear that He had.

As my ribs allowed me to breathe deeply once again, so did my spirit as well. It has been a process, but as I heal, I have been able to grasp that there is a difference between being forsaken and being set apart by trial for a purpose. In the Bible, the term holy often refers to being set apart. Before now, I have thought of this in positive terms: Set apart by God to show others who God is, His attributes. It did not occur to me that being set apart, in this case, feeling forsaken and feeling out of his presence, could also be part of His working of Holiness in me. Maria Faustina helped me to recognize that though I feared being forsaken, I have never been alone. God’s hands have been, and always will be, purposefully guiding me with intent to sanctify, purify, to make new. I am never forsaken.

I do not understand all of the intricacies of what God could possibly be doing in my life through this year of escalating breakage but I do understand that His purposes are higher than mine. His truth tells me that whatever circumstances my life brings, I am never without the help and kindness of my faithful God.

Stage Three: Still Fractured. Still afraid.

December’s Distance: The Many Layers of Fear and Faith

I have heard of such trials as mine being compared to giving birth and so I asked: What is God birthing in me that requires such pain in the process? Giving birth to my last son was the worst pain I’ve ever experienced… until the rib spasms after the accident.

With the birth of J, I struggled for years with the question: How could I call myself a Godly woman if in my fiercest time of need I did not cry out to God for help? Years later, my answer came unbidden with the simplest explanation. The thing about faith is that God is right there at the point of my need especially when endurance takes all I have. I was not faithless. He was FaithFUL.

So when this time around came upon me, I was confidently not bothered by (in)ability to endure only, God would birth in me something unexpected and beautiful through this breaking. I, having learned the birth lesson, trusted my God to Romans 8:28 me: “ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”

Despite my confidence and having worked through issues of fear mere weeks before, another part of me continued to emerge who existed right alongside the faithful one. I was, at times of mounting fatigue and pain, engulfed in the feeling that all I had ever believed was false.. I haven’t felt that way since college when, through His intervention, I was brought back from the brink of a world without God. It was a foundational time in my life when I knew the existence of God was non negotiable. I’ve never looked back until this hurting, fragile self re-emerged from the fracture.

I was, once again immersed in inexplicable panic. Is everything that I have known as true been false? I was helpless, floundering and terrified, again shocked at myself as I continued to switch easily between faith and panic.

I came upon a devotion by Lisa Harper that began my final settling. She calls times like mine, “the necessity of spiritual neediness.” She goes on to say that “Jesus came to heal the sick, to those who acknowledge that they are sick not those who pretend they are perfectly well.” She quotes Mark 9:24, wherein a father of a sick child is struggling and he says: “I do believe; help me with my unbelief.”

And suddenly, there it was; my fracture in a verse. Two parts of me occupying the same space; belief and unbelief. God welcomes both, He welcomes all of me. My acknowledged spiritual neediness is His spiritual glue.

At last, from within the fracture, has come the certainty that it is not a weakness to acknowledge my need, my vulnerabilities, my fear. Rather, perhaps, it is a prerequisite to a deeper relationship with God. It seems that it is sometimes, usually, necessary to be in utter, desperate need in order to rediscover the all-sufficiency of God.

My Pastor then put the finishing touches on the glue that knit my fractured spirit back together. He simply said it is a daily choice to choose Joy; a daily choice to choose connection with God; A daily choice to focus on the things that matter and not to be trapped in our temporary, negative circumstances. It is, in fact, a choice to believe and to ask for help with the unbelief.

And look there, God did birth in me Romans 8:28, afterall.

Stage Four: The Scent of Water

Spring’s Renewal: The Awakening Abundance

“For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again...through the scent of water it will bud.” Job 14:7

I love the desert in Spring with its many different textures of green and bright dots of color. The sprinklings of yellow and purple with surprises of orange scattered among the delicate velvet of the cattail grass. The light green, almost white, of the prickly thinness of the aloe vera is nearly eclipsed, in turn, by the cottony explosions of red branched, white leaved softness. A flourishing Palo Verde tree sprouts randomly in the midst, like an English Governess tending her charges, arms outstretched, welcoming and watchful. I turn with delight to see my contrasting red furred pups frolicking excitedly as they bound and pop amidst the joy of this familiar yet reimagined landscape.

The earthy sweetness rises up to greet the fresh washed smell of the desert as it embraces me. I breathe in the scent of this water and am touched to awe by the promise of the awakening abundance to come.

“She said something about sailing out on living water. It was herself that she meant.”

Scent of Water by E. Goudge

~Living the Journey

Anne

March, 2019