On 1/4/01 I held a bachelor's degree (with high honors) of science, major in nursing, minor in microbiology. I had proudly graduated in the top 10% of my class, magna cum laude, GPA 3.87. I was excited about my life, and was looking forward to starting medical school; in fact I had only 4 classes remaining before I could start. I was nurse successfully working in my field. I was in love with a decent Christian man, planning on getting married. I had a 21 year old son from a previous 20 year marriage I had the courage to end only a year or so before. I was doing volunteer work, community service and advocacy work constantly. I believe I was happy, from all accounts that what I am told. It's so very hard to sum up anyone's life in a few sentences, but I don't know a whole lot more about me then what's included here. I was a Christian, loved and prayed to God and felt good about my relationship with the Lord. At the time I didn t understand that before the wreck, I had power and control over those near and dear to me. What I know now, is that I was spiritually inept, knowing all, having all the answers, controlling and manipulating others with my superior intellect. Only God has the ability to see all, know all and I was fooling others and myself by trying to do the same. Nonetheless, I believed I was a practicing, God-fearing Christian, with the God hat on, I call it now. You know the one that some physicians wear and the cause some people to complain, oh doctor so-in-so thinks he s God. But on this day, a beautiful blue sky January my life was changed forever by a 20 year-old woman ran two red traffic lights, hit a truck and then slammed into me shearing off the front end of my car, throwing me into a concrete wall. I sustained an injury called moderate traumatic brain injury along with other serious medical effects from the accident and from the brain injury.
As a result of the brain injury, I have lost over 70% of my long-term memory, referred to as retrograde amnesia. Essentially this means that after the wreck, I was only able to recall about 10 people of the hundreds of people I had routine contact with each week. None of those I did remember were family members, such as my 21-year-old son, my deceased parents and grandparents. To the best of my knowledge my family is all deceased, and I have no memory of them. I've been told by Gerri - a dear friend who knew me well from the past - that I had grown up in a very abusive home. I was so tormented by the conditions and relationships that I left home at the age of 14, never to return for any significant time. I never attended high school and only walked inside one for the first time when I was a school nurse. God took me from a fearless nurse-going-to-be-doctor to a fearful helpless child. What I have of the past are boxes of pictures of strangers and a few stories of them shared by even more strangers such as my son.
I don't recall much of those early days but I can clearly remember waking up in a strange room and in a strange bed, where absolutely nothing was familiar and feeling completely terrified by the strangers (my son and boyfriend at the time) who were coming into my room. I was frantically reached for the phone as a weapon I believe, thinking and saying "oh God, please help me!" You see God resided in my heart, not in my broken brain or body. Although I functioned about like a four year- old in the early days after the wreck, lost in confusion, beyond my ability to explain even now, I knew only one thing for sure, I needed God to help me! I felt His presence in my heart, which was the only thing that has gotten me to where I am today.
I d a horrible time accepting what has happened to me. You can probably understand why once you fully understand my situation but I walked around suicidal for the best part of two years, had to be hospitalized to protect myself twice, I had no fear of death and I didn't want to live another day.
As I have said denial was my friend, and many days I lived there, fully committed to it just so I could continue to deal with my reality. I had such a terrible, almost impossible time coping with is all the losses. I lost my identity, memory of my life, my son s childhood, my family and friends. I have lost all my friends and have significant troubles making new ones. I have lost all my education, my reading, writing, comprehension skills and deduction skills. I have had to learn to speak, walk (still not great at that) dress and groom myself. At first I didn t know when to eat, drink or shower. I d forget to rinse off or other things like stepping out of the shower with a full head of soapy hair. I had no clue where I was safe and even wandered the apartment complex at 3am until my caregivers understood I was walking up in the early hours of the morning. I lost my ability to control my impulses and I lost my instincts. I lost my source of income, my ability to work in the future, my ability to get health and life insurance in the future. But mostly I've lost my hopes and my dreams. I've lost my ability to be spontaneous, to walk away on a moment s notice, I've lost my IQ and my ability to understand social situations. My pre-injury IQ was approximately 126 and I was tested three to four months post injury, my IQ was 76, which is borderline mental retardation. I've lost my understanding of the culture, history, music, and dance, anything that requires long term memory. I didn t know what a yo-yo was until I saw Ed with one during a sermon, then I asked my son get one for me which I still carry in my purse. I have lost the ability to relax, feel safe, to multi-task. In summary, I have impaired decision making, planning, sequencing, judgment, attention communication, thought processing speed, problem solving skills, organization self-perception, perception thought flexibility, safety awareness, new learning, social skills, emotional control and mood swings, self-centeredness, and at times inappropriate behavior. I have significantly reduced self-esteem, anger management, coping skills, self-monitoring remarks or actions, motivation, irritability and agitation, excessive laughing or crying, severe depression, anxiety, frustration, stress and yes - denial. Many can begin to comprehend what that might feel like, or how anyone could survive such a tragedy. I basically have gone with out a significant support system, and I've gotten most of my rehab from my own hard work. I've been recently told I m unemployable, so the state has cut out any funding for additional rehabilitation. The injury to my brain is substantial, having affected the front lobes, cerebellum, cerebrum, occipital, subcoritical, brain stem and more. Denial allowed me to hide away thinking that I was hurt, but okay, I could manage my life with a little help.
I d lost all my bible study memory from the brain injury and have a horrid time remember any thing I try to learn. I'm faced with so many cognitive, psychological, physical issues. Since I have lost about 90% of smell, I burn most of what I try to cook. I'm learning to make a few things though. I can't manage my money, I've had the gas, electricity and water turned off my times that I could possibly count them for you. I can't read the bills or get the sequence of events needed to get the payment to the provider on time or correct or both. But now I have a financial guardian who recently started helping me. On one side, I m completely grateful to have the help and know it s important to me to have the help. On the other side, I m devastated that I m not able to perform task essential to care for myself independently. I m the walking wounded, so most people don't understand the extent of the damage that was done to me physically as a result of the wreck. I also have three different kinds of headaches, loss of peripheral vision, loss of vision (was 20/80, then 20/200 now 20/125), ruptured every disc in neck, c5-6 was eventually fused, all others healed to bulges. I have a loss of motion in neck and chronic pain in the whole area. I have a loss of sensation and pins and needles down one of my arms. I often choke requiring the Heimlich maneuver about once a month due to lack of muscle coordination at the airway and the swallowing tube. The discs in my mid-back were jammed together has set off a progressive degenerative disc disease which causes horrendous pain. I have sustained three ruptured discs in low back, which cause shooting pain into my buttock on a good day, down my leg on a bad day. I have a broken tailbone broken which hurts when I sit on a hard surface for any length of time. My left knee is blown out and is described as chondromalcia patella and interferes with my walking distances. I have SI joint tendons that are torn making my pelvis unstable will now require painful injections. I am currently in pain management and have received about 20 injections under anesthesia. I am going to have 8 spinal nerves temporarily killed which I m told is very painful and will take some time to recover from. I drag right foot at the toe when walking faster than stroll which also interferes with my balance and so I do find myself falling from time to time. I also have an impaired part of my inner ear with really plays havoc with my balance and makes me appear drunk at time or as I like to say just a klutz. I have a neurogenic bladder and bowel, which basically means my brain, is not talking to my bladder. But now I have a device implanted after 2 surgeries that allow me to function as a normal person. I have petite-mal seizures, absence I think is what they are called. For the most part they are considered under control, but can easy surprise me when I'm not sleeping well, or I'm ill. I have to take numerous medicines every day, which is a significant challenge to make sure I m taking it all correctly. The most important for me is one that controls my tremors. Without this medicine, I'd not be able to hold my hands still long enough to write, type, brush my teeth, drink water and etc. I asked for help from my boyfriend and he walked away from me about four months into the ordeal, saying I can t be your hero baby. I was devastated by those words, I don t think I could ever forget them but as hurt, angry and suicidal I was, I found forgiveness in my heart for him. Richard stayed by me long enough to keep me out of a nursing home, where clearly my ability to survive would have been incredibly limited. Locked away with no real connection to the outside world, I d never know what I d be able to accomplish on my own. However, alone again, estranged from a son I could not remember, I found myself in a very small one-bedroom apartment. I was terrified, and had no place to turn.
I searched for direction from many that had impressed me, having no instinct I unfortunately picked the wrong sort of people. I did learn that people loved to control me and found high self-regard or self-esteem and happiness in "helping" me. But helpful they were not, and I was back to the same place where I started. I found a support group, met a nice man who introduced me to his church and I was baptized again. I needed to reaffirm that God was in my life and I was a believer. Not too long after I met this man, he began taking advantage of me financially. About this same time, I had received the maximum I could receive from my policy and the 20-year-old motor vehicle policies. I didn t know better to protect the money, and I had no real over sight of my life. I was an easy target for predators. In my denial, I thought I could pay people to help me, I could make people want to be around me. Those folks did help me until they had either stole what I didn t give them or the money was all gone. In my denial, I thought I could buy happiness, acceptability, love and safety. Of course, this did not work well, and I was incapable of working, I had no way to help my self and I was rather desperate.
So no surprise when a man made contact with me while I was on the Internet, I began chatting with him. Over about a six-month period we became buddies on the Internet and decided to meet. It took him about another few months to convince me he loved me and then he used me also. Towards the end of the relationship, he would eventually be honest enough to tell me I was easy to deceive. He understood how vulnerable I was, and he used me because he could. He understood I was incapable of completely understanding what was happening due to my brain injury. I thought in my denial and desperation that I could trade love and intimacy for acceptance and safety.
Due to the retrograde amnesia I felt as if I have my lost life, my identity and any hope of ever being normal. I had to count on others to describe the person who I used to be and who I was after my injury. I ran through all the stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and never found acceptance but found in the first couple of years denial had become my very best friend. I believed I could, one way or another, manage my life and achieve recovery from this horrible condition with out ever really having to ask for help from God. I d allowed many people to use me, steal from me, take precious and personal things from me such as love, intimacy, trust and faith and yet I still was not willing to completely surrender. I believed I had continued to be a good Christian, but I wasn't talking to the God that was in my heart. I felt my heartache, but just believed it to be self-pity, but later learned it was the Holy Spirit making Himself known to me.
As I began to improve, I decided that the "new" me had to be someone I could be proud of, so I set off trying my best to create that person. I wanted so much to get better and was doing everything I could to achieve good recovery. I attended church and took classes even though I could not remember the material the next day. I tried to find a home team but nothing was ever enough to help me past my desperation. I tried to be a good person, loving kind and generous. I even started seeing a Christian counselor who was trying to help me the best he could. I tried to lead a God driven life, but absolutely nothing stopped the feelings and desire to finish what the 20-year-old woman had started on January 4th 2001. I knew in my heart that God had a plan for me, yet I had no idea if I d ever discover it. I hit the pinnacle of willingness to die, yet I knew it came out of my desire to stop the pain. I just couldn't manage it but I had no clue what to do next. I hoped and prayed I would work my way through the losses and it would just take time. I knew in my heart of hearts the Lord with protect me and keep me safe. But I still had no clue, two years post brain injury, what I needed to do to stop the pain. As you might imagine, my life was obviously out of control, so I d try to control it in any way I possible could and often it was not a pretty sight even when I tried my very best. When I couldn't control it, I denied it and that was pretty much my life. I had to try love who I was and I wasn't able to do that all.
Infuriated with my obvious inability to change my life and giving my life over to others to help me, I determined I wanted to be known as of the women who over came all, who beat the odds no matter what was thrown her way. All I thought was that I was not much of anyone or even anything - very broken, pain beyond measure, no hope, no one to help. I wondered how could I ever overcome the horrendous odds against me. I felt my pain from head to toe, spiritual, emotional physical etc. I realized that I hated myself because I was so fragmented and wondered how any one could love me as I was. I knew the answer to that question, and it was that they couldn't, as they were mere mortals. I knew I had to find the unconditional love a parent might have for his child and instantly thought of God s love for me. Wishing and praying God would help me I had not been willing to surrender my will and my life to God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
Even though in my confused state of mind from my injuries, I didn't attempt to go it alone those first few weeks at Fellowship Church, I felt blessed to be greeted at the door; it made me feel so welcome. Everyone showed me the way to a place I never thought I'd find peace and serenity, amidst my own confusion and crisis. You see Fellowship Church (FC) was the only place I could find this serenity, every where else I felt alone and uncertain. Here I was not alone in a sea of people, the pastor, Ed was speaking right to me at every turn. Although Ed sometimes speaks over my head, I still get something from every sermon he preaches, and I have learned how to finally achieve a few things I believe that God has wanted for me all along. I listened carefully to Ed speak about volunteering, becoming a part of the body of Christ, finding my design and other marvelous things are accomplished by doing just that. And I recalled how I was treated each time I crossed the church s doors. I was so impressed, and knew I d found my home early on. As you could figure, finding the right volunteer position might be a real challenge for me. And it was but with the right amount of prompting and show of my heart s desire to be apart of and do everything and anything I could manage to do, I found my home in the women s ministry. I am so grateful to God for the willingness, cooperation, and flexibility of the women s ministry, Tianne Moon and especially Courtney Burns who has given me projects to do to the best of my ability. On the rather bad days, Courtney kindly shows me for the 100th time how to use the copier, or she gives me very simple tasks like folding the women s newsletter. However inconsequential it may seem to others, I am able to make some sort of contribution and that gave me a huge sense of accomplishment and eventually brought back hope into my mind, spirit and soul. I knew I had started the process of working my way back in to the world, back in to society, having successes and joy every time I did even the smallest tasks.
By finding the miracle of being a part of a church home, being connected at Fellowship Church through regular participation, taking women s bible study and volunteering, I've achieved a higher sense of spirituality, connection with the trinity and personal serenity I never thought possible. I've since discovered that I have the gifts of intercessory prayer, prophecy and many more, which I can and do utilize in my daily life. I've learned to hear the Holy Spirit inside of me, to embrace my deficits and surrender my will and my life to God. Sure I do want to take it back at times, as we all want to control our lives in this crazy world, but for me, I realize when I m out there and I stop, and surrender to Him. I no longer tell God what my plan is; I surrender to Him daily, I ask Him to allow me to be close to Him instead of telling Him when I need Him to be with me. I don't ask God to help me, I ask God to do it for me. I've completely understood that I can do little but some basic human function (I'm talking breathing etc.) without Him. I have surrendered my will and my life to Him, for this I feel blessings beyond what I am able to describe. But no matter how willing I am to surrender my life to Him, I have to also be willing to accept His will for me. I know God has been with me through every day of my life. He s done for me what I could not do for myself. He loves me like no human can, and piece by piece He s putting me back together again. He meets my daily needs, not necessarily my daily wants but I've not starved, I have had a roof over my head, and thankfully I m still alive to share my story with you. I have accepted, because I m no longer willing to live full-time in the land of denial, that God has me right where He wants me to be. He has made me as He wants me to be, and He loves me just as I am. I finally found what I d been searching for all this time love, acceptance, safety and so much more.
From day one I knew He was in my heart! Now I have come to understand that for me to progress in every way, I must surrender to His will, be obedient to His word, listen patiently during meditation and other quiet times and then accept whatever He has in store for me. I am a much better person today, because I am willing to assume the position, on my old fat knees I beg God to change me. On March 8, 2003 I said to God, okay I'm tired I'm weary and I'm rather useless. My will has gotten me no where fast. If I am to survive it's only through your (God's) will. I quit negotiating with God and learned to surrender to Him. Asking that He teach me to love me as He loves me - unconditionally, I finally found some peace.
Today, when I am in the flesh, I fight the urge to see myself as others do, and I still see myself as the broken weary woman. If I'm not careful, I know I can find myself back into the darkness and desire death once more. The rather odd aspect to this is when I am with other God-fearing Christians, they tell me what a wonderful woman I am. How I inspire others, how I light up the room. I have yet to be able to see this myself, but I am glad to be thought of this way. When I know and embrace the love of God I'm a child of light, peace and hope who understands it matters not what others say or think of me, only what He thinks of me.
God has transformed me from a scared little child to a fearful lady to what I am now, a faithful committed Christian woman. Yes I was suicidal for two years, every moment of every day and now that is just not the case. I have many hurdles to over come yet to this day, but I know God is with me, guiding me and loving me as only He can. I wish I could say more, but my cognitive deficits severely affect my ability to remember. My deepest impression though is the feeling of being blessed by God, by His walking me into Fellowship Church. I promise you I couldn't have done this alone, how grateful I am that He knows my heart and my abilities; He was walked with me every step of the way, and still does.
If you would like to become a part of my distribution list, which includes Christian meditations, prayers for special occasions, illness or any other situation, prayer requests from the members of the group, please email me "Becky" at beckygreeneyes@hotmail.com. I will add you to my list. We are a group of strong and faithful followers from all over the world. We would love to pray for you and yours also. Please feel to ask for prayers! May God bless you and yours now and always, Amen (\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/) angels on your pillow!
I promise you I am forgetting things but for now, this is Becky in a nutshell. Please pray for me. I m grateful for all your support because without it I d never had a chance to have the personal, emotional and spiritual growth I have obtained.
Peace and Grace,
Becky
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