Life Matters - February 26, 2025

Emerging from a spiritually peaceful comatose condition (though mostly aware when people were talking) to facing the tumult on this spinning orb was a transition possibly not unlike the emerging of a baby from the womb. Certainly my feelings seem, in retrospect, as defenseless and instantly visible as that newly born bundle of instant reflexes.  

All went emotionally well in the hospital, even though I have no memory of ever feeling so helpless to move, nor so constantly fatigued by the effort to do so. My first memory, as a child, with a definite timeline, is of President John F. Kennedy being shot and killed in November of 1963. I was 3 ½ years old. In the ensuing 48 years I felt vibrant, my strength and stamina growing for the first two decades and still feeling in the prime-of-life at 51 years of age on that fateful day of September 27, 2011. 

Being helpless in the hospital was acceptable. It was accepted by the staff. The therapists had an innate sense (I don’t know how else to describe it) of knowing when my endurance was maxed out and then would encourage me to “once more!”  I came to deeply appreciate that “once more” even in the helplessness that had been forced upon me. Therapy was merely a necessary means to an end, a joint rehabilitation effort with full recovery as its goal. Anyhow, I was convinced that a miracle would yet happen. Had it not already? 

I must have been in a deep sleep when Pastors Daniel Esh and Vernon Helmuth anointed me. Sadie tells me that she called on them for anointing when she was informed by the doctors that they had me scheduled for surgery the next day, on my ruptured spleen, as they were unable to stop, nor curb, the resulting internal bleeding. The broken ribs had been reset, the punctured lung (by a rib) and the broken collarbone would heal, but the spleen, besides the brain injury, was a problem. I was anointed and prayed over that evening, Sadie tells me, and by morning the bleeding had stopped. 

That miracle possibly saved my life. Together with other events that seem none other than providential. The hospital was, for the most part, excellent. Had they not been capable of keeping me alive; would God have allowed my fall to happen? That is a question I don’t try to answer, but it does put a check in my spirit when the hospital is given profuse credit for saving my life. God knows the end from the beginning. I was told by hospital staff, family, and friends, that I am a miracle and I believe that, because it gives God the credit. If we really think about it, every breath we take, every beat of our hearts, is a miracle that continues as our bodies are kept alive by those and many other functions. Secular scientists have yet to discover what some refer to as the “god particle” that keeps the atoms from splitting apart as they continue to make up the forms of all matter. That’s right, God does. He keeps it all together! 

Spleen healing, however, was not the only injury that needed a miracle to fully heal quick enough to get back to normal life in the short time I allowed for in my mind. Dr. Peter, the neurologist with a bedside manner par excellence, sat at my bedside one day with charts, and x-ray pictures of my brain, (nobody dare call me brainless anymore!) showing how a part of my brain was jarred into an offset by the impact it had suffered, to explain what I’m facing, and to answer questions.  

My first question was, “How was I when coming out of a coma?” I had heard of people saying bad things, even needing restraint, when coming out of a coma and was concerned that my teenage wickedness had somehow found its way to the door of my lips.  

Dr. Peter looked at me kindly and said, ‘’You must have a strong faith.” He went on to tell me that they routinely prepare themselves, and the family, for the possibility of needing restraint, of thrashing, of cursing, even possibly all three, when coming out of a coma. “You had none of that,” he assured me, “You were peaceful all the way through.” I was relieved of my struggling question. The question I didn’t want to ask but felt compelled to. His answer strengthened my faith. 

We had known a saintly old lady who, when emerging from a coma, vacillated between being the lady we knew to the cursing teen she must have been in days gone by. Her doctor tried to comfort her grieving and troubled family with that explanation, but it was still troubling to them, and to us, when they shared their experience with us, searching for answers. The best I could do was to support the doctor’s explanation, that in her comatose state she was not aware, nor accountable, for her actions.   

But it troubled me, and later, reflecting on my own rebel teenage years, I wondered, with good reason, what would happen if I were ever in that condition. So I prayed desperately and many times that, if any such thing happened to me, God would spare my family that level of pain, to keep me from disgracing His name, to purify me from those former sins. God answered my prayers!  

God is able and willing to answer our sincere appeals at the throne of His grace. 

Life Matters!