Living A New Reality

My life has changed so much in the past year. Previously, life had been filled with love, joy and happiness in my life as wife, mom, in family, as friend, and as a nurse leader. After 45 years as a nurse leader, I retired and was excited about how I could care for others in a new way in our community. We also experienced special vacations in different parts of the world. Life was filled with peace, fun and excitement.

But, as I have written about previously, after 2 years of retirement, my life changed in many ways that I never expected. During February 2024, Gary and I were on a warm vacation in Florida and we enjoyed being outdoors taking walks by the ocean and around the neighborhood. Then my life was altered forever when a young man hurt me by hitting me in the head with his truck. During the hours, days, weeks and months since then, God has chosen to keep me alive, but my life would be different. God brought special care givers into my life helping me heal and learn how to understand my new reality.

The most significant challenge in my life, besides blindness to my upper right side, is learning to read, speak and understand words. Slowly, that continues to grow day by day. I don’t know if God plans to heal my understanding completely, but I do believe that God plans to use me for his glory through the rest of my life. God has wonderfully shown me other women who have shared about their journey following physical and medical problems they experienced.

A young writer who gives me personal hope from God is Tiffany Smiling through her book “Your Dream. God’s Plan.” She shares her struggle with cancer from age 10-16 years. All of the dreams that she had as a child were lost, yet God gave her peace, hope, love and excitement as she began serving others in great need. She now serves thousands of orphans and women throughout the world. She provides physical needs as well as spiritual guidance.

A very dear friend for nearly 50 years is Susan Roland. She wrote “Celestial Walk, A Daily Journey in Practical Intimacy.” She said, “This book is dedicated to my Lord and Savior. I will declare Your lovingkindness in the morning and Your faithfulness at night. When life has thrown me curves and I’ve been tempted to despair, you have given me courage to look up instead, leaning on Him and fixing my eyes on the things above.” Even though her life has brought tremendous pain and struggle, she has followed God as he has given her strength to love and serve others in other nations as well as at home in America.

In 1967, Joni Eareckson Tada was swimming and broke her neck. Since the accident she has lived in a wheelchair needing help in every part of her body. She has served others throughout her life as a radio host, artist, author of over 48 books, speaking to thousands of people, and visiting other nations to give hope to many who need help. As years have passed, she has also been diagnosed with cancer and added another book, “Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God’s Sovereignty” in 2010. Gary has been reading to me from her devotional, “A Spectacle of Glory,” each evening after I do my Bible reading and she has encouraged us both. She has touched millions of people throughout her life as she follows God’s lead in her life, desiring to obey Him.

Another special person in my life is Ruth White, my mom. At age 70, she was diagnosed with heart issues. She is now 97 years old. During all these years, she has turned to God every morning as she awakes and asks God what he would like her to do for the day to serve Him and serve others.

The most touching writing to me in the past few months are God’s words through the Bible. “If you believe that Jesus is the Christ - that he is God’s Son and your Savior - then you are a child of God. And all who love the Father love his children too. So you can find out how much you love God’s children - your brothers and sisters in the Lord - by how much you love and obey God. Loving God means doing what he tells us to do, and really, that isn’t hard at all; for every child of God can obey him, defeating sin and evil pleasure by trusting Christ to help him. But who could possibly fight and win this battle except by believing that Jesus is truly the Son of God?” 1 John 5:1-5

Every day I live I believe my life is given to me from God since the accident. Most of the medical providers thought I would die. When I continued to live, they thought my life would be weak and I would not be able to do any personal care as an adult. Yet God continued to give me healing and hope throughout the year. I work every day as He provides for me, growing me stronger and able to understand more and more. As God continues to work on me, I believe he wants me to love and serve others as He does. It is more exciting to learn more about how I can serve others every day rather than thinking about what is taken away from me. God is stronger than anyone or anything that He created and I trust his plan for me.

The picture below shows me wearing a pendent given to me by my dear friend Susan Roland. It is a broken shard of glass from the streets of Chicago which is meant to demonstrate that something so broken can be made useful and beautiful again. That is my hope and prayer for myself and all of you.