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By Root 467 0

As I lay there, my attitude changed. I had no idea when my physical pain would end or how long I’d have to wear the Ilizarov frame, but I knew Jesus Christ was with me. I still didn’t understand why God had sent me back to live with all of this agony, but that no longer mattered.

Now I was free. He had healed my mind. My body would mend slowly, but I had experienced the major victory. Never again would depression afflict me. It was just one more miracle from heaven.

11

BACK TO CHURCH

So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and in his good time he will honor you. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you.

1 PETER 5:6–7

Some people who have known me for a long time see me as some kind of courageous figure. I certainly haven’t seen myself that way—not for an instant—because I know too much about the real me. I also know how little I did to get through my ordeal.

Despite my own perceptions, friends and church members say they received encouragement by watching me as I progressed from a totally helpless state and gradually moved toward a fairly normal lifestyle. A number of individuals have said to me in the midst of their own difficult times, “If you could go through all you endured, I can go through this.”

I’m glad they’ve been heartened by my example, but I’ve had a great deal of difficulty accepting myself as a source of inspiration and courage. I don’t know how to cope with their admiration and praise, because I didn’t do anything. I wanted to die. How uplifting can that be?

When people tell me how inspiring I’ve been, I don’t argue with them, of course, but I remember only too well the time David Gentiles told me that he and others would pray me back to health. I lived because others wouldn’t let me die. Those praying friends are the ones who deserve the admiration.

Most of the time when people have that if-you-can-do-it attitude, I nod, acknowledge what they’re saying, and add, “I’m just doing the best I can.” And really, that’s all I did during the worst days. Sometimes “the best I can” was nothing but to endure. Even when I struggled with depression, it was still the best I could do. Maybe that’s what God honors. I don’t know.

By nature, I’m a determined individual, which I admit can sometimes be a first cousin to stubbornness. Yet many times I felt terribly alone and was convinced that no one else understood. And I still think that’s true. When our pain becomes intense and endures for weeks without relief, no one else really knows. I’m not sure it’s worthwhile for them to know what it’s like.

They care. That’s what I think is important.

After I came home from the hospital in the middle of May, I still had to sleep in a hospital bed until February 1990—a total of thirteen months. Even after sleeping in my own house, I had setbacks of various kinds or developed infections. Back to the hospital I’d go, and some of those trips, especially in the early days, were for life-threatening infections. Sometimes I stayed two weeks and other times three. On most occasions Eva drove me there, but I always came home in an ambulance.

After they initially released me from the hospital, church members kept telling me how good I looked “considering all that’s happened.” No one actually said the words, but I imagined them saying, “We prayed for Don. We can’t believe how well it turned out. We asked for him to live, and we asked for him to be better.” That is, I was a pitiful mess, but I was alive and that’s what they had asked for.

My twin sons, Joe and Christopher, were only eight at the time of the accident, and our daughter, Nicole, was twelve. One of the things that hurt me most during my recovery was the sense of pain my children had to cope with. They didn’t say a great deal, but I knew how they felt.

This is a handmade card from my son Joe, written to me in February 1989 while he was living with his grandparents. (I didn’t correct the spelling.)

Months later when I finally came home, most afternoons, Joe’s twin, Chris, came in from school and into the