About 11 months ago my life got flip turned upside down. It was some fresh prince kind of stuff for sure. I haven’t had the opportunity to open up to most people about this past year – partly because I haven’t had the platform to do so, and partly because being vulnerable is scary, and to tell it I have to be very vulnerable. I’ve come to realize that it’s through exposing the deep, foul, wounds that the beauty and strength of Jesus is best displayed SO here we go…
In August of 2015 I was in an accident. Long story short, I was airlifted to the ORMC where I spent about two weeks undergoing major surgery. It hurt… a lot… like so much that it gives me the chills just thinking about it. When I was allowed to return home I was confined to my couch and didn’t have the ability to move anything but my upper body. I then underwent a lot of physical therapy and unbelievably rapid healing.
This was an extremely trying time for me and I wrestled with God so often it was keeping me up at night (that and the relentless pain). Somehow, I came out of it with a distinct calling on my life to go serve – and with a great deal more wisdom I want to humbly share with anyone willing to listen.
God wanted to teach me a thing or two (or seventeen) about dependence. This was made clear when I had to yell for my mom to bring me the bedpan or get me the remote for the tv. I am an independent person; the type that had to be forced to go to the payphone to call my parents at sleep away camp because I wanted to spend all my time on the waterslide. I set my goals and decided how I was going to achieve them. Don’t get me wrong, I prayed about my future… and by that I mean I told God my plans, asked for him to bless them and went on with my day. I would ask Him to lead me to the right law school and would fully allow Him to direct me within the plans I had. DON’T TRY TO PUT GOD IN A BOX because He pays no mind to your plans when they don’t match up with His – and this is such a blessing. If it were up to me I would still be seeking my own glory and depending on my own strength. He taught me in the realest way I could imagine that my strength wasn’t going to cut it. I need HIM.
He stole away my vanity and forced me to be bold. My looks have always been a source of confidence or insecurity for me, depending upon the day and how my jeans were fitting. After my accident I was looking rough. It’s hard to be pretty when you haven’t showered in 6 weeks… I struggled with letting go of my vanity, gaining weight due to my inability to exercise (or, ya know, move), and accepting the fact that I’m going to have big scars all over my leg for the rest of my life and am now completely disqualified from ever becoming a Victoria’s Secret model. Most people have never seen a skin graft so I get a lot of funny looks and blunt questions. I have struggled to be bold in evangelism and God decided to make that a non-issue. These scars remind me of what an incredible healer He is and when I’m asked I have no choice but to share my testimony. He has also taught me about the sweet joy and confidence that comes from knowing I am beautiful to Him, regardless of how many Instagram likes I get or if I have a pimple the size of Everest on my forehead or if people stare at my leg when I wear shorts. The creator of sunsets and the Seven Wonders of the World and all the Victoria’s Secret models thinks I’m beautiful, and that’s pretty cool. People stare at those things too so I’ll take it as a compliment.
He also wanted to kill my skepticism. I may seem gullible at times but I’ve actually always been a skeptic. I never remember actually believing in fun mythical figures like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus – but I pretended to for my parent’s sake. Because of this, whether I was willing to verbally admit it or not, I had always been skeptical about the gospel story. As a mere human without supernatural understanding I always secretly wondered things like – how come God send his son and didn’t just do it Himself?… like way to cop out – and – how much could the crucifixion have really hurt if He didn’t break any bones? I know this isn’t something a Christian should admit and I never did, so God took it into his own hands to clear things up for me. My accident included puncture wounds to my ankle and big toe and the skin being ripped off of my leg from my toes to my upper thigh. Miraculously (and I mean that in the truest sense of the word), I did not break one bone in the accident (to the amazement of my doctors and paramedics), which I honestly believe was the Lord protecting me or healing me. That being said, it hurt. It hurt like @#&#. But, Jesus had the skin whipped and ripped off of His whole body, not just one limb, and he had NO NARCOTICS OR SEDATIVES *chills*. I also witnessed the helpless agony my parents and family experienced seeing their baby girl in pain, and I have no doubt at all that they would have switched places with me in a heartbeat. That’s the kind of pain God experienced while watching Jesus die for us. WOW. It just got real.
He showed up to comfort me. I’m a positive person and have been blessed to never totally lose my cheerful disposition – but God needed to teach me what a comfort He could be and that wasn’t going to happen when my life was filled with peachy, chocolate covered, rainbows. I had contracted an ear infection in the hospital that left me with a constant splitting migraine and the inability to eat or talk, on top of that whole leg thing… I was also experiencing an itching sensation on all of my upper thigh that was so severe I felt as if I had gotten bit by a million giant mosquitos with special itching powers instilled in them by the devil himself. I got to a point where no amount of Oxycodone could mask the excruciating pain and I asked God why He would let this happen to me. I was crippled with a cloud of fear and anxiety that I had never before experienced. My ear infection passed, but the emotional pain didn’t. For the first time in my life I was having panic attacks. I couldn’t sleep and when I would fall asleep I would have recurring nightmares related to my accident and wake up in tears, drenched in sweat.
At the same time, I was running from God, feeling abandoned by Him. I thought maybe this whole thing was a punishment for all the ugly-ness that I didn’t let others see. One day, a sweet friend of mine texted me to read Psalm 34. I reluctantly opened my bible and began to skim so I could at least send her a thoughtful response and low and behold I found this message that I felt God had written directly to me (verses 19 and 20), which read
“The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all; he protects all his bones; not one of them will be broken.”
I literally started crying as I felt the Lord give me the unexplainably wonderful peace and heard Him tell me that He will deliver me. I’m pretty sure when King David wrote this God was up in Heaven, like, wow this verse is going to bring Elisabeth so much comfort one day.
You see, sometimes you have to experience a period of painful brokenness before you can truly taste His abundant joy. Yes, I’ve always been that happy girl but He has shown me a joy that doesn’t come from chocolate or friendship or The Office (although I do believe this program is a blessing); rather, He is the source. My positivity is no longer situational but eternal, because He is eternal and never fails.
He wanted to show me the beauty of love and strike in me a need to go love his people. Through the entire experience I was lavished with such amazing, genuine, inspiring demonstrations of Jesus’s love. Some were as apparent as my big brother sleeping on the uncomfortable pull out couch in the hospital almost every night. Some were as simple as an encouraging text or Facebook message that amassed to hundreds of messages that made me feel unfathomably blessed when I was cognizant enough to read them. Some were as incredibly kind as my Aunt Lynn traveling from Tennessee to come care for me for weeks after I was discharged and some were as seemingly small as my brother giving me his HBO Go password so I could watch all Game of Thrones when I was unable to move, but thankful that I was not born in a universe where White Walkers and King Joffrey Boratheon existed.
Each kind act was equally as impactful. So, to my family and friends who sat in the hospital with me as I screamed in pain (or cursed you out because I was so high I had no social graces…), to the nurses who came to my house everyday and spent an hour unwrapping and redressing my bandages, to the kind Jamaican cleaning lady at the hospital who prayed powerfully over me, and to everyone who encouraged me, prayed for me, sent me kind words and loved me, THANK YOU! God used each and every one of you in my life in such a special way.
Now I feel a commission from the Lord to go love as I have been loved – to care as I have been cared for – and to make disciples as I have been discipled. So that’s what this whole World Race thing comes into play.
He is faithful. He blessed me through a seemingly tragic and dismal season. He healed me faster than any physician thought possible. He showed me how fragile we are and gave me a new outlook on life. He forced me to stop focusing on my plans and to pursue His. And here I am, going on this crazy missional journey that I heard Him directly call me to.
So my biggest piece of wisdom would be that, through all the pain and hopelessness and exhaustion and tears this world brings, He is hope, He is joy, He is healing, He is love and He is faithful. Learn from my mistakes. Don’t wait until you hit your bottom to let Him bring you to the mountain top.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23
