“IT IS WELL, IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL”
If I could even begin to describe the last few days I’ve had, it would be a bad dream. The kind that just keeps going and never lets up.
Yet through it all I have felt peace. Hope. Unshakable faith.
Let me tell you the story…
I awoke to my ministry contact handing me the phone. It’s early, and I had slept on the couch because too many women were crammed in one un-air conditioned room for the night. With little sleep and a bit disoriented I reach out and take the phone she’s handing me…
It’s about 8:30 AM. On the other line is one of our squad team leaders. He quickly reports there has been an accident. Two of our teams and a few others had risen early to watch the Indian sunrise from the nearby mountaintops, and something had gone terribly wrong on the way back down.
“There’s been an accident. It’s bad. The ambulance is on the way and you need to meet us at the emergency room.”
Pictures of the car look like a smashed tin can on all sides. No explanation for the crash. The car just rolled several times, and everyone should have died. Four teammates are injured. One is badly bruised from being thrown from the car. Another badly concussed and confused. Another has horrible neck pain. And the last cannot feel her legs…
My ears start to ring a bit, like the surreal tunnel sounds when your brain can’t quite figure out if it’s dreaming or this is really happening. Noises start to fade, but I hear a still, small and steady voice.
“I AM a Good Father. I AM never surprised by anything. I AM a God of miracles.“
I hang up and as quickly, and calmly as I can possibly muster, I wake up my co-leader Dustin Mick. “There’s been an accident. It’s bad and we need to go now.” I’m sure these are not the words he ever expected to start the morning. We wake up the team and immediately ask them to pray. Off to the hospital we go. It was a silent ride, with a million thoughts swirling through my head and emotions, I could no longer hear the horns, the racing cars and bustle of the chaotic city. I could only hear the questions and prayers racing through my mind.
What is going on? Are they ok? What happened? What are we supposed to do? And Jesus, please, PLEASE let me friends be alright.
Who prepares you for these kinds of things? I knew squad leading would be hard, but I never imagined this would be a challenge we could face. They prepared us for many things, and we said yes to doing our best and trusting The Lord in any and every situation, but I’m only 24 years old and I’m headed to the emergency room to take charge for my four friends who are critically injured in a foreign country.
“My peace I give to you. In this world you will have trouble, but TAKE HEART for I have overcome.“
We arrive at the hospital and burst into the ER. There are several other squadmates already arrived and helping admit and fill out paperwork. It was unfortunately a very busy emergency room. I finally see them all face to face. Banged up, bruised, cut and scraped, bleeding and disoriented. I know what The Lord is giving me strength to do today, because it’s going to be a long day.
“I give you strength for today. I give you hope and faith. You are a woman of peace, unshaken by the world around you because you know I am always by your side. You can do this, if you rely on Me.
I AM a Good Father. I AM never surprised by anything. I AM a God of miracles.“
I take a deep breath and feel His peace. I talk with each of my injured friends. I pray over them. I smile and let the peace of God that has somehow overwhelmed my soul seep into theirs. I have no fear. I have no chaos or panic. I am calm, at rest and in complete hope. I have faith in a God who I trust with our lives.
They begin assessing and reporting about our injured friends. Since Dustin Mick and I have been identified as the leaders of our traveling group, we’re nominated to be the receivers of news & sign off on the papers, the good and the tragic.
One teammate is completely fine. An absolute miracle. He was thrown from the car, a little scratched and bruised but completely fine.
Teresa is also fine. She had a slight concussion, mostly just bruised and very cut up. A few stitches on her hand and a lot of ice, but she was fine as well.
Another teammate has fractured the top of her spine in her neck. She was to be stabilized, stitched up and held in the hospital overnight to make sure her neck brace will support her neck healing without additional injuries.
The last teammate’s injury report came a bit harder. The doctor pulled Dustin Mick into the room to look at the x-rays. Her spine was completely broken, pushed to crack in two by the impact of the wreck. She couldn’t feel her legs because her back had snapped, and the chances of feeling or use in her legs was looking like an impossibility.
I stood by her side while the doctor slowly began to explain some of her injury. She wasn’t told all of the severity at first, due to the traumatizing shock she was already in, but none-the-less she was beginning to put the pieces together in her mind. As the doctor spoke to her, I simply stroked her hair, and repeated the words I had heard.
“I AM a Good Father. I AM never surprised by anything. I AM a God of miracles.“
This was going to be her journey now. She would have to trust in a God of miracles. She would have to trust that He is good, no matter her circumstance. And she would have to hold onto faith and hope, that God was not surprised by her accident, but allowed it. She would have to choose to believe He allowed it for some greater reason than we could see. Her faith in His plan and trust in His love was going to have to be enough to get her through.
And it was going to have to get me through too.
I stayed with her that night in the hospital. She was in pain, but she never showed it. She was tired, but never complained. She was nervous, who wouldn’t be, but the strength of character and faith in this woman I have never seen in anyone else in my life. Thousands of miles away from home, traumatized and in great pain, she praised the name of The Lord with her mouth and trusted Him with her life moment by moment throughout the night.
As I watched her fall in and out of sleep, I kept praying these simple truths:
“You are a GOOD FATHER. You are NEVER surprised by anything. You are a God of MIRACLES. I believe we will see the GOODNESS of GOD in the LAND of the LIVING. I believe that You are FAITHFUL to complete EVERY GOOD WORK You begin in us. We are never outside of Your hands or Your plans. You are the healer, and you knit us together from the beginning of our lives, and you can do it again. You desire to give GOOD gifts to Your children. You raised the dead, You gave sight to the blind and You made the LAME to WALK. In Isaiah You promise that those who WAIT upon The Lord will RENEW THEIR STRENGTH. They will WALK and not grow weary. They will RUN and not faint. WE GIVE YOU GLORY, GOD, FOR YOU ARE GOOD.”
That night was a test of my faith. To praise in the midst of suffering doesn’t seem logical, yet there is nothing else we can do other than cry out to the One who holds everything together anyways. And so I praised His name.
And that is exactly what our entire squad did. They praised the name of The Lord. They gathered for the night to spend hours praying and praising God. What a testimony of their faith and strength, what a testimony to The Lord and His goodness, and what a slap to the enemy, who cannot win if we give glory to God in our blessings and sufferings.
“In this world you will have trouble, but TAKE HEART for I have overcome.“
All we could do was praise Him, because He promised that He had already won.
We saw faith rise. We saw hope and peace surpass all understanding. We saw The Lord begin to do miracles, in our hearts and physically in those injured. He had already saved lives, to heal them was just a greater way for Him to shower His love. The greatest testament to God’s faithfulness was the response of the Christians in India that came rushing to our aid. From a predominantly Hindu & Muslim nation came flooding Indian Christians from all over the state. They drove from everywhere, hundreds of pastors and missionaries to come for the night and pray at the hospital for healing and God’s presence to come in that place. It’s like having a giant family come rushing to your aid. They came, a non-stop revolving door of praises and prayers for God’s miracles. God’s church came to LIFE.
The next few days were still chaotic, though the Lord’s peace surpassed us all. She had an emergency surgery to stabilize her spine. She then had to have another surgery to fix a punctured lung. Another squadmate had a medical emergency and had to have a minor surgery in the midst of the accident chaos. We awoke to messages reporting about the 7.9 earthquake that devastated Nepal, only a few hours north of us and our next intended destination for the squad. We praised God that our friends in Nepal were unaffected, but the tragedy was another blow to our every increasing traumas. Logistical planning and more medical adaptions came flying at us fast, and I got fewer and fewer hours of sleep because it seemed the phone would never stop ringing with more and more news…
I learned the meaning of the verse in the bible that tells us not to worry about tomorrow. The truth is, there isn’t a point in worrying. Even if I had wanted to, my worried mind could never have imagined in my wildest dreams that all of these things would happen in a short 3 days time. Yet The Lord knew. He was never surprised, and for whatever reason He entrusted us, this squad of 54 people, to walk in faith through the fire and trials of life. Not just one small fire, but the wildfire.
Yet through it all I have seen more hope, more faith, more trust and abandoned dependence on God’s faithfulness than I have ever seen in my life. I am blown away by the strength in these American men and women I’ve learned to call family on this side of the world. I am humbled by the generosity and selfless aid given immediately by our Christian brothers and sisters who live here in India. I am completely in AWE at a God who perfectly orchestrates all things together in His perfect timing for His perfect will, knowing that in this world we are not guaranteed easiness or safety, but we are given peace and courage to take heart and have faith in a God that sees much bigger than our sufferings.
I believe in a God of miracles. I have seen them. They should have died in that car, but they didn’t. We shouldn’t have had peace or hope, but we did. They shouldn’t have been released with little injuries that day, but they were. And the one who’s spine broke in half? Well she shouldn’t have wiggled her toes today or sat up straight in her bed this morning, but SHE DID.
There is a long, long road of difficult recovery ahead for her. There are no guarantees in this life, and there is still no certainty that she will walk again. But we do not lose hope, because we serve and praise a God of miracles. We have already seen them, and I believe there is more to come.
If there is anything that I have learned over the past few days, it is this:
I do not worry, not because there is nothing to worry about, but because my God is bigger than my biggest worried dreams. I have hope in all things, because He is a God of miracles. And I have peace, that He is never surprised by what seems thrown into the chaos of my life. I have faith, unshakable, because I know that at the end of the day, He is a good father who cares for His children far more than we could ever know. Some of us He entrusts with really hard things in life, like Jesus and His disciples had, but this I have found to be true-
“In this world you will have trouble, but TAKE HEART, for I have OVERCOME the world.“
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Please continue to pray for VANESSA MARTINEZ. Go to her facebook page or worldrace blog (vanessamartinez.theworldrace.org) to continue getting updates on her health and recovery. Please pray about financially supporting her family through her recovery process as well- it is still a long and expensive road to recovery for her, but we do not lose hope.
The other three involved in the accident are continuing on with us in travel and are recovering well.
We are currently sifting through options for the squad to spend month 5. Currently, we are debriefing in India for another week, but our visa expirations and the devastation in Nepal have us in a bit of a bind. Pray for God to open doors where He wants to lead P Squad next!
