By Michelle Cable

“Can you tell me your name?”

Silence.

“Do you know when your birthday is?”

Nothing.

I didn’t know my birthday. I didn’t where I was or why I was there. I didn’t even know who I was. These thoughts flamed tears of sincere frustration that rushed down my face.

It was beyond remembering. I did not know who I was. With every question nurses were prompting me in the ICU to gauge the severity of the brain damage, it slowly started to click that something was wrong. I did more than just fall from a 10 foot ladder. The MRI scan of my fractured right temporal bone and bruised left frontal and temporal lobes was the start to my long road of traumatic brain injury recovery.

As painful as the first couple of months were, and feeling like my 27 year old brain was frozen trying to reboot, God was at work. He has used my pain and my confusion and my hurt and my frustration to draw me into His arms. I was confused and bitter that I wasn’t the same as I was before, and scared of what my new normal was going to look like. I was like a child who was physically and emotionally drained from kicking and screaming, that I just needed to fall into the arms of a loving Father to embrace me and walk me through every minute of the day. Neither my husband nor friends nor doctors could fix me, as much as I desperately wanted to be fixed.

As odd as it might sound looking back over the past 7 months, I am thankful for my brain injury.  Not just for the recovery, or the community God purposefully placed to walk alongside me, or all the steady improvements along the way, but for the actual accident and all the ugly, raw pain that came with it. Even though gratitude was not my initial response, my heart has grown to thank a God as loving to choose me in this manner to bring me back to Him. The road to recovery has not only pertained to my brain. This verse explains it best. “Not only this, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Romans 5:3-4. God is working through suffering to draw you closer to make you more like Him for His kingdom purposes. You first need to ask God to help you. And you need to let Him help you.