Friends, thank you for praying for me, as I continue on my journey to recovery after the major car accident I experienced last July. Your prayers have carried me and my family, and the Lord has been so good to us.
Some of you are aware of a recent significant development in my journey. While so much of my recovery from significant bone breaks, nerve damage and more has gone according to plan and on (or ahead of schedule), my right leg was too badly injured from the accident.
Over the course of a few weeks, we had multiple consultations with surgeons on the ortho trauma team at OU. They recommended that the best path forward for me to regain my mobility and quality of life was to amputate my right leg below the knee.
After carefully weighing the options, seeking wise counsel and thoroughly praying, we were confident that amputation was the right choice. The Lord gave us a peace about the decision.
I am writing this update to you in the days following the surgery to amputate my leg. We are praying for good recovery healing over the next couple of months and starting the process of getting a prosthetic leg. How grateful we are for all the people who have continued to pray for us!
I was asked more times than I can count by the hospital staff, “How do you feel about this?” I tell them that God has given me a deep peace and my belief that He will use everything that has happened and my future life as an amputee for His purpose. What an opportunity we’ve already had in this journey to point people to God and His Kingdom.
Yes, I lost a physical part of my body. I lost the ability to walk and move in a way that I’ve been used to my whole life. I lost some conveniences and perhaps my ability to do certain things. But I thank God for helping me focus on what I’ve gained in this journey. My physical body has been diminished, but my spiritual life has been enriched.
I’ve gained a greater perspective on not taking for granted the blessings God gives us every day—faith, health, marriage, family, so many other blessings. I have a greater appreciation of how God can use our suffering and how, even in the valley, He is working for His glory and our good. I will soon gain a new way to physically walk with a new chapter in my testimony that I pray can be used to encourage others in their spiritual walk.
And perhaps greatest of all, I have gained a richer understanding that our lives today and our hardships are temporal, our mortal bodies are jars of clay, our focus today must be centered on eternity where one day God will make all things new and give to us glorified, whole bodies to live for eternity in His perfect presence.
God has used this journey the last seven months to teach me in ways I could never have imagined on the importance of what is eternal, about the things of faith and how that impacts the way I live today.
“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:16-18).
