Last January I remember getting a card from a little boy at Hillside. Besides a cute drawing, the only message on the inside was: “Dear Grace, I hope you are okay. Are you okay?” The card was hilariously cute and sweet…you can tell since I remember it over a year later in spite of TBI! But the kid actually had a good question.

Accidents produce trauma. Trauma – especially extreme trauma – can produce mental and emotional disorders. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this and I stand in full support of anyone who suffers these, as well as anything that offers them healing. On the flip side, though, it is possible to end up okay. Way back in the rehab hospital, both Ivan and I were interviewed by a psychiatrist to screen for developing mental health disorders. We tested as normal. Over the past year and a half there have been several other doctors who ordered psychiatric testing because they didn’t think it was possible to stay mentally healthy in the face of everything we’ve gone through. Ivan got some questions along the way, too. Although a healing TBI  changes my mood and mental processing to an extent, in the big picture I still screened negative for PTSD and its co-morbidities. Since I’ve  turned out “okay” my treatment team is confronted with the unsettling reality that science can’t explain everything about how I function. That’s because my mental wellness is based on something greater than the physiological.  Both Ivan and I believe that God will always be faithful to us. True, we can’t explain why the accident happened, but we know God has a plan…and that at the end we’ll finally understand how and why it was good. This is why we can be peaceful and even happy.  I was listening through the songs below this morning and got super inspired to write a new post (I am a musician, you know). Even if you’re not a Christian, feel free to explore and see the world through our eyes for a couple of minutes. It’s refreshing to hear a different voice capture the essence of what keeps us going.

Any real relationship is raw and weird sometimes – even a relationship with God. Catastrophe highlights the raw side, but we trust our questions won’t last forever

That is why we can trust our questions won’t last forever.

Here is our guaranteed happy ending. (Yes, the song was written after the artist heard our story, but we’re so grateful it’s sung for far more people than we could ever talk with.)

The happy ending is why we’re okay.