God with us.

Most of us (religious or not) spend December counting down to the 25th. What’s not to love about all the sparkly festive magic that only comes once a year? I couldn’t wait for “permission” to crank up my Spotify, pull out our Ikea tree with its box of quirky ornaments, and douse both of us in peppermint hot cocoa – starting Black Friday at dawn. Missing out on most of the Christmas season two years in a row just about quadrupled my excitement for Christmas 2018 (!!!!)

But more importantly, I’m excited to count down to the moment God became “God with us.” I grew up with this Christmas saying like most Christian kids, but that was about what it was – a nice Christmas saying. Which is why my accident did not happen on December 3rd by mistake. My family was suddenly living “God with us” literally hour by hour in December 2016, and I lived it hour by hour with them in December 2017. (If you missed last year, you can check it out here.) “God with us” has grown real to me in a dimension I literally can’t describe, and this December promises to be no different.

As many of you know I had the final evaluation of my traumatic brain injury (TBI) about a week ago. The testing fell on the day before Thanksgiving, which is just how things would work out for me 😉 A 5 hour test (with only 5 minute breaks) left me mentally decimated the next day…and the next…and the next…but Mom was sweet enough to run us over two plates filled with all those Thanksgiving fixings so Ivan and I could still have a Thanksgiving Date. “Romantic” is not the first word that comes to mind for the last Thursday in November, but it is also a word for which I’m ALWAYS thankful 🙂 ❤

And now…drumroll please…the TBI results!

God has blessed us with so much healing since that December 2 years ago, and the tests were an excellent witness. There were several categories in which I scored normally for my age, and I even scored an exceptionally high verbal IQ compared with other healthy, graduate-level twenty-five year olds. (My competitive side was jumping for joy on that one.)  There were also some lower scores, though. I still struggle with visuospatial skills, a minor attention deficit, and a significantly impaired processing speed. “Processing speed” is the energy I use to take in information through talking or reading, make sense of it, and then respond. Hopefully that explains why I still only do very short social visits. I promise I like hanging out with you…really! 😉

God with us. God didn’t give me back a perfect brain, but He gave me back a pretty remarkable one considering how damaged it was. God was with us to preserve my life, He was with us to promote my healing, and He’s with us now to move forward with my finished picture. Considering most specialist checkups will fall in or near December each year, I think I’ll always have an extra reminder to celebrate “God with us”…

For which I am very thankful!