Seven years ago today, I no-showed to my own Christmas concert. Little did we know my and Ivan’s lives had changed forever.

Many of you already know the basics of my accident story if you’ve been following us through the blog, social media, or my new book, Walking with Grace: Embracing God’s Goodness in Trauma. If you’re new to us or would like a refresher, feel free to check out the blog’s intro here or consider purchasing Walking with Grace here or on Amazon.

However you know us, you’ve probably read about God sustaining us through long seasons of turmoil, uncertainty, potential despair. When one wave of health and relational issues neared resolution, it seemed there was always another wave riding its wake, eager to break over our heads and pull us to the bottom with its un-human power.

But God.

In the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church, he shares that God has given him a “thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.” Yikes. “Messenger from Satan” is tough stuff. On the other hand, Paul has been caught up to Heaven and received spiritually “classified” information. Does that mean he must be taken down a peg no matter how he responds?

Paul doesn’t claim innocence or protest the injustice of his “thorn.” His submission to God’s seemingly harsh judgment affirms God as sovereign King of the universe. But unlike when he was enslaved to sin, Paul enjoys a redeemed Father-son relationship with the Lord. God is still the Father, but Paul can now ask for mercy as one of his beloved children.

What about me? What did I do?

We were not able to identify a particularly severe sin or heart issue for which God could have been disciplining me when I was struck by a car that cloudy afternoon on December 3rd, 2016. At the same time, I am not perfect and cannot claim to know the crevasses and crannies of my own heart, which the Bible tells me is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9).

I was unconscious and Ivan was in shock, but God’s people literally all over the world were lifting us up in prayer – so many sons and daughters begging our Father for mercy.

The Apostle Paul begs Father God to take away his messenger from Satan. But God sticks to his (metaphorical) guns. “Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said to me, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work within me.” ~ 2 Corinthians 12:8-9

Father God spared my life that night. I truly believe this was thanks to the countless prayers from his beloved sons and daughters that rose as pleasing incense to him that night. But I also didn’t yank out all my wires and walk out of my ICU room the next morning. I wonder if God let my healing play out a more painful, circuitous route to maximize the amount of people with whom we’ve shared our faith in therapy, doctors’ offices, and hospital stays. Our rollercoaster ride of ailments requiring urgent care/ER trips has also glorified his powerful ability to keep me and my immediate family safe beyond reasonable explanation. Most importantly, in the past couple of years he’s broken my obsessive reliance on specialty care and is helping me fix my eyes on him, the One True Healer and the Greatest Physician in the Universe.

It’s human nature to survey the past seven years of suffering and reflect on how we’ve “survived.” But like the Apostle Paul, I’d rather surrender them to Father God and call them Years of Power instead. Thankful for 2023 and hopeful for many more to come!