WARNING---LONG ROAD AHEAD...
I was broadsided in a car accident in 2013 in my driver’s side by a woman who had blacked out, but, I didn’t know that was her situation at the time. I went through a LONG period of physical recovery, including 5 surgeries to fix many torn and broken body parts. I went through a long road of Emotional recovery of grief, loss and being forced to adapt to my new limitations. There was also a long road of financial recovery due to the expenses involved for all that medical and emotional care and counseling. IT was also a LONG road of forgiveness, of which I am still on that road! It was a spiritual road of choosing to be mad at God or be closer to God because of where I now was. All the while, experiencing legalities and court depositions, I was counseled by my Lawyer NOT to post publically about anything in my personal life during that time.
Well, now that time of holding back has come to an end and I am free to post again. Yay!! I feel that long coming freedom and now have much to share thru different posts forthcoming.
The first thing I want to say is that I have intellectually learned a GREAT DEAL during this time of introspection and recovery- especially about myself. I tapped into deep reservoirs of faith that I never knew I had within me, but I had hoped that I would have should and that it would show up if anything difficult should happen to me in life. My mind has been opened to spiritual insights and how we choose to live our lives and the consequences of those choices.
March 29th 2013, I was on my way to the bank from the grocery store. I had had 3 little promptings to go home and put my groceries away BEFORE I went to the bank but, I rationalized with that little voice of guidance- mistaking it for my own voice, “I don’t have ice cream, so I don’t NEED to go home before I go to the bank. I will just go to the bank and get home and be done for the day.” I had helped 3 clients that day and just wanted to finish up and relax.
Needless to say, on the way to the bank I was hit. My life catapulted into an astronomical turn of events. I had planned for a long while to have April 1st 2013 be the date I bought the big competitive bike. I looked for it, tried many out and decided which one I wanted, circled the date on my calendar and kept it out there for THAT date to buy it. That was only 3 days away…..
It took months to find all I had been broken and torn thru MRI’s and many a doctors visit to several doctors to finally unearth the impact of that day. I nearly crippled under the weight of each surgery- experiencing 3 of them in 3 months because I was strong and just wanted my “life back”. At the time I had just completed a 4 yr stint of training to race 100 mile (Century) rides. I went into this when I met a woman aged 63 who cycled competitively and she told me she had started in her late 40’s. I was in my late 40’s at the time and thought, “I could do that!” It was then I started and invested 4 years to do what she did. I had listened to the prompting that “I needed to get my body strong.” And felt this was to be my answer to acquiring that strength. At the time of my accident, I was aged 51 & I don’t think I had ever been stronger. I had never had been as strong of lungs and has as massive of thighs as I had then.
Maybe I’ll share more of that time period later, but I learned a very important lesson about choices after my first deposition. IF you’ve never been deposed, the opposing lawyer will bring up all of your misconducts or medical situations in your life to try to prove you wrong so they do NOT have to pay your for your injuries. You are first asked 2 questions:
1. Have you ever been convicted of a felony?
2. Have you ever been convicted of being dishonest?
I was very confident in my reply of “Never” to each instance.
I was informed after the first deposition and settlement in a conversation w/ my lawyer about choices we make. He told me of a former client, a woman who embezzeled money from an employer in her 20’s and was caught, repaid her debt, later married, became a mother, and shaped up her life or “repented” so to speak and became an upstanding member in society. Well, one day she was involved in a car accident, similar to my situation and when asked those same questions in her deposition, she had to reply, ”Yes”. Upon hearing that, the opposing lawyer let her know that because of that reply, her case would never go to trial and that she was not to be trusted to be honest and that she would receive whatever settlement the lawyer thought was appropriate to give her. I was all of the sudden highly consciously aware of the choices we make in life. Many assume it is “tough” to make a right decision ALL the time. Actually, it takes the SAME amount of energy and thought to make ANY decision. Making right or wise decisions is NOT harder to do! The blessing comes WAY down the road sometimes when you make a right decision, but always, always down the road, a bad decision made, can, and will come back to haunt you at some other time. When it does, the regrets seem to overflow of our youthful or inexperienced choices and oh how we wish we had chosen differently back then!
Now, I have not always made the best decisions in my life, or been totally honest in every situation, but all of the sudden I had a reckoning of how we CAN be blessed to independently make right choices. I was well aware of the choices I have made at that moment and was grateful I had chosen wisely in most every situation in my past.
In my youth at age 10, my parents divorced. We had various live in housekeepers for a couple of years, and then My Dad remarried to a very religious woman. It was then I was introduced to the Youth programs in the church. I was fortunate to be provided with amazing female mentors in my teenage years- in the Young Women’s program-- who guided me to make wise choices BEFORE the choice was placed before me. I was taught the consequences of poor choices and how not to be deceived by the adversary. I am so grateful to have heeded that mentorship and guidance. It brought me to where I am today, standing comfortably on the right side of the line.
I recognize that we build spiritual confidence step by step in ourselves when we make wise choices. That confidence grows more firm in each consecutive right choice we make. I have heard it said that God does not want his children to DO Right, He wants them to CHOOSE right! The Devil, Adversary or Satan, as he is called by many, wants us to experience all of the impediments of the earth, to be unhappy and unworthy and miserable as he is. He wants to remove us from the option of being able to be happy. He makes things “appear” unto us to be desired, glamorous or attractive when all the while, they are not. He has no power if we don NOT give him power over us. God truly does have the whole world in His hands! He is all loving, forgiving, provides a way for each repentant soul to truly come back to Him. He just asks that we “Follow Him—very evident when he said: “Come follow me”.
IF you need to, make that easy choice now to Follow Him. Turn your heart, fully repent, rectify your wrongs, regain and rebuild your spiritual confidence & get back on the road of “Happiness” which is “the Way” back home.
