Divine Comfort: More Faithful Than Even a Mother’s

In 2007, I had been suffering with a painful back injury for about 10 years. I was 21 years old when the injury occurred, causing a bulging disc and pinched nerve. I was 31 years old when I was told that it was fully ruptured and herniated, causing severe nerve impingement. My body was a wreck of sideways standing, limping, grunting, and general unpleasantness. Compounding the problem, I didn’t have health insurance when the injury occurred. By the time I had insurance, I was mostly told that it was a pre-existing condition, and not covered.

I thought my life as a fully-functional man was over before it had really gotten started. My wife and I had one son at the time, and I couldn’t even pick him up.  God probably had some plan for me, but it was pretty tough to imagine what it was or why I deserved this. But, in hindsight, I can clearly see God herding me along.

I was crying the same “my Lord has forgotten me!” words we see in Isaiah 49:14. I was in unbearable pain. My life felt like I was watching it from the outside of a glass window. Everything–from work to family to fun to church to the whole future–was dismal and gray.

But God had a different plan. The people around me weren’t accepting my defeat the way I was. Friends and family were there the whole time as God’s “hands and feet” for my wife and son. When money was tight, bills got paid. When I was dragging my wife down with me, she was covered in love from others. Dinners appeared at the house. Our son got picked up for a lot of “impromptu” play dates. Our friends had committed to loving and caring for US, when I was no longer capable of loving and caring for myself.

These same people kept pushing me to look for alternatives with my back.  I’d suffered with this injury degenerating over the course of 10 years–I had forgotten HOW to hope for a solution. God used these people to remind me that He is always in control, the ultimate source of hope in this life and the next.

At a friend’s “stern” urging, after we’d spent thousands of dollars on therapies with no results, I visited a neurosurgeon. That young doctor looked at my scans and x-rays and calmly said, “I can fix this.” It was like looking into the face of God himself! It took some wrangling to make it work with insurance and all, but his confidence that he could fix it restored my hope and ultimately my desire to live and love. I felt like I’d been a dark room with a flashlight and someone had turned on the fluorescents overhead. Now I could see all of the effort people were putting into me, and now it was worth fighting for the chance to give that back.

Today, five years later, I live in a different state with my wife and 2 kids. I consider that point in my life a turning point, where I saw that God really does have control. It wasn’t a “miracle” that brought us through that point, but a concerted effort of many people to show God’s love to a person in need. I pray that God will work through me to show that love and God’s favor to someone else in their time of salvation.