What a Difference a Year Makes

A year ago today, I was playing intramural softball with a group of friends. The season was going well, we had won all of our games and we were winning this game as well. Not being the best player, I felt confident sticking to right field, while occasionally switching positions with my friend at second base. Well this night a year ago, was rainy and we were playing at a different time, making it darker than when we normally played which should have been a warning sign. When my friend asked me if I wanted to switch positions, something in my stomach told me no but I had not had any action in right field and I was getting restless, so I agreed. Maybe one or two innings, I thought.

I cannot tell you how long I had been playing second this inning but before I knew it, my inning and my last opportunity to play intramural sports was shot by one throw to second base. The batter had just hit the ball into left field and a runner was coming into second. With my foot on the bag, I reached my glove out to receive the incoming catch from left. Instead of catching it with my glove, which my whole team had thought I had done since there was a sound indicating I had, I caught the ball with my face. Yup, I got a heater thrown at my left eye. It knocked me down and out for a few seconds but seeing everyone around me made me so uncomfortable that I told someone I just wanted to sit down in the dugout. Despite everyone telling me to regroup, I got up and walked back to the dugout with blood dripping down my face, onto my favorite T-shirt. After my protests against being taken to the hospital and once my team realized I was going to stay conscious, the game resumed. I spent the rest of the game being cleaned up by the medic and filling out forms saying I wasn’t going to sue the league as I held ice to my face. Once we had finished the game, with another win of course, my friend took me home and I finally got to see the damage. Picture Quasimodo and you have my face! My left eye was swollen shut and my nose was a faucet, constantly dripping blood.

The next morning I woke up, hoping the past night’s drama was all a bad dream but when I looked in the mirror that morning, washed my face and ate my breakfast, I realized this was not going away. I called school telling them I would not be in (since I was in the middle of student teaching) and decided that it would be best to go to the doctors since my nose hadn’t stopped bleeding. My roommate so graciously gave up her day to take me to the doctor’s office where I was examined and x-rays were taken. This was the day that I discovered that my face was not just swollen but broken….completely broken, from my nose, to the optic bone surrounding my eye (the terms my doctor would use later for my broken bones was “cornflakes”) My parents, who had thought I was “just swollen” as well, came up and took me home a few days later.

Beginning on the car ride home, miracles happened left and right. With a few calls to my dad’s high school friend I got an appointment with SHARP hospitals best END. When I was able to meet with him the next day, I knew I was not only in His hands but I was in the best medical hands I could be in.

After a 4 and half hour surgery and months of healing, my face started to heal and resort back to normal. However, this whole process was not just about experiencing healing physically but emotionally as well. The months waiting for the swelling to go down were the most painful months I have ever gone through. My face, from the moment of impact to post surgery, never hurt once (which is another miracle) but looking in the mirror and not seeing the face I had lived with for twenty two years was excruciating. I did not know how or if my face would ever be normal again. I was literally experiencing an identity crisis. Every day I questioned who this person was in the mirror? It was then that I could only rely on Him. No one else could sympathize with what I was going through, I felt completely alone. I realized I could no longer place my identity in what I looked like on the outside but who He has made me on the inside.

Even though a year has passed, I still have not gotten to the point where I am completely confident in my identity, both physically and spiritually but I believe this whole experience is what brought me here to Vietnam. He has changed my heart to be completely dependent on Him and living in a foreign country, it is the only way I can survive.

Yes I could have done without the screw in my face and a soreness that comes and goes but I would never want to do without the transformation that was made in my heart. Where would my faith be without it?

A month after my accident. Notice the left eye a little bit bruised.

At the end of student teaching...still swollen

Today...back to my old self!