It was around the time R. Kelly believed he could fly, a head injury had left me with short-term memory loss.

There had been rain, a car, a tree… I broke.

I didn’t know God, didn’t love God…It seemed I used to, but not then.

 

The fool has said in his heart,

‘There is no God.’

~ Psalm 14:1

 

In the frantic madness of the ER, a male nurse in blue scrubs stood motionless at the foot of my bed. He had long, shiny black hair pulled behind his neck, and his eyes were a color I don’t know, like water.

He smiled peace the whole time I watched him. Then he was gone.

I kept asking for him days later, but no one else had seen him, not even Mama.

When I described his hair, the nurse laughed and said, No one with hair like that could work here; it’s against the dress code.

Only I had seen him.

That’s not a story you can tell to just anybody.

Most people who have near-death encounters or unexplainable rescues like I did are CHANGED! They’re better people, better Christians, better citizens after that.

They travel all over the place telling their stories.

Not I.

Unbelievably, for three more years I lived as if God did not love me, still lost.

Jesus said some people won’t believe even if they see someone rise from the dead. That was me. After the wreck, I’d experienced the unbelievable, yet remained an unbeliever.

Still, I gave testimonies at various churches and shared my story of God’s rescue whenever asked.

I wasn’t lying; the story was true. God was true.

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God at this point—I’d be a fool to deny Him after what I’d just experienced.

The thing I didn’t believe was that God loved me.

I supposed He did on my good days, but not always. Certainly not every day. This is what made me an unbeliever.

This is what left me unchanged.

Because of the head trauma, everything was new again. The whole world was like I’d never seen it before. My own bedroom was upstairs, inaccessible to my wheelchair, so even it was new to me when I finally was able to walk.

Mama would park my chair on their country porch, and for hours I’d watch iridescent winged things and nervous creepy things, completely mesmerized by their detail.

Like never before, I was absolutely certain of a Divine Creator—of God’s existence.

Not that I loved Him—I didn’t. But I was more aware of Him than ever, and I was starting to wonder if maybe He loved me.

There’s just something about the healing process, when the Hand of the Creator is right down inside our soul mending it, that silences the atheist in us.

As we heal, the fool within feels loved by the One who makes things fly.

I limped for three years after the wreck, a reminder that I was still broken.

In 2000, through events only Jesus can weave together for our good, I heard His invitation: Follow Me.

So I said yes.

That’s about the time I stopped limping.

Are not all angels spirits sent to minister to those who will someday inherit salvation?

{Hebrews 1:14}