Celebrating Life with the Peace that God Provides

Day five

Early on as I was sitting on my porch I realized something had changed. Well lots of things changed, duh. Figuring out what had changed, and how to deal with it, it was something I would often think about. But I realized something else had changed. Something good happened. It is weird how recovering from trauma happened to me. It’s sort of like the fog is lifting, things that you didn’t realize were going on, gradually come into focus.

I guess it is one way God has created life. We can access the trauma that happened in stages. I don’t know if that is common, but that happened to me. It was a couple months after my stroke that I realized that I couldn’t write at all, a couple months later I realized that everything that I memorized was gone.  I think I would have been overwhelmed if I knew what had happened all at once. But in stages, it was doable.  

And at the same time I experienced the love of God in a profound new way. And when I realized that I had lost all the verses I had memorized, I realized as well those truths were still there In my heart. I realized that my ”me” was intact. Something distinct from my brain was healthy. The fog was lifting, gradually revealing both the good and the bad. I can’t overstate how important the good has become. Without that, I guess I would be just focusing on trauma. 

I guess that’s pretty substantial. What I noticed on the porch that morning wasn’t. But maybe it was a taste of the good? 

I realized that morning, the tension in my shoulders is gone. While sitting on my porch I realized I was relaxed. There was always some tightness in my shoulders, one of the side effects of work I guess. I can remember doing a procedure to deal with stress, by relaxing every muscle, starting with one hand, then the arm then the shoulder and the neck then back down the other arm and then the legs. A way to release stress. I’m not sure if it worked. It wasn’t long before the tension was back. So I tried to relax my shoulder muscles, but couldn’t, because they were already relaxed. The tension in my shoulders was gone.

It occurs to me that maybe it was because I don’t have muscles anymore, I am so weak. Hmm, that is not it, on occasion, my weak muscles still tense. But that day, as I sat on my porch, I was completely relaxed.

The peace that God offers is amazing. When I woke up from my stroke, peace was there. I can’t explain how that happened. What a gift it was and still is, peace through the storm of a stroke, and peace through the aftermath.