Witnessing Miracles - Visualize all that God has Prepared for Those who Love Him

The feeling is almost indescribable...almost

1 Corinthians 2:9 says, "What no eye has seen and no ear has heard, what the mind of man cannot visualize; all that God has prepared for those who love him."

NASHVILLE, TN - As a human being, there are things of this world that I do not know or understand: disease, famine, why bad things happen to good people. As a person of faith, there are things that I do know, free from worry or doubt. In his letter to the Hebrews, St. Paul tells us that, "faith is the realization of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen." I know that one day our children will be made holy by the power of God. That will come to pass in God's time, and the peace that I have surrounding that desire is, in itself, a gift from God.

Still, we are human and we desire, nay demand in our foolishness, glimpses large and small of what God has prepared for those who love Him. And we prefer those glimpses be revealed in a time that matches our desired schedule. It is so much easier to understand His timing (to connect the dots so to speak) once the miracle has occurred if we are so blessed to understand the miracle in the first place.

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A bit of background, then. Our 19-year-old daughter, Samantha, was diagnosed with PTSD in 2014. It was not one traumatic event - one illness or injury every so often she could have processed and handled - it was a series of illnesses and injuries over four years, combined with a lack of understanding, compassion and care from friends, family and physicians that led to anxiety, panic attacks, and flashbacks. As parents, Jim and I tried everything: medication, natural remedies, four or five different therapists, etc.

Imagine your mind and spirit as a backpack. When it is empty and light, life flows along like water in a babbling brook.gliding over pebbles and sparkling in the sun. A wayward tree branch may momentarily redirect the water, but it quickly moves around the unexpected detour and continues to flow.

Now imagine a 14-year-old girl. She thinks her group of friends is a good group. Little comments here and there give her pause, but she goes with the flow to fit in.

In January of her freshman year, she hits her head on a diving board at the indoor pool and suffers a concussion, which causes short-term memory loss for a few weeks. There's one brick in the backpack. Her "friends" don't understand and start teasing her. That's another brick.

One month later she develops ovarian cysts. The pain every three months is so severe she has to stay in bed for two or three days. Another brick. The doctors tell her suck it up - the cysts aren't that big. That's a fourth brick in less than two months.

By the end of her freshman year, her "friends'" teasing comments are becoming just plain cruel. She doesn't tell anyone. Brick five. One even tells her they just allow her to eat lunch with them because she's amusing, but they don't really like her.

In mid-August, the day before the start of her sophomore year, the "friends" message her on Facebook. They start a conversation on her wall. "Maybe Sam shouldn't come to school this year," one says. "Maybe she won't be at the first day of class," another writes. "Click, click." "Kill her!" says a third. Bricks 6, 7 and 8 pile into the already weighty backpack. Sam says nothing.

In October of her sophomore year, we take her to the ER because the pain in her abdomen is unbearable. Her appendix is removed - unnecessarily as it turns out. Brick 9. Laparoscopic surgery leaves a lot of air in her belly - pain-killers constipate the system. The pain doesn't go away - it intensifies. The nurses and doctors patted her on the head and whisper to each other about low pain tolerance. That's brick 10.

In January of her sophomore year, she hits her head again - this time while ice skating. The bricks are getting heavy and her mind cannot cope. Sam is taken in an ambulance to a local hospital, where she begins to convulse and passes out. The ER docs send her to a different hospital in St. Louis. Because three teams of doctors are involved (ER, trauma, and neurologists), they cannot come to a consensus and leave Sam strapped to a backboard for 13 hours. Bricks 11, 12 and 13.

She returns to school after a few days and is greeted with stares, taunting and rumors flying so fast and furious she can barely keep up. Her brain, again in fight or flight mode, decides to fight. In an attempt to turn the vicious teenagers to her side, Sam fakes long-term memory loss. Brick 14.

The ovarian cysts continue and Sam is put on birth control to help prevent them. Her "friends" call her a slut. Brick 15.

That backpack is now very heavy. Life no longer flows like a babbling brook. It is a river filled with Class 5 rapids. An extremely long obstructed river with violent rapids and complex, demanding routes. A river with unavoidable waves and steep chutes. The water is deep, and it is very cold.

In November of her junior year, Sam develops a urinary tract infection that is so bad it takes a month-long course of antibiotics to kick it. Brick 16. The antibiotics cause a yeast infection in her belly, but we won't find that out until the middle of January. During December and January, Sam cannot keep food down, and loses 25 pounds in 30 days, spending two 5 to 6-day stints in the same St. Louis hospital. Doctors and nurses run a myriad of tests but cannot figure out what is wrong. They put her on IV Nexium, which is the worst thing for a yeast infection in your belly. They bring a psychiatrist in and tell her she may have an eating disorder. Bricks 17-19.

In mid-January 2012 we figure it out. Whew! Mom and Dad are relieved. Sam's health improves. Our backpacks are emptied, but we are older, wiser and more mature in our faith. Sam is angry - at doctors, at teachers who now tell her she may have to repeat her junior year and at girls who she now realizes were never her friends.

The summer before entering college, the truth about her 18-month "memory loss" comes to the forefront, and her brother blames her for all of the times he was disciplined or scolded for telling her she was faking it. It's a night filled with yelling, crying and chaos. Brick 20.

The small victories she experienced along the way were nice, but they never allowed her to process each event and turn it into a memory. She was repeatedly told by others and herself that these incidents were her fault. That was the message that stuck. I could tell her 100 times a day that she was not responsible for the concussions, the ovarian cysts or the massive yeast infections in her belly. It wasn't her fault that the high school girls tortured her emotionally.

The 20 bricks in her mind's backpack have stored themselves in the frontal lobe of her brain. When we become stressed, the brain releases cortisol, adrenaline and another chemical. Those kick in our fight or flight response. With each new event, or reminder of each event, more chemicals are released, and a literal wall is constructed between the frontal lobe and the rest of the brain. The events cannot pass to the back of the brain to be stored as memories, and Sam's brain and body were in constant fight or flight mode.

She graduated on time, fighting for the A+ scholarship and good grades. She scored a 29 on her ACT and made it to college. She began her freshman year two hours from home, and it went  well. Happy to be away from home, she started going by her middle name, Dallas, wanting to start over. But remember, those events are in the frontal lobe, and any stress (assignments, meeting new people, etc.), trigger the PTSD and flashbacks.

Flashbacks (of being strapped down to a backboard and doctors telling her she cannot leave the hospital until she eats and holds down food) cause her heart rate to spike to 220 beats per minute, and she often passes out when they were over. Digestion stops during times of stress (stomach pain anyone?), and confusion, impaired decision making and decreased self-awareness set in. Pupils dilate, preparing the eyes to see everything it can to either fight or flee. When the flashbacks subside, Sam is left with a headache (too much light entering the brain in a very short period of time), and a stomach ache. She also stutters (sometimes for 24 hours) and experiences dissociation - emotionally shutting down for hours.

Forget the river. Sam's mind, heart and psyche now resemble a lake in the middle of January - muddy, cloudy and frozen solid.

The PTSD ebbed and flowed, and reared itself at the most inopportune times (midterms and finals, for example). It was hard to notice any blessings that could ever come out of this, especially for a teenager. Our happy, once self-confident girl turned into an angry, bitter young lady who blamed herself and others for her PTSD and other health issues. Her faith all but disappeared.

Mine was shaken a bit, but I knew that God would one day reveal Himself, and Sam would be healed. Over the course of those four years, Sam had some growing to do. She had to learn, if she wanted to be out on her own, how to recognize when her body, brain and psyche needed attention. She had to learn how to ask for, and accept, help. I had to learn patience and trust in God's timing. I had to learn how to be grateful and thankful for His blessings in my daughter when it seemed there was nothing for which to be thankful.

On January 22, 2015, the Holy Spirit chose Dr. Tania Glenn to reveal the glory of God. Tania is a doctor of psychology from Austin, Texas. She specializes in treating people who work in public safety, aviation and the military. My company, Air Evac Lifeteam, brought her to our bases in Wichita Falls, Texas, and Duncan, Okla., after the October 4, 2014, accident that claimed two lives and forever changed others. Tania's work with our employees was so successful that the Air Evac leadership decided to bring her to our corporate headquarters in O'Fallon, Mo., and train a group of 50 employees to be a peer-support team for critical incidents. I am blessed to be a part of that team.

The first day of training, January 20, was dedicated to education. Tania explained the four types of stress; acute, delayed, cumulative and PTSD. The brain is an amazing thing. When the physical, physiological and emotional symptoms of PTSD appeared on the screen, I laughed and cried at the same time. While I could always feel for Sam, I never really understood what she was going through. Part of me didn't want to understand it, because I feared that would reveal a flaw in my parenting.

The first miracle was that I now understood my daughter and what her body and brain endured for so long. The second miracle was that the Holy Spirit gave me the boldness and the strength to ask Tania for help. The third miracle was that my daughter asked me to be present to witness the fourth miracle - the very glimpse of what God has prepared for those who love Him.something tangible for my daughter's benefit and mine.

Tania met Sam at 5 p.m. on Thursday, January 22, 2015 in Room 319 of the Holiday Inn Express in O'Fallon, Mo. For the next 90 minutes, Tania performed EMDR therapy with Sam (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). This, in a nutshell, moves the traumatic events from the frontal lobe where they have been stuck, tricking the brain into believing it's in fight or flight mode, to the back of the brain where the events are stored as memories. While unpleasant, these memories do not interfere with a person's ability to cope, and the memories dissipate over time.

Water and ice are made of the same substance, but have vastly different properties. Sam lived in a frozen state for many years. At 6:24 p.m. on Thursday, January 22, 2015, God - through Tania - removed that frozen internal message that Sam had carried in her heart and on her psyche for so long.

I witnessed my daughter melt before my eyes. She transformed from being frozen in a harmful cycle of blame, illness and anxiety, to a happy, confident babbling brook dancing over the pebbles in the sunlight.

I give thanks and praise to God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I thank Him for Tania, for Air Evac, for my gifts that led to my position within the company, for my faith, for a supportive husband, for a strong daughter who refused to give up and for all the little (realized and unrealized) miracles that took place along the way to give us strength and faith that one day she would be well.

Faith is the realization of things hoped for, and evidence of the things not seen. I proclaim that if our hearts, minds and spirit are aligned with God's even just a tiny bit, He will show us that our hope is not in vain.

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