First Breath After a Coma

First Breath After a Coma

Thu-thump. Thu-thump.

A long pause.

Thu-thump.

The heartbeat comes in slow. A few unsure beats at first, but eventually it grows stronger.

Pins and needles prick down my spine.  A wave of feeling rushes down as blood returns to my limbs.

Warmth. Something strange that I hadn’t felt in so long.

I try to move, but I feel like I am tied down, like I am in one of those dreams where you are trying to run, but have lead in your shoes.

I can hear muffled voices around me. I don’t know what they are saying, but I recognize them.

A voice louder than all the rest speaks. One that is ancient, deep and yet full of warmth. When this voice speaks, my heart is brought back to life, healed. When this voice speaks, I am reminded of who I am.

“Rise, my child.” He says.

Then suddenly, oxygen floods my lungs, clenching at the sides of my hospital bed with white knuckles.

A white-hot burning light flashes before my eyes.

And then I am alive.

——-

The funny thing about comas is that you never really realize that you’re in one. Time elapses by. Day after day, but you don’t know that you aren’t in the present.

You see, I was in a sort of coma.

For a majority of the past year I lived in the future. In my mind I was always a few states away. Always a step ahead of myself. But funny how our best laid plans always seem to fail.

God was calling me to a greater journey and a greater plan, but I had the grabbed the pen and was trying to write my own story. I was never truly present, or satisfied where God had me.

When that bittersweet day happened in December, I was scared. To me, all of my hopes had been shattered. That my perfect story had just been burned to pieces. I began to slowly slip deeper and deeper into a coma.

I wasn’t myself. I forgot who I was and the world around me faded to grey. It was like I was living in the fog, flying blind.

I cried out for a God who would come and heal my broken heart. A heart that was bleeding and I was unable to do anything about it. I tried again and again to make everything better.

Each day I cried out for Him to heal me.  But as the days turned into months, the coma overtook me.

I was robbed of my joy, my identity and no longer lived for the future … because it was gone. I now lived in the past. Reliving memories that should have been forgotten. Walking old streets where love no longer lived. The past was a horrible place to dwell.

My mind was just like the winter that seemed to never leave Texas, full of death and dying.

But then something happened.  After months of wrestling with the angels and facing down my demons … One day the fog lifted. As if with the changing of Winter to Spring, my heart was healed.

The world around me mirrored my heart. Flowers slowly climbed their way out of the cold, hard ground. The bare arms of the trees began to slip into their green leaves.  Spring had come to Texas as well as to my heart. Life flooded my veins.

It was like my very first Spring. I had forgotten what leaves looked like on trees, what the soft blades of grass felt like under my bare feet.   It was like how the sky always looks bluer, and the sun seems to shine more bright after it has rained.

You see, He was wooing me. He was calling me to come back, to find my true identity as His child, His beloved. To discover a greater and better path that He has for me.

Like Jesus called to the paralytic man after He healed him, “Arise, pick up your mat and walk.”

So that is what I am doing, I am getting up and walking to Him.

I believe He has called me awake from my coma. Ya I still hurt from time to time. But I have a Healing Hand against my side. He has brought life to my veins and has lifted the fog.

The Spring breeze flows into my car, pulling at the ends of my hair. The golden-orange beams of the sunset shine through, making my hair look even more red. I smile as Explosions in the Sky drums on off my radio. The trees sway with their arms full of leaves. I breathe in deep and exhale as a smile sweeps across my face.

That is what this is for me  … my first breath after a coma.

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