Happy Monday! I’ve decided to add a feature.

For the next few Mondays, I’ll post a series of excerpts from RELENTLESS GRACE. You can read previous excerpts here.

I hope you enjoy them, and that you’ll encounter God’s invitation to give hope another chance.

THE MONSTER IN THE MIRROR (Relentless Grace Excerpt #5)

Intensive Care became my new home. Five days later a team of neurosurgeons fused the vertebrae, joining crushed and splintered bones with an assortment of metal plates and screws along with a chunk of bone transplanted from my hip.

I emerged from surgery encased in a “halo brace” to stabilize my neck while the fusion healed. This contraption surely descended from some medieval instrument of torture, a metal jacket attached to vertical rods that clamped to a metal ring around my head—my “halo.” Four screws secured the halo to my head. It took some time to assimilate that little piece of information—the thing was screwed into my skull!

As the fog of the anesthetic subsided I gradually became acquainted with this primitive apparatus that served as an inflexible exoskeleton to lock my upper body solidly in one position. Not that I could move much anyway, but this device added profoundly to the discomfort and frustration.

I had to learn to live with my new halo because we’d be together for four months.

The therapists tried hard to be friendly and encouraging, to make the best of an awful situation. Jokes, sports, movies, they tried every topic and tactic to distract me from the dismal circumstances and create a more pleasant and personal relationship. I wasn’t playing their game. I was miserable and had no intention of pretending otherwise. I couldn’t see beyond the halo, the catheter, the orthopedic stockings, and this bed that had become my prison. I did everything possible to make sure everyone around me understood the hopelessness, that efforts to help were pointless and doomed to fail.

I also had lost my voice, making a bad situation even worse. The surgeon accidentally damaged a nerve to my right vocal cord, so in addition to the paralysis I could speak only in a hoarse whisper. I really didn’t want to talk to anyone anyway, but communication now required significant effort. I effectively used my inability to speak as a perfect excuse to refuse any sort of positive interaction with anyone. I became increasingly mired in despair and anger.

A few weeks after my injury, an aide helped me to the P.T. waiting area. Quite by accident, he parked my chair near a full-length mirror. I didn’t notice at first, but then a movement caught my eye. I saw the mirror slightly to the left, not directly in front of me but still within the limited field of vision created by the brace that prevented me from turning my head. At first the reflection didn’t register. It took a moment to realize the image in the mirror was—ME!

I stared in horror at the ghost gazing back at me through sunken, glazed eyes. He slumped limply in a large, leather wheelchair. Clothes appeared to hang from his emaciated skeleton. The feet pointed at odd angles like those of a rag doll carelessly arranged; uncombed, greasy hair, hadn’t shaved in several weeks, his skin a pale, chalky white. The ghastly specter evoked memories of grainy black-and-white pictures from Nazi concentration camps, an empty half-alive stare that looks but doesn’t really see.

And the halo brace! Screws protruded from his head, every bit like the Frankenstein monsters from those shadowy old movies. The creature might have escaped his shackles in some secret basement laboratory, the wretched result of a mad experiment gone horribly wrong.

I stared, gradually assimilating details of the shocking spectacle. Fascination faded to disbelief and then terror as I began to comprehend my link to the gruesome image. I moved my right arm like a child might do to verify that the reflection in the mirror really somehow connected to him. Sure enough, the monster’s arm flopped across his body as well. That pathetic, half-human phantom was ME!

I’d never actually seen the halo brace. I guess I’d developed some sort of mental image of the awkward apparatus that immobilized my lifeless body, but I hadn’t really considered the appearance of this horrific contraption. I certainly wasn’t prepared for the ghastly image staring lifelessly back at me like some mistaken merger of man and mechanism. I wanted to escape from the pitiful, subhuman specter, but of course I couldn’t move.

Couldn’t run, couldn’t walk, couldn’t push the chair, couldn’t even turn away. That monster remained right there in front of me, and I was powerless to evade his ghostly gaze. As fearsome as the apparition appeared, I couldn’t force myself to squeeze my eyes shut and make him disappear.

I screamed in horror, or I did what passed for screaming with my hoarse whisper of a voice. No one heard my nearly silent wail, so I banged my arms in frustration on the sides of the chair. The spasmodic movements were the only volitional actions I could generate to attract attention and express the fear and anger.

Eventually one of the aides came to investigate the commotion. “Get me out of here,” I rasped. “Take me back to my room.” He didn’t realize the source of my distress, but he pivoted the chair and we headed back toward the elevator. As we turned away, I got one last glimpse of the monster in the mirror. I croaked another horrified moan.

Back in my room, no one could console me or make sense of what had upset me. “Just leave me alone! Go away! Let me alone!” I whispered through tears.

“What’s wrong?” asked Julie, my nurse. “What happened?”

But I didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to tell her about the monster, about the horror of the frightening image that confronted me, about the embarrassment of finally realizing what others saw when they looked at me. I just wanted to turn off the lights and hide my pathetic remnant of a person in darkness. “Everyone, just get out. LEAVE ME ALONE!” Now I was begging, “Please, turn off the lights and go away.”

In the cool darkness of the hospital room, I cried. How could all of this have happened? The entire period since the accident drifted past in a horrible, surreal haze—ambulance, emergency room, Intensive Care, surgery, recovery. Weeks passed in a fog of pain, sleep and drugs, until days had little definition and time either passed or not but it didn’t much matter. The shock of the entire episode blurred the distinction between reality and some sort of bizarre nightmare. I acted in the dream, aware but not really. The whole dreadful muddle seemed like a struggle to awaken from a dream within a scene in a bad movie.

But in that dark room, the fog began to lift. That ghastly, half-dead reflection wasn’t a character in a scary dream or the product of a drug-induced hallucination. The screws in the head, the chair that trapped me, the feet that didn’t appear to be connected to legs I couldn’t see or feel—that pitiful fabrication of some demented imagination was what remained of ME. I had become that gaunt, slumped, pathetic-looking monster. I cried.

I sat where they had left me, facing toward the window of my room. The blinds were mostly closed and I stared blankly at the window. I heard the door open quietly behind me. “Rich?” Julie whispered. “What can I do?”

“Nothing,” I murmured. “Please, leave me alone.” The door closed again.

I cried, stared at the blinds and cried some more. I should have been out of the chair and back in bed a long time ago. I felt dizzy, light-headed, and nauseous, I struggled to breathe, and my back ached. But I couldn’t move, couldn’t turn the chair or call for help if I’d wanted to. I was just there. Helpless. Alone.

If you’d like to read the story of Relentless Grace, you can order a signed copy here or purchase it at Amazon.com.

Did you enjoy this article? Please leave a comment, visit my website, and/or send me an email at rich@richdixon.net.

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God does not allow evil and suffering to continue because He does not love us, or is in some way detached and removed from us. God takes our suffering so seriously, that he took it upon himself on the cross. Tim Keller 

When I speak to a group about RELENTLESS GRACE, the questions are frequently penetrating and gut-wrenchingly honest. One question is asked more than any other. “Do you believe that God caused your injury?”

That’s tough to answer because I know what’s beneath the surface. A child gets cancer. A spouse dies in a senseless accident. Dreams and aspirations are destroyed indiscriminately, pain strikes needlessly, suffering endures pointlessly. And we want to know why. Why did this happen? Is it God’s will? How could He do such an awful thing, or how could He allow it?

I can’t speak definitively for God (which probably doesn’t surprise you) and I think there’s great danger in claiming to understand the details of God’s plan. We tend to create Him in our image and ascribe limited human motives to Him. We seek simplistic cause-and-effect explanations for complex circumstances. I’m convinced that His thoughts are bigger than our finite ability to reason.

However, my injury has prompted me to examine the question of God’s role in suffering and apparent tragedy. I’ve compiled an incomplete list of basic principles that cast some light for me into a troubling personal darkness.

• God’s purpose and plan are bigger than anything I can see or even imagine.

However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” [1 Corinthians 2:9]

• God loves me and never wants me to be afraid.

God is love … There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. [1 John 4:16(a),18(a)]

• God sent Jesus as the perfect sacrifice. No matter what my situation, I know I’ll spend eternity in relationship with Him.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. [John 3:16]

• I trust that God will never let go of me.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans 8:38-39]

• I trust that God’s work in my life will ultimately come together for my good, even when I can’t see how or when that might be possible.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. [Romans 8:28]

• God made me along with the rest of His creation. His intent for me is for good.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. [Genesis 1:31(a)]

God loves me, wants only good for me, and will never let go of me. And even when circumstances are temporarily horrible, I know that He sacrificed His son to assure that I’ll be in His presence for all of eternity. This is the sum of my experience.

Childhood disease, random accidents, and indiscriminate suffering don’t seem to qualify under any reasonable definition of “good.” Neither do senseless, disabling injuries like mine. Therefore, my answer is that I don’t believe God causes these events. I do not believe that God decided one morning that this would be a good day to cause the suffering associated with a spinal cord injury and permanent paralysis.

Evil is present in our fallen world. Why does He allow it? I don’t know, because His purposes are bigger than my vision. But I know that He’ll always use even tragedy for good and that one day the pain will end and be replaced with endless joy.

That’s not an easy answer, but it’s all I’ve got. It’s enough for me.

I have been asked on hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. Billy Graham

I hope you’ll take a look at my new e-book titled STICKS AND STONES: Finding Freedom In The Face Of Criticism. It’s a free PDF download. You can click the link in the sidebar or go to my resources page to download.

Did you enjoy this article? Please leave a comment, visit my website, and/or send me an email at rich@richdixon.net.

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