The Deacon's Bench
Over at Catholic Vote, Thomas Peters has written for the first time about the crippling accident that has changed his life. It’s a powerful, deeply moving testimony that he calls, with a breathtaking understatement, “Reflections on My Time Away.” You’ll want to read it all and share it.
A major accident is an invitation to both physical and spiritual recovery. I have never felt God’s presence as much as I do since the accident. People will say that accidents like mine should call into question God’s mercy or even His existence. But for me, the fact that I survived my injury is the greatest evidence I have ever experienced of God’s mercy and providence. I believe God allowed my accident to happen and that He chose to help me survive that accident and every day gives me the opportunity to be blessed through it…
…The accident has taught me that I am a work still in progress and anything I do achieve is for God’s glory. I completed my term of inpatient rehabilitation this week and the hard work of learning to live on my own again (with the tremendous help of my wife) has just begun, as has grueling outpatient therapy to regain more of the strength and muscle systems I have lost. The vast, vast majority of individuals with my injury never walk again, but there remain signs that I could beat these long odds, and I have been praying to St. Jude for such a miracle. The majority of individuals with an injury like mine never regain the use of their hands – I have had to write these reflections using a knuckle of my right pinky on a touchscreen, if you can believe it. But through the intercession of St. Francis, I am recovering some finger function in my left hand. There are troubling signs that my life will forever be plagued with neuropathic pain, but as I have learned, pain can be offered up and need not inhibit living a good and worthy life.
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