Physical Trauma Reveals Spiritual Trauma

by Joelle Taft

I can still remember what we were doing when we received the phone call. My husband, Kendall, was assembling the crib for our first child due to arrive in less than three months. I was reading a book in my room. On the other end of the line was a nurse, who after confirming who I was, informed me that my Dad had been in a motorcycle accident and was taken by helicopter to the Intensive Care Unit at a hospital about nine hours away.

I can remember wondering how this could be happening. My Dad was on his way to visit us. He was riding his motorcycle for five days on a leisurely trip down to see our first home. This was day three and his trip had been cut short. Kendall and I left early the next morning on the long nine-hour car trip to the hospital. Dad was unconscious when we arrived and had tubes and IVs everywhere. Surprisingly, he looked relatively well, except that he wasn’t waking up. Despite the fact he hadn’t been wearing a helmet he only had a few small abrasions on his head and face. We stayed until visiting time was over and then checked into a local hotel.

The next morning we went back to the hospital. Immediately the doctors asked to speak privately. I sat and listened as they explained that my dad had suffered severe head trauma. Overnight his brain swelled severely causing him to have several strokes, which had left him brain dead. For a few hours I sat next to my dad holding his hand. I was so sad that he would never meet his first grandchild. I was sad that my child would never know her grandfather either. But almost as suddenly another realisation swept over me – I had never shared with my dad about the loving Jesus I had encountered five years earlier. And now it was too late.

My dad died that afternoon. I held his hand as he took his last breath and left this world. In that moment I had two options. I could ask: ‘Why, God? Why now? Why me? Why him?’ or I could ask: ‘What would you have me learn from this Lord?’ With God’s gentle nudging I chose the latter and cried out for the Lord to reveal to me what He would have me learn from this experience.

As we left the hospital and started towards my home to make funeral arrangements I prayed, thought and listened until I felt my call became very clear. I had been a believer in Christ for five years. He had changed me profoundly and yet I had never shared that with my dad. I knew I couldn’t get that opportunity back but I also knew I could do something about the present. My parents were divorced when I was an infant. My mum remarried when I was ten and I had lived with them until I left for university. I may not have had as many opportunities to share my faith with my dad, but I hadn’t shared my faith in Christ with my mum or step-dad either. That evening as we stepped into my mum and step-dad’s living room I shared that I had just lost my father and didn’t know if he would be in heaven or not, but as far as I was concerned, I hadn’t been obedient in sharing my faith with him. I then shared with both of them, ‘I don’t want to lose another parent without knowing the certainty of their eternal destination.’ My stepdad explained to me how he had asked Jesus in his heart as a teenager. But my mother who was a dedicated churchgoer and Sunday School teacher admitted that she didn’t sense a certainty of where she would spend eternity.

It was almost a year later, after several conversations and much prayer that I had the privilege of leading my mum into a prayer of repentance, forgiveness and belief in Jesus. Through my father’s loss of life and the realisation of my own disobedience, God worked something spectacular - my mother’s salvation. Praise God! While I ache for the loss of my Dad, I’m so grateful that God can create goodness from tragic circumstances. He used physical trauma to reveal the real spiritual trauma in the loved ones around me.

That moment changed my understanding forever. I now realize that this world is NOT our home and every day brings us closer to leaving it. The urgency of a harvest that is ripened but requires obedient disciples that will go and tell the good news of Jesus has been impressed upon my heart. After all, the biggest TRAUMA would be for us to keep the Good News to ourselves, while those around us perish with NO HOPE!

Romans 10:14-15

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’

Joelle Taft attends Canterbury Baptist Church.