A health crisis reaps an unusual harvest.
by Kristen Joy Wilks
My toe caught on a root, and I hit the hard-packed trail face first. The world around me blurred and stilled. What happened, and why did the back of my head hurt instead of the front?
I lay there for a minute, letting my forehead rest against the dirt and the gentle sounds of the forest continue around me. Nothing seemed broken, but I was still hesitant to move. I wasn’t in too much pain, but I didn’t feel quite right either.
Canine attention
A soft brush of fur touched my neck. Slobber on my cheek and big paws on my back. Nessie! The snuffling and digging only grew more desperate, so I slowly got my knees under me and let my four-month-old Newfoundland puppy throw herself into my lap. She was a big girl, already weighing forty-five pounds.
I ruffled her fur and defended my face from a flurry of slobbers.
That’s how I’d fallen. Nessie! We were walking down the dirt trail that connected my house to my mother’s trailer. Nessie loved to visit Grandma Judy.
Spooked pup
However, my young pup had gotten spooked by a series of frightening encounters. A dog barked, a chicken clucked, and a pair of goats had spotted us across the lawn and charged over to say hi.
It was all too much for poor Nessie. She turned inside out with terror and bolted.
She flew down the dirt path at Jet Dog speed. I stumbled after her, my arm yanked out in front of me by the taut leash. Then my toe caught a root, and with the leash tugging me forward, I couldn’t cushion my fall.
Straight to the ground, my forehead hit first, stunning me — a stunt my middle-aged body did not appreciate.
Pushing through
I couldn’t lay in the dirt all day. My husband and I lived and worked at Camas Meadows Bible Camp, where he serves as director, and I take photos of the campers to share on social media. I also write the camp’s blog posts.
I picked myself up and dusted off my jeans and t-shirt. There were so many activities I hadn’t photographed yet.
Nessie let me catch her and lead the way up to the paintball field. I captured a few shots of the campers in facemasks, darting through the forest with their paintball markers, shooting at opponents, and sliding for cover behind trees. My head still hurt.
Struggle
Slowly, I turned around and led Nessie up the narrow dirt road toward the main lodge. I never made it to the lodge. As the sun beat down and the pain at the back of my head increased, my mind grew foggy.
I blinked and looked around. I was standing in the middle of the road, leash in hand, puppy gazing up at me. How long had I been standing there, staring sightlessly into the woods?
Our camp manager looked at me more closely, then walked over. “Are you OK?”
No, no I was not.
Diagnosis
The camp nurse confirmed that I had a concussion. I had experienced concussions before: the pony, that downhill ski trip, possibly the time I stepped on a rake laying tines-up in the grass.
So I proceeded to do the things that had worked in the past. I rested with an icepack on my head and didn’t work on the computer or watch TV.
Strange responses
On Saturday, I was determined to take photos of the camp skits. With Nessie’s leash in hand, I walked outside for the first time in days.
The sun beat down. The basic chatter of happy campers rang in my ears. Worship was pure misery. The guitar, the singing, the clapping. Oh, the terrible clapping! Each and every beloved sound now made me cringe.
I snapped the photos and then stumbled back inside. People tried to talk to me. Their voices grew louder and louder. I just couldn’t do life. I mumbled some kind of apology and stumbled to my room.
Harsh sounds
The ticking of my alarm clock echoed in my ears. I stuffed it into a drawer. Still too loud. I piled clothing around it. There, finally blissful silence surrounded me.
I laid my head on an icepack and stared at the ceiling. I stayed there all day. I stayed there all night. Nothing helped. When my husband or mother ventured in with a tray of food, I begged them to whisper. Every noise grated and caused me to wince.
Restrictions
After an ER visit, I was relegated to my bedroom. I slept for ten hours every night. I rested with an icepack for fourteen hours every day. I could do nothing at all for three straight days. No whispered conversations. No music, computer work, TV, reading, typing, handwritten stories, or audio books.
I could not attend staff meetings with the camp counselors. I could not walk our puppy or play fetch. I couldn’t feed our teenage sons or chat with my husband about his day.
Everything had been taken away. The ER doctor told me to try not to even think.
Thoughts and prayers
All I could do was pray. I stared at the ceiling for fourteen hours a day and prayed to the same God who had not caught me when I fell.
He met me there, though.
In the darkness and pain, God sat with me and listened to my every labored thought. Even the angry ones. Even when I asked Him why He would allow every blessed thing to be torn away.
Prayer list
Despite my anger, I lifted up my sons to him. The sons I could no longer care for. I lifted up my husband to him. The husband I could no longer talk to. I prayed for the camp I loved. The camp I could not photograph or write blogs about.
I prayed about a tricky issue that had been troubling me for well over a year. Something that felt so impossible, I had been suffering from insomnia.
Unexpected blessings
That summer was so incredibly difficult. I wouldn’t read or work on the computer for another month. A year later, I would still have to stand outside during loud worship songs and plug my ears when people clapped. But nonetheless, God was still at work.
My sons and husband cleaned, cooked, and kept the puppy from chewing up our shoes. The campers still had a blast. And that problem — the one that kept me up at night for so long — resolved in a way I couldn’t have ever imagined.
Did God wallop me upside the head to do His work in my heart? No, I don’t think He did. However, God does not waste a thing.
Parable
I read in Matthew 25 where Jesus tells a parable about how God entrusts gifting, abilities, and talents to His followers: a larger responsibility for the servant faithful in the past and a smaller gifting for the one yet to show himself capable to use the gift wisely.
After two servants are praised for investing their master’s money well, Jesus goes on to describe the travails of the third servant:
“Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you’” Matthew 25:24, 25, NIV).
Puzzling phrase
The phrase “harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed” has always troubled me. Is Jesus saying God is a thief? A greedy tyrant who wants a harvest even when He doesn’t put in the work?
I don’t think so. I am convinced that this fascinating phrase is a metaphor for how God does not waste a thing in our lives.
Meeting God
God cannot sin and He does not go about sowing the seeds of pain, suffering, and heartbreak into our broken world. Yet He gathers a harvest in the places where He did not sow seeds. He will use the pain that comes to grow a bountiful crop, even though that pain was not something He planted among us.
When the concussion shattered my world, God met me in the quiet and the darkness as my brain struggled to heal. He did mighty work all around me as I lifted each care up to Him. I beheld miracles as we sat together in the silence.
Good changes
I have healed substantially but still face concussion-related struggles. The gloriously loud worship songs at the camp still bring head pain. I have to enjoy the music from the porch in front of the main lodge instead of inside.
However, I am forever changed in good ways as well. I saw firsthand that my worth as God’s child does not depend on what I am able to write, cook, clean, or express to others. I am a daughter of a Creator God, and as He sat with me in the darkness, I realized that just being His made God so pleased. Reaching out in the only way I could was a mighty act of faith that made Him glow with pride. Well done, good and faithful servant.
God was at work, even in my weakness, harvesting where He did not sow and gathering where He did not scatter seed. He helped me grow in strength, gentleness, and faith as I lived those terrible days in the dark with Him, and He remains with me today.
Kristen Joy Wilks is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in Nature Friend, Clubhouse, Thriving Family, Keys for Kids (Unlocked), The Christian Journal, Today’s Christian Living Magazine, Splickety, Spark, and Havok magazines. She writes on faith themes for kids and has three books in her Phooey Tales series for children ages 6-10. Kristen also has six romantic comedies and a middle grade novel available. She lives in Peshastin, WA. Visit Kristen’s website: https://kristenjoywilks.com/.