Brian: I grew up in a strong Christian family, and I had accepted Christ when I was 7 years old. My parents have always been very involved with church, so I had good examples of how I should live.
But as I was growing up, I really questioned what kind of “testimony” I had that could benefit anyone else. I felt insignificant and unimportant. As I grew older, I began to understand how blessed I was to have a strong family and to know that Jesus was the center of it, helping and protecting me through everyday struggles.
Because of some significant events that have happened in my life, God has changed me. I am stronger, and more dedicated for having had these things happen to me, and I am only where I am right now because of God’s grace and provision.
In 1997, after driving back home from a vacation (16 hours), Brenda, my wife, noticed that I woke up in the middle of the night and was not properly answering questions. She called “911” and I was rushed to the hospital. By the time I had reached the hospital, I had suffered from a stroke, affecting my full left-side movement. The doctors determined that I also had multiple PE blood clots (pulmonary embolism) in both of my lungs, because of a fall.
The doctors had told Brenda that, had I not been awakened that night, she would have found me the next morning dead or in a vegetative state. I KNOW that it was God that woke me up.
There is no reason for me to have survived that experience at all, except for the grace of God. Anyone with any medical understanding will tell you that one PE can kill you, and I had multiple, in both lungs.
God allowed me to fully recover, including all movement that was affected by the stroke and from the multiple PE blood clots. In 2009, I was laid off from a career position where I had been working for nearly 23 years. Our family had to really depend on God and his provision during that time, because it took me nearly eight months to find steady employment.
Even since that time, we have had to depend on God multiple times, because of being laid off from multiple other contract or direct-hire positions. God promises us, in Isaiah 40:28-31, that if we can wait on Him and His timing, He will provide the next step and renew our strength. I had also been diagnosed with heart failure in approximately 2008. With some medical testing that had been done, it was discovered that my heart was functioning at about half of “normal” capacity. There is a measurement used for heart function called “EF”, which stands for “ejection fraction” and is a measurement of the percentage of your body’s blood content that gets circulated through your body with each heartbeat. A “normal” range for that measurement is 50-70, meaning that 50-70% of your body’s blood content is circulated per heartbeat. So, all the blood content in a person’s “normal” body is circulated within the span of two heartbeats. It takes about 4 heartbeats for my body’s blood to circulate, since my EF number was noted as 25-30 (%). The result of that is a constant fatigue condition that I deal with every day of my life. A pacemaker with an internal defibrillator (ICD) was implanted in 2017 to help with my circulation.
In March 2019, my heart went into a “ventricular tachycardia” arrhythmia (or better known as “V-Tach”), which means the left side of my heart (which sends blood out your arteries to the rest of your body) was pumping at least 200 beats per minute (bpm) instead of 70-80 bpm. As a result, my heart could not “re-fill” with blood coming back into the heart to be able to pump out. The impact of that is NO circulation of blood to your body AT ALL.
Normally, that will cause a cardiac arrest condition, which is usually fatal. Once again, I should not have survived that day. The Pacemaker/ICD implant, and God’s protection, saved my life once again. I am very thankful every single day for God’s provision and protection, as well as for a wonderful, dedicated, wife and family who have been by my side through all of it.
There is no physical reason why I should be alive at all, let alone doing normal activities and handling “everyday life” as well as God has allowed me to handle it. All of us have a choice for how we respond to the difficulties that we face. I remind myself daily to praise Him for life, for His protection and safety, and for His provision to allow our family to remain intact and be able to handle all our responsibilities. My trust is in Him!!
