This is a picture of my dog Sparky in our car lying in the midst of our belongings as we returned from our beach trip a couple of weeks ago. Worn-out, he lies among the clutter and I must admit, right now I feel the same way! I had hoped to return from the beach rested and raring to go, but that didn’t happen.

As I’ve done numerous times since my car accident, I’m focusing on Isaiah 43:18-19. “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

I don’t like being in the wilderness but it seems in this journey, there’s no way of avoiding it. Back in the late 90’s, there was so much improvement in my functioning that it was hard to focus on what I had lost. I didn’t feel buried in the wilderness until after my rehab. I knew I wasn’t ready to serve a church yet, but wondered what to do next. “What is wrong with me,” I thought. “Why don’t I feel like I’m accepting this?” After all, I had already been through all the five stages of grief outlined by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance

I know now, acceptance is not a one-time event. It keeps happening over and over and over again. The neuropsychologist I saw back then, suggested that grief, rather than being in stages, is more like a coil. One keeps returning to the various stages but it’s easier each time.

http://www.soaringspirits.org/camp-widow

While that image helped me for years, I recently found a picture which seems much truer to my experience for the brain injury journey isn’t a simple coil or road: my thoughts and feelings are all over the place.

I’ve always struggled with the verse in Isaiah about not remembering the former things. I know how important it is to remember the past and learn from it. However, here the prophet doesn’t mean to forget what has worked before but to move on and try new, creative things. Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi writes, “Faith is restored as we see things differently.”

So as I go forward along this road, I’m looking for the creative, life-giving, Spirit of God along the way. There will be days when my body feels like this picture looks and that’s okay. I must be patient for I will eventually see God making a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. God has done this in the past, and God will do it again in new,creative ways.