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Faith Trauma And The God I Choose To Believe In

By The Artful Woman
  The God I Choose to Believe In I’ve been struggling with something lately, and honestly, I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t affect me. It started after a conversation with a friend I’ve known for years — someone I used to have a very normal, human friendship with. We used to hike together, grab beers, sit on the beach, talk about life, grief, stress, relationships, and everything in between. He was just a regular flawed human being like the rest of us. Then life changed. He retired, got remarried, dove deeply into organized religion, and somewhere along the way, it started feeling like every conversation became a sermon. Not inspiration. Not connection. Preaching. Constant scripture. Constant verses. Constant moral conclusions about everyone else’s life. And honestly, what bothered me most wasn’t even the Bible verses. It was the judgment. The holier-than-thou energy. The way he spoke about people — even his own family — like love suddenly had conditions attached to it. And then ...
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Why I’m Still Here

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By The Artful Woman

 


Why I’m Still Here

By Jean Marshall

I’ve asked myself the question more times than I can count: Why am I still here?
After a stroke that changed my life five years ago, I thought I had already learned resilience. I thought I had already been tested. But then came the accident — a beautiful September morning that shattered my body, altered my future, and once again forced me to start over from the ground up.

There are days I still can’t fully understand it. One man’s poor decision, one wrong moment, and everything changed. My bones broke. My leg was lost. My body shut down. My life — the one I’d built with so much effort — came to a stop.

But somehow, my heart didn’t.

They tell me it took over twenty doctors and nurses to keep me alive that day. I was in an induced coma, held together by machines, prayers, and the hands of strangers. There were moments I thought I was dying — I even said my last prayers. But each time I surrendered, something unseen pulled me back. Something whispered, Not yet. You’re not done.

I’ve come to believe that surviving isn’t an accident. It’s an assignment.

Every breath I take now feels sacred — not because I’m fearless, but because I know what it costs to stay alive. I don’t know yet what the full meaning of all this is, but I feel in my heart that it’s calling me to live differently — slower, truer, with more love and less fear.

Maybe I’m still here to remind others that life can change in an instant — but the soul never breaks.
Maybe I’m here to help others see that healing isn’t about getting back to who you were — it’s about becoming who you were always meant to be.
Maybe I’m here because there are still stories to tell, art to create, people to love, and light to share — even from a hospital bed.

Whatever the reason, I know this: I didn’t survive to go back to sleep. I’m here to awaken — to the sacredness of life, to gratitude, to grace.
And one day soon, I’ll walk again — not just on a prosthetic leg, but on purpose, on faith, on the strength of everything that didn’t destroy me.

This is not the end of my story.
It’s the rebirth of it.


#Amputee #Amputation #LimbLoss #Prosthetic #LifeAfterAmputation #Stroke #StrokeRecovery #BrainAttack #BrokenBones #TraumaticInjury #Accident #Trauma #Recovery #PhysicalTherapy #LearningToWalkAgain #Disability #DisabledLife #PhantomLimb #Mobility #Adaptive #Healing #Rehabilitation #Rebirth #SecondChance #NewBeginning #StartingOver #LifeAfterTrauma #WhyAmIStillHere #Purpose #Existence #NewLife #Resilience #Determination #LifeReframed #NewChapter

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Location: Lake Elsinore, CA, USA

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