When Life Hits You In the Head: How to Listen for Your Next Steps
Nearly ten months ago, I took an awful fall that landed me an ambulance ride and lots of fun doctor visits (and many of you know how much I love going to the doctor).
While at a wedding in Iowa, I was walking out of the pool while carrying my son Ivan when I stepped into a puddle of water on the slippery deck. I fell backward and hit my head twice on the rock-hard pavers beneath me. By the grace of God, my son Ivan was not harmed. However, this fall not only knocked the wind out of me; it stopped me dead in my tracks.
Bed-ridden for two weeks and unable to stand upright, focus, or move around without a splitting headache, my life was taking a huge turn. A very slow recovery left me for months inching my life back to its normal pace.
Roughly a month after the fall, I found myself sitting on our living room couch in tears over this stressful recovery. I began to ask God the same question I had asked for years as a teen secretly struggling with an eating disorder:
“Why me?”
What good was to come out of this? My husband losing his mind because it was on him to do everything? My yoga studio going under because not only could I not teach, but I couldn’t even look at a computer for more than a few minutes without my head going nuts?
If everything has a purpose, and I do believe it, then what was the purpose in this?
As I laid on the couch thinking, into my head popped my little angel in the sky, Faith. I started to think about her short life and her impactful death, and what that all meant to me. As I thought of that, I began to think about my whole entire life. Surely all of the struggles and hardships I have overcome at such a young age were not for nothing.
While lying there, I started to think about however since Harper and Meredith were young I would tell them about their sister and how she lives in the sky. They know that she is always watching over them, and whenever they see a butterfly, it’s Faith coming to say “hi”. I laid there thinking about how my kids still giggle with delight when they see a butterfly, even at almost nine and seven years old.
As those thoughts passed, I began to ponder how everything in life is connected and began to wonder why I was named Hope. Although these thoughts were not new in my brain, this time I felt the urge to look up what the symbol for Hope was.
I then remembered an acquaintance, LaVonna, who through her speaking business created a light bulb bracelet. She did this to symbolize her message, igniting people’s lives. I began to wonder what kind of meaning my message could have. So, I picked up my phone and googled “What is the symbol for Hope?”.
To my surprise, up popped a picture of a beautiful butterfly. Tears started to roll down my cheeks as this overwhelming sense of love and validation ran over me. The butterfly was my daughter Faith, and the symbol of Hope is a butterfly; surely this was not a coincidence.
And what is a butterfly… New life, change, growth, and transformation.
I believe that when you are on the right path in life, you are provided for. It may not always be easy, but pieces do begin to fall into place. It took me hitting my head to slow down and truly start to shift gears. This was vital to ensure that I’d hear this important message clearly without distraction.
Make sure it doesn’t take you hitting your head to hear your next steps in life.
Click below to join Hope for her 5-day Challenge!
