Fight of my Life

After publishing my recent reflection, Footprints in the Sand, I completed a prayer walk as a form of regulated, low-stimulation activity—something my recovery from traumatic brain injury (TBI) requires as much as my spiritual life does. I needed a setting where my nervous system could settle, where I could stop performing competence, and simply be present with the Holy Spirit. Standing along the Burrard Inlet, I noticed the familiar pattern: when my body is quiet, the deeper layers surface. Alongside neurological symptoms, I carry moral injury and relational grief connected to church trauma—particularly experiences tied to leadership contexts in Saanich and Victoria—and the uncomfortable awareness that I may also have contributed to harm. That mixture produces a specific kind of internal arousal: not dramatic, but persistent, with shame, vigilance, and sorrow competing for oxygen.

I chose a quiet stretch of beach and watched my own footprints form and disappear. Only one set was visible, but I was not alone. In clinical language, I would call it co-regulation: the steadying presence of God, not loud or forceful, but consistent—an anchoring relationship that reduces threat and increases capacity. A song came on in my Spotify playlist (“Fight of My Life”), and it landed not as poetry but as a kind of assessment. TBI has reclassified ordinary tasks—reading, rehearsing, driving, sustaining conversation—from “routine” to “high-demand.”

This injury has not been my only rehabilitation. There is also the slower, quieter work of healing from church trauma—work that does not show up on scans but does show up in the body: guardedness, startle, distrust, and the temptation to withdraw. In that sense, my battleground expands inward. This is not a cinematic fight; it is the daily decision to remain present when my brain feels foggy and my trust feels fragile.

What makes this season clinically and spiritually complex is that symptoms are only part of the struggle. There is also the battle of interpretation: the pull to equate slowness with failure, limitation with disqualification, and silence with abandonment. The mind tries to narrate loss as identity: You are less now. You are not useful to the Body of Christ. That narrative is not neutral—it is shame wearing the voice of “realism.” So the fight is not only against symptoms; it is against shame. In that fight, truth becomes oxygen. I am learning to name my experience accurately: cognitive fatigue, motion sensitivity, overstimulation—these are not metaphors. They are real constraints that require real accommodation. And constraint is not the same as condemnation.

Recovery often feels like walking at dusk: vision slightly blurred, balance slightly off, confidence easily shaken. There are moments when Scripture feels quieter than it used to, when worship requires more intention, when community feels necessary but harder to find. It is sobering to see who remains close after the injury, and to grieve the absence of those who once stood nearest. Still, light is rarely absent; it is often subtle. It appears in scheduled appointments, in incremental gains, in a body that tolerates five minutes more than last week. It appears in pastors’ emails that communicate steady care, in friends who hold me in prayer, and in the mercy of being loved even when I carry regret. God’s presence in this season is not theatrical; it is faithful.

Joy, for me right now, is not a mood—it is a rehabilitative and spiritual practice. I cannot manufacture gladness or force resilience. If joy returns, it will be received. The world often treats joy as a reward for competence; the gospel treats it as a gift for the weary. I am learning that joy can coexist with limitation—flickering, not triumphant; sustaining, not performative. When I say, “I’m not giving up,” I do not mean pushing through recklessly. I mean honoring pacing. I mean stopping at the symptom-limited threshold my clinicians and I have identified and calling that wisdom, not weakness. I mean accepting physiotherapy, vestibular retraining, and cognitive limits as part of the ordinary architecture of care—hands through which God helps.

There have been moments when God’s quiet has felt like distance, especially when church spaces that once felt like home became complicated or unsafe. Yet I keep returning to this: being carried does not eliminate the fight; it reframes it. The footprints in the sand and the boxing gloves belong together. God does not observe my internal war from afar—He enters it, steadies it, and stays. Perhaps what I experience as the “curse” of TBI is also a calling: not to reclaim who I was before injury or before trauma, but to trust who God is now. My life is no longer a sprint of competence; it is discipleship shaped by dependence—on Christ, and on the Body of Christ. I can be honest without despairing. I can be weary without being abandoned. I can be carried without being worthless. In this valley—through fog, fatigue, and fragile trust—I am not fighting alone. I am held. I am loved. And I remain deeply grateful for the mercy of God expressed through the petitions of His children and the care of those who responded that night—July 26, 2025—when my life was spared.