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Your Hope-Filled Perspective with Dr. Michelle Bengtson podcast

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274 How to Witness God's Faithfulness in Suffering: From Trauma to Triumph

Jul 11, 2024

Episode Summary: 

In this week’s episode, I speak with Gina Kelly who was a sixth grader when she was hit by a truck which caused significant physical and emotional injury and wounds. She shares what she endured, as well as how she has seen God use that for good, and how she has witnessed God’s faithfulness to her through it all.

 

Quotables from the episode:

  • There was definitely a defining moment in my life, which happened a little over 45 years ago. When I was a 6th grade crossing guard and was crossing the street to get to my post, I was hit by a truck. I flew 100-125 feet in the air and landed in a snowbank. I suffered the most pain in my life from that event: the physical pain, the trauma, the suffering.
  • I had a skull fracture on the right side of my head, which left me deaf in one ear, complete facial paralysis on the right, I had six broken ribs on the right and my right lung collapsed. Physically, my body went through a lot from that.
  • That event caused emotional wounds too. I was just entering middle school when I had to wear an eye patch over my eye, my smile was very asymmetrical, so I experienced a lot of insecurities with my physical body and with the emotional wounds that went along with the physical wounds from my accident.
  • One of the ways that God used the wounds you experienced for someone else’s good was when I was in a car accident and suffered physical injuries and you reached out to me to comfort me in my healing process. That is directly related to the scripture that says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
  • Before the accident, I was pretty reserved and shy. After the accident, I remember two prominent feelings. One was feeling like I was in a fishbowl because I went back to school and everyone was curious about the girl who almost died so all of a sudden, as someone who preferred to shrink back to the edges of society was thrust into the forefront because everyone wanted to know what happened and that made me uncomfortable.
  • I did experience some cruelness. About two weeks after I returned to school, I participated in the spelling bee. In the very front row were two boys from a different elementary school and every time I went up front, they made faces at me and pointed at me, and I was nervous anyway trying to remember how to spell the words and I remember crying with my parents after we left. I experienced the shame of not wanting people to see my deformity.
  • I was blessed to have one youth leader who sat with me in my pain, listened to me, spoke truth into me and little by little I no longer covered up my asymmetrical smile.
  • Something good came out of it in that they did not put another sixth grader in that role but had an adult as a crossing guard going forward.
  • It’s been 45 years since my accident and just over the past couple of months God has been revealing to me some lies I have held onto since childhood.
  • I was recently at a youth conference and one of the speakers felt the call to pray for someone who was deaf specifically in their right ear. I realized that since my accident no one had ever prayed for me and for what I had gone through. My whole life I’ve praised God for keeping me alive but there was something about going back and specifically praying over that area.
  • When the leader prayed over me, he happened to touch my scar that I hadn’t revealed to him, and God revealed to me that I was still seeing myself as broken, which was a lie and God showed me I am not broken.
  • Also, because I couldn’t hear physically in that ear, I had believed I couldn’t hear God speak very well either. There was that spiritual wound. I had always previously sensed his presence on my left side, but recently, during my quiet time when I was journaling, I sensed God speaking to my heart that “I will always position myself so you can hear me.” Since that prayer for healing of my deafness, I have been able to sense him on my right side as well. 
  • If God can raise dead bones to life, he can speak into a deaf ear and it can hear.
  • As I look back over the course of my life, I can see several ways God redeemed those wounds. It led me into my current profession as a pediatric physical therapist. I worked as a missionary in a clinic with children with special needs and I used my hands to show them God’s love.
  • One particular incident occurred when I was on the mission field when I was working with a woman who had been in an accident and her husband asked me, “What’s wrong with your face?” In that moment, God showed me that this was my opportunity so I told them about my accident and about how even in the hospital I sensed God’s presence, and I knew I would be okay. When I told them about Jesus, the wife said, “I want to know Jesus!” So, I was able to share and to pray with them, and tell them that Jesus loves them and that he died on the cross for them, that he rose again and that he wants to have a relationship with them. I was able to share the gospel in the jungles of Peru.
  • If I’d had that perfect smile, that I had prayed for all those teenage years, I don’t know that he would have asked me about my faith.
  • There was another young girl who was bitten by a snake and lost part of her leg and was really struggling with how she looked. I was able to show her my scar, and my crooked smile, and having only one eyebrow that can raise, and help her to see that it’s okay for her to be different.
  • God has shown me that my scars can be stones of remembrance. They can be something that when people ask me about them, I can either see that as a nuisance, or I can see that as an opportunity to explain the goodness of God.
  • In the hands of a redemptive God, what we view as broken, he views as beautiful.
  • Our scars are really the tapestry on which we can see God’s healing hand.
  • Sometimes we don’t receive the healing that we most want, but God is working on the area of healing that he knows is most important for us now.
  • While we might long for physical healing, and to be restored to our pre-injury state, God is busy healing us emotionally or relationally or spiritually in our walk with him. While we still desire that physical healing, I’m grateful for the healing he has brought.
  • Scripture tells us that if we are Christ followers, we are going to experience pain and brokenness. The question is, what are we going to do with it?
  • One of the things that God keeps showing me is that he continues to want to bring healing.
  • When you see God’s faithfulness in one situation, and then you go through another rocky time, you can rest in knowing God has been faithful and will be faithful.
  • I understand my accident differently, from my parents’ perspective now that I am a parent. As a child, I saw what God did for me, but I also saw my parents walk with faith.
  • As great as a parent’s love for their child, God’s love for them is greater. God is faithful and will care for those you love, including your children.
  • Looking back, would I choose to be hit by a truck again? Not for what I went through physically, but if that is the only way I can know my God will be faithful, hold me and love me in the greatest pain I’ve ever experienced, in the greatest brokenness I’ve ever experienced, if that will give me a faith that is unshakeable, then I would go through it again because in many ways, I am who I am today because of my wounds that are now sacred scars. 

 

Scripture References:

  • 2 Corinthians 1:4 NIV “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

 

Recommended Resources: 

 

Social Media Links for Guest and Host:

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Guest:

Gina Latta Kelly is wife to her husband Brian, and mother to her two young adult children, Joy and Joseph. She works as a pediatric physical therapist in an outpatient clinic where she lives in south central Pennsylvania. She served as a missionary in Peru, South America prior to getting married. Gina says she still feels as if she left a piece of her heart in Peru with the families she worked with when she was there. 

 

Hosted By: Dr. Michelle Bengtson
Audio Technical Support: Bryce Bengtson