healing in the hurting: bekah smith

“This is the story of my older brother Jake and his car. As odd as it seems, these two elements hold many memories from my adolescent years and shaped who I am today. Also, you may be thinking this is going to be a tragic car crash story. Well, it is not. Sometimes I wish I had a unique, life-changing story like that to tell, but this is simply the story of me riding in my brother’s paint-chipped, forest green, 2004 Jeep Cherokee, which smelled of “black ice,” dirty clothes, and McDonald’s.”

 — An excerpt from “The Vehicle Where I Found Myself” by Bekah Smith, 2020.

THREE YEARS LATER

Heaven is on the way, and God made sure that Rebekah Smith would be a living reminder of this. A peculiar tug in her heart told her brain to write that statement down somewhere, anywhere. She was on vacation riding in the car, so she decided her right arm would have to do. Where else would a left-handed writer think to scribble something down in a pinch? The initial inclination ignited in her mind and transferred straight to the tips of her fingers almost instantly. 

It would still be scribed on her skin when she awoke in the hospital. 

Except, now she had vertebral fractures and a severe traumatic brain injury. 

Bekah didn’t know what heaven felt like, but she knew waking up in a hospital bed wasn’t it. The closest to heaven she had ever felt was gazing at the Hawaiian scenery through the window not all that long ago, taking a million mental pictures in the car that would soon be wiped from her memory.

Heaven is on the way. It was still imprinted on her forearm, and it could not be erased.

Everyone told her she was a miracle, but how could she be so sure when she didn’t even know who she was anymore? After a five-week hospital stay, six-month stretch of therapy, and one vertebrae stabilization surgery, Bekah learned an important lesson. Surviving a near-death experience may make you a miracle, but it also somehow manages to make you feel even more human than before. This realization lives with her every single day.

“When you go through trauma, it just messes everything up,” Bekah said. “Everything gets flipped upside down, and I know only God can truly restore that. Healing takes time.”

Words have always held a sort of importance to Bekah. From the beginning, the famous Smith family mission statement was etched into her and her brothers' minds.

From then on, her adolescence could be depicted as a habitual reaching for pen and paper. It was second nature, and it grounded her in times when she felt as though her feelings were outside of her reach, beyond her grasp. Even after the accident, loved ones flooded her inbox with guided journals of all sorts to aid in her recovery.

What was a good thing that happened today?  _______________

What was a hard thing that happened today? ________________

It didn't take much time for her to conclude that putting words on a page wasn’t as simple anymore. To some degree, everything had to be relearned. She no longer found beauty solely in storytelling, but by embarking on the arduous journey of self-rediscovery.

“Healing to me means restoration,” she said. “It means restoring what was. We will never be completely healed until Jesus comes back–that’s just the earth and its brokenness. This whole year I’ve been on a journey to restore my mind and body, and I can just pray for that.”

Thankfully, Bekah’s collection of notes app entries left a trail of fragments for her to follow to aid in this mission moving forward. It’s a repetitive process of picking up the pieces of her life and determining what should be left behind and what should be held onto.

The instant she became truly conscious in the hospital, she found that her perspective was no longer her own but a culmination of everyone else’s around her. In most cases of people who survive an injury like Bekah’s, their damaged brain stem places them in a wheelchair for the rest of their life, needing assistance for basic functions like breathing and eating.

To the doctors and nurses’ surprise, Bekah’s brain stem was remarkably unaffected.

Her swift recovery has allowed for her to make a cautious return to her regular routine. Entering into her second year of college, Bekah’s God-given joyful countenance has fueled a spirit of grit within her. Mundane tasks that once came naturally, such as writing a theology paper for class, had to be accompanied with a more methodical process now.

“I can try to paint the picture and I think I will eventually, but I think the weird thing about this injury is that it has impacted my brain and the way I learn,” Bekah said. “It has led me to feel very incompetent even though I know that’s a lie.”

At every corner of her recovery, Bekah has had to continually surrender, knowing that it's not by her own strength that she is progressing, but because of Christ’s manifested within her.

“My life is His,” she said. “It’s not mine, never was. So I’ll go wherever He sends me and do whatever He wants me to do. That’s kind of my outlook now. The little things don’t matter. We make life so complicated and it’s just so much simpler. I’m really just here to share His goodness and to share His good news. I have this great gift, and I just want to share it.”

How does one go about sharing the scariest experience of their life? It may be a breeze to shout God’s praises when you’re comfortable, but what if God meets you in a hospital room over 4,000 miles from home? Following the accident, when Bekah found out that her poetry account on Instagram went from roughly 50 followers to upwards of 400 seemingly overnight, she started to ponder her complicated relationship with social media.

Instead of ignoring the pressure she felt to share her testimony on a public forum, she has embraced the importance of a healthy balance that both glorifies the Lord through her story, while also praising Him in the quiet moments of rest and rehabilitation. Knowing how and when to share her story has alleviated some of the obligation to post on social media. Being a generally private and introverted person, Bekah cherishes how crucial it is to protect herself emotionally, mentally, and physically along her road to recovery. 

“It’s been the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to go through,” she said. “I don’t really want to take it with me. I don’t want it to be me. Sure, I want to tell the story and glorify the Lord because He has done so much. And I want to bring awareness to TBIs because other people experience them too, even though it’s not common at all. It’s an invisible illness. But I also just want to live a normal life and be me, not my TBI.”

Bekah’s heart posture continues to be one of relentless surrender. She might not know exactly why God saved her in the moment of impact, but she can rest knowing that there’s a greater plan that her brain doesn’t need to comprehend to understand. Heaven is on the way, but it’s not here yet. There’s work to be done, and God made sure that Rebekah Smith would be a living reminder of this.