Collision doesn’t damage thankful heart
"When
I learned to walk again, I felt him walking
beside me, holding my hand."
By
Rachel Wallace-Oberle
Special to ChristianWeek
MILLBANK, ON–Having an afternoon coffee with Judy Martin is unlike any visit I’ve ever experienced. The 46-year-old Millbank Mennonite woman who was involved in an automobile and buggy accident and now struggles with mental and physical disabilities, tells me to choose a mug from among her collection, pours me coffee, sets out a plate of tiny homemade sweets and fusses over me endearingly. She is a captivating combination of girlish giggles, tearful frankness and spiritual intensity.
In March 1994, Judy and a friend were driving home from a church fundraising event late one night when their car collided head-on with a runaway horse and buggy. The buggy had no passengers.
Judy remembers nothing of that night. The details she is able to give have been supplied to her by family and the local newspaper.
The roof of the car had to be cut away in order to remove her from the wreckage. Her jaw was broken in two places, her brachial plexus was torn from her spinal column and she suffered severe head injuries. That God allowed her to survive, as she puts it, still moves her to tears.
Apologizing, she sets a box of tissues between us on the table and explains that her head injuries, which are permanent, make it difficult to control her emotions.
 PHOTO COURTESY JUDY MARTIN Crash victim Judy Martin spent 50 days in a coma and another five months in rehabilitation. |
In
a coma Judy was in a coma for 50 days. Her memories begin vaguely around the time that she was transferred into a rehabilitation wing of the hospital. In order to be released, she had to learn how to walk again. "I used to cry before physio and after physio. I wondered if my brain would ever allow me to put one foot in front of the other. I used to wonder if I would ever get out of the hospital, but I learned to walk again and three days later, they let me go home," she recalls. |
Despite the severity of her injuries, Judy was released from the hospital after five months.
"There is no medical explanation why I progressed as quickly as I did," she says with a delighted giggle. "Everyone was amazed but I had such a real sense of God holding me in his arms and that I could just rest in him. When I learned to walk again, I felt him walking beside me, holding my hand."
Discouraging
However, to discover that her injuries would prevent her from ever returning to her job full time, that she would be forced to become left-handed because her right arm was now almost useless and that her short-term memory was, at times, almost non-existent, were extremely difficult and discouraging for Judy.
She has undergone several operations, extensive physiotherapy and counselling. A metal plate with nine screws holds her right arm in its socket–"proof," she quips, "that I definitely have some loose screws!"
For a long moment, we silently study the horrific newspaper photograph of the accident scene. All that remains intact of the pulverized buggy are two wheels. The vehicle is totaled; its roof is missing; front end, crumpled; windshield, shattered and folded almost double.
"At this point I can’t yet thank him for that night but I can thank him for so many things," reflects Judy. "It’s only a child of God who can say a negative thing like my accident has caused so many positive things to happen. I know that he has called me to reach out in my small way and make people aware that he is real and that he cares."
