by Mo Isom
As I lay there in my greatest hour, I chose to believe. I surrendered my life, fully, to the Author of my eternal story.
“God Is Beautiful”
Inspired by this new hope, I sat up again, totally bewildered. My head was burning and my body was throbbing, but I felt nothing other than the will to move. To get out. To tell anyone who would listen about the King I had encountered. I felt a hunger deep within me to know more and to learn more about this amazing grace that had somehow so miraculously set me free.
Then I heard a hesitant voice stab the silence and saw a light crack through the rear driver’s side window. My ears perked up and I dragged my body toward the edge of the roof as the light bounced off the shattered glass beneath me and the voice grew louder and closer. Before I knew it, I saw a man’s gentle face peering into my car. He had a look of such overwhelming worry. The fear on his face looked like that of a man preparing to see a dead body. As we locked eyes in that rubble and debris, his look of shock was one of my final clear memories of that night.
The rest came in flashes—like snapshots flipping through my mind. The sight of his face. The sound of my own broken voice straining to whisper to him. The cold, wet feeling as my hand reached through the shattered window and slid between blades of damp grass. The ambulance lights. And the faintest memory of my mom’s voice on the other end of a telephone line telling me that everything was going to be all right.
A day or so after the crash, my mom called that man to thank him. It turns out he was one of the only other cars on my stretch of road that night. He had been driving and saw my lights flicker and swerve in the distance. Out of curiosity, he stopped to check out the scene and discovered my mangled vehicle and me. I’ve come to learn that God delights in orchestrating “coincidental” extraordinary things. That sometimes we can catch His splendor in the subtle, curious things. Of all the people who could have possibly come across me on that night, that man happened to be a retired paramedic and a member of the Navy. Talk about showing off—the Creator of the earth, offering a gentle, unspoken wink.
The man explained to my mom that, after finding me, he tried asking questions, tried directing me on how to escape, and tried to assess my needs, but all I kept saying were three simple words—
God is beautiful.
God is beautiful.
God is beautiful.
He noted that I was bloodied and beaten, but I was smiling. Continually proclaiming the beauty I’d seen. I can only imagine what I looked like to that poor guy. Swollen and scraped up and smiling like a crazy person, stumbling around trying to tell him about Jesus. Looking back, I probably should have written him a note of apology. But, hey, at least I gave him an interesting story to tell at family gatherings.
The Road to Recovery
I awoke to the putter and beeping of hospital machines. I remember looking over and seeing a paramedic—a very cute paramedic—leaning on the wall beside my bed, staring at me. In true Mo Isom fashion, I milked the situation and stretched out my arm, signaling for him to hold my hand. He squeezed my hand and told me that he was just waiting to see me wake up, carrying out standard procedure. Determined to make the most of the moment, I said something along the lines of, “I’ll never let go, Jack.” Realizing I was fine—and also a fool—he dropped my hand, smiled, and left the room. No shame in my game . . . you can’t blame a girl for trying.
My stay in the hospital was a blur filled with ominous machines, tedious scans, and X-rays. Needles, blood, IVs. Pain, fatigue, restlessness. My mom’s and sister’s arrival. My mom and sister revealing they had snuck in my dogs inside their jackets to brighten my spirits. My dogs sniffing things and barking. My dog jumping onto my fractured ribs and unhooking my IV. My mom and sister being asked to leave the hospital and remove the dogs. My mom and sister sneaking back in. We were that family. But the pain-filled laughs offered me some needed relief.
In the wreck I had fractured a vertebra at the base of my neck, cracked the ribs down the left side of my body, and sustained severe contusions to my lungs and liver. I had damaged my face, my eye, my jaw and, most severely, had contusions to my brain. I also jammed my pinky finger, which to this day I still say was the most painful of everything, but no one seemed to take me seriously in light of the coughed-up blood and broken neck and intense head injury. (The pinky healed, if you were wondering.)
I was severely concussed and had bruising on my brain, but I was alive. I was saved. I was renewed by a God who had boldly called me by name. I didn’t have many answers, I couldn’t put much into words, and I wasn’t able to make sense, yet, of most things. But there was one thing I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt: I was unshakably, unmistakably captivated by my King.
8
Wreck My Dependence
My physical recovery was a long and slow process. After being discharged from the hospital, I found my way home to Atlanta and then quickly back into the ER as some of the originally prescribed pain meds reacted violently with my system. Once those issues were resolved I lasted about a week in bed until my renewed and anxious heart grew restless and my type-A personality began to trump my logic—and my doctor’s orders. It didn’t help that my mom’s type-A personality had a hard time understanding my new limitations, as well. In fact, I had only been home a few short days—with half of my face still severely swollen, a broken neck, and a motion-limiting brace strapped around me—when my mom lovingly reminded me that the Christmas tree wasn’t going to decorate itself. If I was going to be spending so much time at home, I might as well knock out a to-do list. We still laugh about that to this day. I moved like a robot around the tree and groaned in pain any time I tried to reach up or bend over, as my mom questioned my poor ornament-spacing and why it was taking me so long to get the boxes empty. Whoever thought it was a good idea to leave two such ridiculously driven women alone together during a period of necessary rest and recovery clearly didn’t think things through.
It didn’t take much to talk my mom into letting me return to school to finish the semester and take my final exams. The academic stretch from Thanksgiving break to Christmas break wasn’t very long, and the competitor in me wanted to believe I was capable of finishing what I started. I had a hard time accepting that I had significant mental and physical limitations, and I wasn’t sure what would happen to my grades and my eligibility if I missed my finals. So, still riding high off the endorphins that lingered in my system following my incredible awakening, I was somehow able to pull myself together enough to ride with a friend back to the bayou and limp my way onto campus.
I lasted forty-five minutes in my first class before I passed out on my desk and woke up to the teacher staring, horrified, with very clear direction to take myself to the athletic training room. Immediately. The athletic staff wasn’t thrilled to learn I had snuck my way back onto campus, and the administration had me on a flight back to Atlanta before the week’s end. Fortunately, my academic advisors worked together to withdraw me from my classes, without penalty, and assured me I could make up my finals the following semester after appropriately resting through the winter holiday. I was relieved to find my way back home and into my comfy bed as the shock my body had been experiencing finally wore off and the rest my brain and body so desperately needed overwhelmed me.
I spent most of winter break sleeping and healing. But the time I was awake, the season of forced stillness finally allowed me time to reflect on the intensity of all that had happened the previous month in that Interstate 85 ravine. I couldn’t believe what had become of my story. I never imagined that my arrogant and scornful cries for God to prove He was real and reveal Himself to me would have been heard, much less answered so literally. I racked my brain for a logical explanation. I tried to make sense of the situation so I wouldn’t sound too crazy when I described to people what had occurred that cold November night. But in truth, I couldn’t describe it simply. I couldn’t rationalize its complexity. God’s resuscitation of my sin-torn heart was never meant to
be explained academically. It was a spiritual encounter with a holy entity far bigger than my own understanding. But there was a glorious wonder associated with the faith required to simply rest, and trust, and believe.
What I knew at the most basic level was that there was an undeniable difference between my life and my perspective before truly encountering Christ and after choosing to surrender my heart to an undeniably holy God. A newfound awareness stirred deep in me: this life was about relationship, not just religion. I was fiercely loved, no matter my past, and simply going through the manufactured motions would no longer be enough to satisfy my love-hungry soul. Knowing the right things to say and how to look a certain way meant absolutely nothing to my eternal story. Desperately working to control my life and author my own identity was as arrogant and ignorant as trying to fabricate my own glory. I began to realize that a lukewarm walk based on my emotions or my mood or my opinions was, at its core, a counterfeit faith. For far too long I had crafted a world image of “Christian” in my mind that actually looked very little like Jesus and true grace.
I had a lot of learning to do, and a lot of painful growing. I welcomed it. I wanted to know what Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross actually meant for my life. I would have been the first to admit there was a lot of baggage and brokenness I’d been hiding. But even in my earliest steps of faith I began to recognize that my past wreckage no longer had the power to define me. Overcoming the adversity and scars that had defined me didn’t have to be done through my own strength. I was being equipped with a newfound strength that had little to do with me—and that had the power to overcome anything. God longed to set me free. Still, surrendering my broken pieces wasn’t going to be easy.
There were a few fundamental things that had been downloaded deep into my heart immediately. The first was that God the Father had created me, sustained me, and loved me fiercely. Even in the midst of my wandering and my blasphemy, there was nothing I had done that was outside of His forgiveness and reach. I believed He was perfect, and sovereign, and longed for me to understand that this world was only my temporary home. He had an eternity orchestrated for me, and the purpose of my days on earth were not for my own glory but to share His love with others and invite them into His eternal kingdom story.
I believed that God gave me the choice between desiring Him or desiring the things of the world. When I chose the world, my sin and my mistakes and my shortcomings had separated me from His glory. I wouldn’t stand a chance against the schemes of the enemy, or have any hope for life after my time here on earth, if that sin continued to rule me and if I continued to try and be the god of my own journey. I believed God loved me so deeply that He made a way for mercy. He was not a furious, vindictive Father who was fed up with me. His desire for me to know Him and to live according to the purpose He had for me led Him to make a way for forgiveness and reconciliation despite everything: Jesus. His Son. Sent to pay the price for my failings. Sent to give His life to bridge the gap of separation and die the death I deserved. Sent not just to save me from my former ways but also to save me from an eternity of separation. I believed faith in Jesus Christ was my only hope in relationship and reconciliation with God Almighty.
I also believed I didn’t have to take on this life alone. In Christ, God promised me a guide. I wasn’t just placing my faith in a God I could hardly understand who would push me out into the world and expect me to follow His rules and be a better Christian. No, I believed I was given a Helper who made a home inside my soul when I said yes to God that night in the rubble. The Holy Spirit. My lifeline. A piece of God breathed into my heart, to comfort and direct and guide me. At the time I liked to imagine the Holy Spirit as my own personal mechanic, working on me from the inside out—slowly rebuilding my perspective and mentality. Binding together my broken pieces and graciously recrafting me. I believed that God’s promise was true—that He would never leave me nor forsake me. That the Spirit within me would always see me through.
So I placed my faith in those fundamental truths. I embraced the Bible as the living, breathing Word of God that was unquestionably true. I knew I had a great deal to learn, but I felt empowered by the basic principles that were already opening my eyes to so many things I had been blind to. My heart’s prayer became a repetition of a few simple requests:
Lord, break my heart for what breaks Yours and bind my heart to Thee.
Give me eyes to see the world as You do.
Give me ears to hear the cries of others and to love them as You do.
Give me wisdom to separate what is of the world and what is of You.
Give me courage to walk in Your truth.
Lord, make me more like Jesus. Make me more like You.
First Signs of the Spirit within Me
Shortly before I returned to school for the start of the spring semester, my family and I began to notice a very odd issue that didn’t seem to be going away. In fact, it seemed to be worsening with time as my brain struggled to heal from the trauma it had sustained. It started as an inability for me to verbalize some of the words I was thinking. I knew what I wanted to say, but occasionally I just couldn’t quite articulate things properly. It was frustrating, to say the least, but became downright concerning when it progressed to a full-on stutter. A few confused words turned into whole sentences I couldn’t articulate, and eventually I’d try to express entire thoughts but would immediately become tongue-tied.
The LSU medical team diagnosed my speech issues as a symptom of postconcussive syndrome. Then necessary appointments and activity-restrictive orders from my neurologist, in combination with extensive amounts of therapy still needed in the rehabilitation of my body, kept me off the practice field and out of several exhibition games through the spring soccer season, as our team prepared for my junior fall season. I was able to make up my final exams from the previous semester, but lingering headaches and a slow mental recovery made my new academic courseload seem doubly challenging. I was still on pace with the new semester, but I found it increasingly hard to concentrate in class and complete work in the time required. And that was very frustrating.
It felt like so many of the things that had defined my identity were suddenly in question. Academically, athletically—simply my competence in day-to-day mental processing. I had held so much pride in the fact that I was such a sharp girl, typically. Now my weakness seemed to threaten everything. But while the Mo I had known would have felt out of control and struggled to desperately fix things, I was surprised when I realized that even with my “identity definers” suddenly in question, I was keenly aware of a newfound peace. It was one of the first encouraging markers I noticed of the Holy Spirit dwelling within me. A gentle reminder from somewhere within that God was in control, and that I could trust and rest in ease.
The next marker of the Holy Spirit I noticed within me was noticeably more intense and challenging. Socially, returning to my friend groups and the environments I had spent time in before my transformation was conflicting. I tried, for a while, to balance everything. I tried to step right back into the routine of my former days and to continue spending time with the same people in the same places I had hung out before. I rationalized that if I ever wanted these people to see Jesus within me, I needed to continue to stay involved with them. Maybe I could be the one to bring Christ’s light into darkened places at the bar scenes and house parties and group gatherings. But the fact of the matter was that I wasn’t actually ready or equipped to effectively take on those places as mission fields. I was actually just uncomfortable looking too different by stepping away.
My flesh wanted to stay. I didn’t want to seem like the crazy Christian girl who was suddenly “too good” for these places and people. I didn’t want to cause too much of a stir. Also, stepping away from my friends meant stepping out on my own. At the core, I was terrified of being alone.
So for a while I tried to juggle it all. And, inevitably, temptation and sin crept back in and caused me to stumble. But this time around
there was something different inside of me, something I hadn’t experienced before. A sense of conviction that was powerful and swift. Not guilt. Not shame. Rather an overwhelming awareness that my choices and my actions weren’t bringing God praise. I quickly realized the newfound Spirit who inhabited my heart was jealous for my attention and my undistracted faith. There was a noticeable difference, to me, in the appeal of the “temporary pleasures” I used to chase.
I couldn’t get the same high. Each thrill felt tacky and cheap and canned. I couldn’t even turn on the radio and hear music the same way. The Spirit pressed a disdain for sin so powerfully within me that my prayer for “eyes to see the world as God saw it and ears to hear as He did” literally left me wincing, constantly. It was as if God unveiled my heart to the difference between the world and His glory. I was startled by what I saw and heard and read on the radio, TV, and internet. My newfound awareness of sin and debauchery and rebellion was almost overwhelming. I realized I had experienced a holy joy and fulfillment that ran so deeply and was so all-consuming that it made everything of the world feel manufactured and fake. The hole in my heart was mending. The temporary pleasures were far less than fulfilling.
As I sat in a Tiger Land bar one weekend, trying to blend in with my friends and not seem too different, I looked around and felt sad for the countless hearts I knew were empty. I found myself in the arms of a King who invited me to step away from pleasing the world for the sake of my worth and I consciously decided that a season of loneliness was worth my time if it meant being able to fully process my changed and renewed life.
R.I.P. Me
There are countless verses laced through Scripture that call us to die to self. What’s funny is that, many times, when we first come to know Christ we expect that death to be easy. But when I came across Galatians 2:20, something new stood out to me.