Daily Devotion Monday February 7

As a part of the Meet My Friend Series, Michelle Davis agreed to share her story. Watch for it over this week because she has a lot of insight into how God uses us and our situations.  

Meet My Friend Michelle: 

My Story, In a Nutshell 

Stability was always the one thing I wanted in life. I remember even as a little girl, this was something I vowed I would give myself & my family, as soon as I was an adult and able to be in control of these kinds of things. As a child, I experienced homelessness, and we moved 12 times in my first 12 years of life. I craved stability, and it was my goal in life to one day achieve it. I would find a stable man, we would raise 2 stable children, live in a stable house, and have no problems from there on out. I was raised in a Christian home, but we went to a church that has now been labeled as a cult. I grew up with a warped view of God; always being fearful and thinking religion was just a bunch of rules. As a way to rebel against this, and certain deep wounds in my life, I found myself deep in an addiction that started at the age of 13, and ended up with me in the hospital. I found God there, on a cold hospital floor. Because I was a suicide risk, they had taken everything from me but my Bible. I chose life that night, but I remember telling God that the only way I was going to be able to make it out of the hospital, and out of my addiction, was with His help. It wasn't a cure-all, but I definitely felt a peace and a hope I hadn't ever felt previously in my life. I still struggled, but every time I felt myself slipping, I would reach out to Jesus and I'd feel Him pull me up out of it once again, and set me back on this rock. He became my stability - the stability I was craving all my life. God was my rock of stability, and somehow I equated that with the thought that I would no longer have anything come and shake me up. But as I entered adulthood, I was about to find out that the Christian life doesn't save you from earthquakes in life, it just gives you something solid to cling to when they come.

My first "earthquake" in life was the massive brain hemorrhage and stroke that my husband of only 1 year had one Christmas night. It required 6 weeks in ICU, then 8 months following that to learn to talk, walk, tie his shoes, tell time, and count change again. They told me that the part of his brain they had to remove would change his personality, and I would have to learn to love a different man. 70% of couples didn't make it after this, only 30% escaped divorce following traumatic brain injury. I remember the doctors telling me this when we met about what kind of surgery options I had to choose from for my husband. Only 10% of people ever survive an AVM like his, and of those 10%, only 10% of those go on to live a "functional" life in which they can care for themselves and not be bed-ridden. We were about to beat both of those odds, but it would be very tough. 

Our 2nd "earthquake" came when Jimmy was only a year old, and we were expecting our 2nd. I was 4 months along when we found that our baby was actually growing outside my uterus, and that I had internal bleeding that would require emergency surgery. I was given no choice, they had to take my baby's life in order to save mine. At four months, we had a name picked out, a future planned, and a love for our child that we never got to meet. I still grieve this immense loss to this day. My 3rd "earthquake" came only days after getting out of the hospital from the loss of my son. I was home recovering emotionally and physically from my surgery, when I got a call in the middle of the night. There had been an accident. The patient that Jim had been transporting in his ambulance decided he wanted to be the driver, not the passenger, and grabbed the wheel, rolling them off the highway at 70 mph. Once again, Jim was in the hospital, requiring surgery to put a metal rod down his leg where his leg had been crushed. Once again, he had 8 months of no work and physical therapy ahead of him.

​Michelle Davis- stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow.