My story begins on August 27 2002, I was out enjoying a mountain bike ride with my three best friends. 13 minutes into our ride, on a trail we all had ridden many times, I had a crash on my bike. I was riding fourth wheel, as I was coming off three weeks of racing and was going to take it easy. So no one saw the crash, but when I did not show up at the next trail junction Ken returned down the trail to find me laying on the ground, about 20 feet away from my bike, curled up in a fetal position gasping for air. He had just completed EMT training and knew to roll me over and open my airway, then stabilize my head. I have no memory of the crash and the impending journey to the hospital (actually most of the next 9 months). Somehow Dale got a cell signal out and Joe was able to ride out and meet the rescue squad. They had to carry me a couple of miles on a back board to get to the four-wheeler to get me to an ambulance. 3 fractured cervical vertebrae, double concussed brain, multiple cuts and bruises. My doctor told me that there was no logical reason for me to have survived the crash. Over time I begun to understand why God has chosen to keep me on this planet. The journey has been hard, the road full of bumps, but as I look back over the last 24 years I begin to understand the work he has done to use me to help spread his love.
What is your story? I hope you will share with us so we can spread your inspiration to help others who think they can't go on. Often when I would be at my lowest points it would be a word or statement by someone who had survived their own journey that would inspire me to fight on. Your story could be that for someone else, or reading the story of another warrior might give you the strength you were so desperately in need of today.
