SHELAINE STROM
We expect life to follow a patterned path with rises and dips along the way. Growing up, high school, starting on our own. Maybe we will meet someone, find meaningful work, raise a family, settle into comfortable community with close friends.
We don’t expect career-ending pain. Identity-altering surgery. Faith-testing disruption.
In But Pain Crept In, Shelaine Strom shares her sojourn from vibrant vistas to deep valleys as jaw joints crumble and bones splinter. Where does one rest, breathe, revive when pain reigns? When does one quit, wait, try to go on? How does one lean on family, friends, even strangers to endure? And where is God in the midst?
In her winsome and honest way, Shelaine tells of travelling between hurt and hope, from agony to plains of purpose renewed. Through tears and humor, her storytelling signals gratitude and grace and no simple answers to the problem of pain.
Excerpt from But Pain Crept In:
The faces looming over me are familiar, each with a knotted expression. Their lips are moving but they appear mute. Blackness. My eyelids press hard against the weight of unconsciousness. I am shaded from the shocking blue Arizona sky by the circle of tall bodies towering above. Where am I?
My left hand can’t clench. It just sweats in my baseball glove, limp by my side. My right hand claws at hot sand, grasping, dropping. I am on the ground. But where? The answer must be beyond the shins surrounding me. I turn my head. Aaahh. Searing hot jolts fire up my jawline, bursting through the joints, igniting my temples. I can only hear pain. Talk louder, people. Tell me how this happened!
No, don’t move me! My head will disintegrate. My mouth won’t cooperate and let me scream. No, I can’t sit up. They need to stop sliding their hands under my shoulders and pushing me up. I’m spinning, I can’t see. Blackness. “Hold her head,” I hear up close in the distance. Someone is behind me, supporting me. Another dabbing at my lip. Blood.
I am on the pitcher’s mound, home plate warping in and out of focus. The pitcher’s mound. We were told to run out to the field for catching practice. Coach would hit fly balls and we’d improve our fielding game. I grabbed my glove and shoved it on as I jogged toward second base. “Shelaine,” I heard yelled from home plate, along with the familiar crack of ball meeting bat. I threw my momentum over my left shoulder and turned back to answer the call. The line-drive had my name on it.
The strike on my left chin spun my head viciously right. Muscles, tendons and bones flew into action, preventing my head from completing the wild trajectory. Simultaneously, my sloshing brain slammed into skull plates, dropping me to the dirt unconscious; the velocity of impact fracturing my mandible ear to ear, puncturing condyle heads through cartilage, smashing bones against zygomatic arches. This is no ordinary broken jaw.Shelaine Strom resides in Abbotsford, BC where she and her husband, Bill, raised their three sons. She works part time as Manager of Education for Food for the Hungry and writes weekly on her blog, In the Midst.
1 comments:
Good luck with your book! Your writing is amazing.
Post a Comment