Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 10, 2023 | Expresso - Madeline Key

Transcript

January 10, 2023 | Expresso - Madeline Key · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I want to take you to January 6th.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: 2020.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: As I blink my eyes open, I see my family, my fiancee, and my pastor.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: We were taking communion.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't sure where I was, why we were there, and why I wasn't able to move.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: But before I kind of dive into that story a little bit, I do just want to tell you a little bit about me and how um up into that point.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was born and raised in Topeka.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have attended TBC from a young age with my parents, Angie and Brent, and my older sister, Cassidy.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was baptized at the age of 10 here at TBC or in a lake somewhere.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point I knew that Jesus loved me and I knew that he had sent his son for me.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: But what I didn't know is how that was going to impact my life going forward.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm going to be bad at the pictures too, I guess.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's my family when we were younger.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So fast forward with me to high school.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I um started going to high school, and my sister at that point was a senior.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I went into high school, um, I just wanted to maintain this perfect image.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to make sure that I was separate from my sister, and I wanted to make sure everyone thought that I had it all.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So what that meant for me was getting good grades, being really involved, captain of the dance team, having a perfect high school relationship, whatever that means, and having a lot of fun and being popular.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: So in order to, you know, have the most fun in high school, that did lead me into a lot of partying, drinking, drugs, um, again, things I'm not proud of.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but also during high school, I met an older friend, her name was Laura, and um, and she just started to pursue my friends and I.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And there was something different about her life.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't sure exactly what it was.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what we found out was that she was a young life leader.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: So she was in college at this point, volunteering her time to hang out with us.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: She would show up at our dance recitals, show up at our basketball games, invite us to church on Sundays.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so at this point in high school, I started to pursue my relationship with God more.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but at the same time, I was having this balancing act of being really popular and having a lot of fun, partying on Saturdays and waking up and going to church on Sundays.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Again, to the world, I wanted everyone to believe that I had it all and that I could do all of this.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Inside, um, often one of my other friends and I would sit down and we're like, is this really it?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't as fun as we thought it was gonna be.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that kind of continued um into all of high school.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then fast forward again to my senior year of high school and my type A personality, very planner-oriented, had a five-year plan.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna go to a big out-of-state college, I was going to major in accounting, graduate early, I would move to a big city, get a successful career, get married at a young age, and my life was gonna be perfect.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or so I thought.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So then going into college, the kind of first nicks off my five-year plan was I decided to go to the University of Kansas to stay close to my friends.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so going into college, I immediately got involved in a sorority, uh, Delta Gamma, and kind of right off the bat just started pursuing um partying again, thinking that okay, this is college, it's gonna be better, right?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even though I had already felt empty, I was like, I can still do this balancing act a little bit longer, I think.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Until I remember it was Halloween night, and I was walking home from a fraternity party, um, probably had drank too much and was probably in a really inappropriate Halloween costume, and I walked myself home in the dark in the middle of the night, and I just remember thinking to myself, is this really it?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I felt empty.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I didn't have a purpose, and I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep this up.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Also, when I had started college, though, I had met another mentor in my life, and her name's Jenna.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: She was involved in um another organization called Student Mobilization, and I had been meeting with her, and so after I went home that Halloween night in the morning, I woke up and pretty soon after texted her to get coffee.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And over a few coffee uh dates per se, um, started to just pour this out and talk to her about what it would look like for me to really pursue my relationship with Christ.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So she started to teach me what this was gonna look like for my life daily.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: She started to get me plugged in with Christian friends and have a community, got me involved in a Bible study.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to even do a nine-week discipleship program where I was taught how to share my faith and that I didn't have to leave this old life and all these old friends behind, but now I could share that with others.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so that kind of continued throughout college.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Again, nothing was ever perfect after really accepting Christ in that moment again.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but my life started to look different.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Fast forward again to my senior year and of college, and I'm preparing to study abroad in Costa Rica for a few weeks.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm living in a house with all of my college friends.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're having the time of our lives, um, getting to enjoy our last little bits before we have to start a career.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I had met a guy a few years earlier, and at this time we are engaged to be married in the upcoming spring.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, again, everything is working out just as how I had planned.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: But now I had had this relationship with Christ that I truly felt that fulfillment.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: But as I started with on January 6th, 2020, that all changed.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: As I blinked my eyes open, I realized that I was at a hospital.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um as my family starts to fill me in, I had learned that 10 days earlier I was involved in a near fatal car accident.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um this car accident had caused multiple brain injuries, pelvic fractures, a torn artery, spinal fractures, and a few broken teeth.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'll skip past to the pictures.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is the um as my family starts to fill me in, and I start to um, they really just tell me I had no memory of anything that had happened.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So they start to fill me in on all these injuries, and the only thing that I could feel in my mind was, oh no, well, what's next?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was supposed to be leaving for Costa Rica in two days, and it started the panic started to set in.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I wasn't doing that.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: I started to worry that I wasn't gonna be able to graduate on time, that I wasn't gonna be able to take my CPA test, that I wasn't going to be able to walk ever, and that I wasn't gonna be able to walk down the aisle.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, as all of these kind of realizations start to kick in, um, along comes the fear, the anxiety, and the worry.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: As the doctors looked at me, they would often say, You know it's a miracle that you're even alive.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really hard to hear when you don't exactly feel lucky to be alive.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I knew that God was going to use this, but I just wasn't sure how.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: At that time, it just didn't feel fair, to be honest.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I had had my whole life planned out, and now it was came crashing down.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout my next uh kind of 20 days or so in the hospital, um, I was often surrounded by friends and family from out of town, um, parents' friends, family friends who went and did our laundry just to be able to support us, and often just surrounded by a lot of community.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that was really encouraging during those times where I didn't really have a good thought sometimes in my head, but I would see the people that had surrounded me and that were really caring for me during that time.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think one of my best memories from the hospital, which feels kind of hard, um, was that my mom and I would often do, I have to not look at her, um, a Bible study in the morning.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: She had gotten a devotional for us, and um she would read that to me because at that point I didn't feel like reading um my Bible, and nor did I know if I could.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the doctors weren't sure how the brain injuries were gonna affect things.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so um my mom and I would read this um devotional together, and I remember one morning there was a verse that one of my friends had actually texted me separately, um, and then we read that morning.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that verse is Romans 8.28, and it says, And that we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I had heard this verse so many times, and it felt a lot easier to say for other people.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that that's gonna work out for you.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, God had that in his plan, but again, at that time, that was really hard for me to see.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, after about 20 days in the hospital, I was discharged, um, but I was told that I wasn't gonna be able to walk for at least two months.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Again, they weren't really sure what the injuries um that I had sustained were going to look like, but it was at least two months.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I um moved out of my college home.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I moved into my parents' newly wheelchair accessible home where my mom converted her office into my bedroom.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's nothing like being 21 years old, engaged to be married, and have to have your mom help you brush your teeth, wash your uh everything, shower, get dressed, and even just to get out of bed.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think just having that realization of how much things were going to change.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I was home and I was so thankful for that.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but now just having to rely on everybody to do everything for me.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, before that, kind of growing up, I've always been a pretty independent person, don't really know how to ask for help, probably still don't.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but at this point, I had to ask for everything.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't, for a lot of times, they wouldn't even leave me alone at home because they were worried that I might fall.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so um definitely just over these next two months being at home, had to find new hobbies.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because of my brain injuries, I wasn't supposed to watch much TV.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I tried to learn how to knit.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Marcy Vanderhart tried to teach me, it lasted about two days.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I picked up drawing, I read a lot of wedding magazines at this time.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was hoping to still get married at that time, um, and just really tried to pick up a lot of new hobbies.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: We also had to bounce um from doctor's appointments and um counseling appointments and just a lot of things just to figure out what these injuries were going to look like.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so this was just a lot of getting used to getting out of the house.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we had never really experienced what that looked like.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I did get to go back to college, thankfully, um, with the help of some of my professors, but my mom had to now take me to class and wheel me into my master's um college classes.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think there was a lot of embarrassment and shame for these people who didn't even really know me and now um didn't have the courage to ask why I was in a wheelchair now.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it was just a lot of unknown and honestly embarrassment at the time because I just wasn't sure how to communicate it.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so um during this time, also I think one thing that was really important to me is that when I was at home over these next two months, again, just having community around me that just um really encouraged me when I couldn't um do it myself.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest kind of takeaways when I look back is um I had been living in Lawrence, and but my soon-to-be husband and I were planning on moving to Topeka.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I was able to be surrounded by this Topeka community that I hadn't even been plugged into for very long and just see the love and support that they were able to provide.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think that that was a start of a lot of great friendships that I still am able to have, just seeing how much those people sacrificed for me, even if they didn't, if I wasn't a part of their community yet.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um so kind of again, over these next two months, it was just a lot of learning and having to rely on everyone in this often left me feeling frustrated, hopeless.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like a burden.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there were a few times my friends tried to take me out of the house and pack my wheelchair in the back and wheel me out.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: But uh the one thing is you don't realize uh how hard it is to go to the bathroom in a public restroom when you're not able to put any weight on your feet at all.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So that was far and few between that I got out of the house without my mom there to pick me up and take me along.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but again, for a lot of this because I had to rely on everyone, my independent personality, I just felt like a burden and I felt hopeless.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um again, I was just wrestling with the fact that I knew that this was in God's plan.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been still trying to pursue my relationship with God a lot of times through friends, through my mom reading um things to me.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I knew that this was gonna be in God's plan, but I was still just confused why.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think when I think back though, now three years kind of pass, and I think back to that season of my life, I can see how God really used that to slow down my life.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was forced to move back in with my parents five months before, planning on getting married, um, and get to spend really quality time with them.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had mentioned, I got to spend really quality time with a community in Topeka that I hadn't really been plugged into.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I got to learn how to ask for help, which was something that I was not good at doing, still probably not good at doing.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I also just got to learn grace and patience with the people around me as they were having to help me meet my needs.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I also just got to learn that with myself, that it was okay that not everything was working out like I had planned.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it was okay that I couldn't do the same things that I was planning on doing.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think overall, when I think of this, um, what I learned is really ultimately um that just God was in control throughout um everything.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: There was a song that I would often play a lot of mornings when the days felt too hard and that I felt like I couldn't get out of bed.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um the song's called See a Victory, and it says, You take what the enemy meant for evil and you turn it for good.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Pass on.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna sing it to you guys, but then it says, I'm gonna see a victory, for the battle belongs to you.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this just really stood out to me again, just thinking of, you know, if I was you guys in the crowd, what okay, what do I want to walk away with?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just that remembering that God is in control, that the battle does belong to him, and I can see how he um has planned my life, even, you know, from the age of 10 to high school to college to now, um, and even since my car accident, the trials that I've faced since then, that he really is in control, whether or not we understand or know the purpose.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we might not know the purpose uh still even until we get to heaven, but that he's gonna be in control and that we can trust that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the other thing, and Shirley was kind of talking about this, um, but just that he is pursuing us daily.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, I can see that when I look at all of my life, how God put different people in my life at different spots that were able to show me the love of Christ when maybe I didn't know um how to.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and thinking about my accident, just the people being surrounded by me, um, even though I might not have been able to open my Bible and pursue Christ in the same way that I had before, but that through other people he was able to do that.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and still, as the trials that I faced now, being you know, newly married in these past few years that we've had, um, just how he's continuing to pursue us daily throughout these.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that that was kind of the biggest things that I took away from this.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so kind of to wrap up the story aspect of it, um, that spring I was able to graduate with my master's and take my first of four CPA tests um a week before my wedding.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to get married in a COVID world in May of 2020, had to disinvite a lot of people, but we were able to do that on the day that we had planned, and I was able to walk down the aisle and even dance at my wedding.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that um just how all of us have gone through trials, or when we accept Christ, our life hasn't been easy.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yes, I can see the celebration um and how God was with me through those, and it's so great to be able to stand here and say that I was able to do all those things.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it wasn't without God that I was able to do all those things.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so um just thinking about how God is always with us in the darkest of our times, but then also in the celebrations.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so that's kind of um oh, sorry.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: One of the um I'm gonna water out.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of my friends actually after the hospital had given me this sign, and I don't know the exact verse, um, but it's to the effect of um you'll share of all the amazing things you'll done or uh that God has done, and your story will be a testimony.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And um, she had always told me, I think one day you're gonna, you know, be able to share this and use this.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I wasn't sure how.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: I um honestly never really planned on that.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've wrote a blog and kept it in my drafts for three years.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So when Connie asked me uh to share, that was kind of an answer to an unsaid prayer that I didn't even know.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um I had the to be able to have the ability to just stand here and share with you guys.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I just thank you um for that.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's all I have.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I guess my pictures.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I have more.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: So this was in a wheelchair, my friends um had to come over to my house and have a chief's party in my parents' house because I wasn't able to leave.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this was when I started to learn how to walk again.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um after two months, I was able to learn how to walk again, and I think it's something, again, you don't realize at 22 years old uh how to walk and how frustrating that can be.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, shortly after this, my family thought we would go on a vacation to celebrate, and I think I spent the whole time mad at everybody because I was too frustrated that I couldn't get up and walk just like everybody else.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then this was my graduation and my wedding.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for letting me share.