Latest / Spiritual Hot Sauce / "Scars That Speak Series: Abbie Martin" Ep#35

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"Scars That Speak Series: Abbie Martin" Ep#35 · Spiritual Hot Sauce

• 0:00
  Chris Jones: Scars That Speak is a series of people sharing their real life stories, of going through adversity and trauma, the storm in life that strips us of our identity, where the path ends, but yet they find life where there should be no life.
• 0:16
  Chris Jones: These are stories of hope.
• 0:19
  Abbie Martin: I am Abby Martin, and I have scars that speak.
• 0:24
  Chris Jones: Welcome.
• 0:24
  Chris Jones: I'm Chris Jones.
• 0:26
  Chris Jones: This is Spiritual Hot Sauce.
• 0:28
  Chris Jones: Abby, welcome to the sauce.
• 0:34
  Abbie Martin: Hi, Chris.
• 0:35
  Abbie Martin: Thank you.
• 0:36
  Chris Jones: It's nice to see you again.
• 0:37
  Chris Jones: It's been a while.
• 0:38
  Chris Jones: You know, I was trying to remember when I heard you speak.
• 0:41
  Chris Jones: And this is seems like a couple of years ago, but I heard you speak, and it was the first time that I think I actually met you.
• 0:47
  Chris Jones: And I don't even know if it's an actual meeting, but you talked about what you're about to talk about today.
• 0:54
  Chris Jones: So when I started doing this series, Scars That Speak, I immediately thought of you.
• 0:59
  Chris Jones: And I was like, man, we got to get Abby on the show.
• 1:02
  Chris Jones: So thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story.
• 1:08
  Abbie Martin: Thank you for having me.
• 1:09
  Chris Jones: Tell us briefly just a little bit about you.
• 1:12
  Abbie Martin: I'm Abby.
• 1:13
  Abbie Martin: I live with my husband and remarkable little family in a really small town in southern Illinois.
• 1:19
  Abbie Martin: And I have three kids, Mercy, Roz, and Boone.
• 1:22
  Abbie Martin: Roz just turned eight months old yesterday, I make candles out of recycled containers and wooden wicks.
• 1:30
  Abbie Martin: I spent my 20s and just a little bit of my 30s traveling.
• 1:34
  Abbie Martin: Got to live in lots of different, several different places overseas, doing technically what could be called mission work, just doing what I could to help people.
• 1:42
  Abbie Martin: And then when I was 32, I got to marry the man of my dreams and am now a stay-at-home mom.
• 1:50
  Abbie Martin: Been married for five years.
• 1:53
  Abbie Martin: And yeah, there we are.
• 1:55
  Chris Jones: Well, take us to uh the mission work where all of this story starts.
• 2:00
  Abbie Martin: Sure.
• 2:00
  Abbie Martin: I went to India for the first time when I was like 22, loved it.
• 2:04
  Abbie Martin: Lots of adrenaline, lots of, you know, culture shock and just amazed by India.
• 2:09
  Abbie Martin: It's a pretty amazing place.
• 2:11
  Abbie Martin: And so yeah, I just, you know, one door opened, another door opened.
• 2:15
  Abbie Martin: And that led me to Thailand in 2012.
• 2:18
  Abbie Martin: I'm 24.
• 2:20
  Abbie Martin: I think it was my second time in India that I had gone there in that summer of 2012.
• 2:25
  Abbie Martin: I lived in a children's home on the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean, you know, 50, 60 kids in this children's home, you know, slept on a concrete floor, kind of thing.
• 2:36
  Abbie Martin: So I went from that to Thailand.
• 2:39
  Abbie Martin: And it was my first time in Thailand.
• 2:41
  Abbie Martin: I was supposed to spend three weeks there serving a ministry that helps kids in northern Thailand on the border of Myanmar.
• 2:49
  Chris Jones: And well, tell us a little bit when you were in India, because you were getting ready to leave.
• 2:54
  Chris Jones: The conditions, I know you had told me you picked up lice.
• 2:58
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, I did.
• 2:58
  Abbie Martin: Got some head lice.
• 2:59
  Abbie Martin: So all the kids in the orphanage had lice.
• 3:02
  Abbie Martin: And so, you know, just practically, I was like, well, this is something I can do.
• 3:05
  Abbie Martin: Let's delice everybody.
• 3:07
  Abbie Martin: So I like brought lots of lice combs and supplies, and it was quite.
• 3:12
  Abbie Martin: I mean, that's pretty much all I did for two or three months was delice heads.
• 3:15
  Abbie Martin: Oh, wow.
• 3:16
  Abbie Martin: And then got my own lice in the process.
• 3:18
  Abbie Martin: Thankfully, I didn't have dreads at that time because, you know, dread lice don't come out of dreads.
• 3:25
  Abbie Martin: So yeah, spent a lot of that's right.
• 3:27
  Abbie Martin: Spent a lot of time delicing heads and, you know, just being with these amazing, amazing kids.
• 3:33
  Abbie Martin: You know, it was just really sweet.
• 3:35
  Abbie Martin: We'd have ice cream parties and I'd get them ice cream from this little man that would bring a little ice cream cart by.
• 3:41
  Abbie Martin: And um, you know, from our perspective, it would you would say pretty rough living conditions, like, you know, using the bathroom and a little concrete hole kind of thing.
• 3:52
  Abbie Martin: It was two or three months that I was there with those kiddos, and it was just me.
• 3:56
  Abbie Martin: You asked me recently, and it's funny because I had never thought about it.
• 4:00
  Abbie Martin: You asked me, What's the last conversation I remember having before my wreck?
• 4:06
  Abbie Martin: Like I said, I'd never thought about it.
• 4:07
  Abbie Martin: And so the last one I have that's like for sure I can pinpoint and say that was a memory, not just like a oh, was did I remember this?
• 4:16
  Abbie Martin: Which I spent a lot of my time thinking, like, is that a memory?
• 4:19
  Abbie Martin: But this I know, I remember it.
• 4:20
  Abbie Martin: I remember it clearly.
• 4:22
  Abbie Martin: And it was, yeah, it was on the flight from India to Thailand, where I was gonna spend three weeks.
• 4:27
  Abbie Martin: And so I'm going from, you know, this children's home, everyone speaks Telugu.
• 4:33
  Abbie Martin: There's a little, there's some English, but you know, it's not really fluent, that fluent.
• 4:38
  Abbie Martin: And so I get on this plane and I'm sitting next to a British guy who's who knows all of the words coming out of my mouth, and I just like dump on him.
• 4:46
  Abbie Martin: Like I'm I'm also like processing, right?
• 4:48
  Abbie Martin: And and I'm excited and I'm going to, you know, Thailand and I'm looking like really scruffy.
• 4:55
  Abbie Martin: I've been living in these, you know, somewhat rough conditions.
• 4:59
  Chris Jones: And I just I You've got lice at that time.
• 5:01
  Abbie Martin: And I have lice.
• 5:02
  Abbie Martin: I don't tell him that I have lice because I'm not sure if he would want to have sat by me on the airplane.
• 5:07
  Abbie Martin: But yeah, so I just I don't know what all I told him, but I talked his leg off.
• 5:11
  Abbie Martin: And I'm, you know, I'm sure I'm just telling him about these kids and you know, Avanti that loved combing my hair and Megan on Raj Kumar, who I had just met.
• 5:18
  Abbie Martin: And, you know, I'm I'm just filling him with stories.
• 5:21
  Abbie Martin: And he was a really good listener, thankfully.
• 5:24
  Abbie Martin: And at the time, I mean, I still wear, I still have a lot of bracelets, but at the time I had a lot of bracelets on and they were all sentimental.
• 5:32
  Abbie Martin: Like, like some of these are sentimental, but it's mostly just I stick them on.
• 5:36
  Abbie Martin: But at the time, I called it my friendship bracelet club.
• 5:39
  Abbie Martin: Anytime someone would give me a bracelet, I'd put it on.
• 5:41
  Abbie Martin: So they were all thoughtful, sentimental.
• 5:43
  Abbie Martin: Why did I tell the British guy about my friendship bracelet club?
• 5:46
  Abbie Martin: I don't know, but I did.
• 5:48
  Abbie Martin: And so by the end of our little hangout, and it was a it was like a just a couple hour flight, he says, Well, I'm I'm gonna have to give you a bracelet then, aren't I?
• 5:57
  Abbie Martin: And I I'm like, Well, no, you know, you don't have to.
• 6:00
  Abbie Martin: He's like, Well, I got one right here.
• 6:01
  Abbie Martin: I just bought it from my daughter, and I want you to have it.
• 6:04
  Abbie Martin: And so he pulls out this bracelet and he had just bought it at a duty-free store in an airport.
• 6:08
  Abbie Martin: And you know, they don't sell anything in those stores for less than $80.
• 6:12
  Speaker: Right.
• 6:12
  Abbie Martin: So it's like, it's a nice bracelet, and it's like kind of glamorous looking and like sparkly and shiny, and not at all like how I'm looking.
• 6:21
  Abbie Martin: Like I'm looking, you know, really scrubbed.
• 6:24
  Chris Jones: Like you just came from a mission.
• 6:25
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, exactly.
• 6:26
  Abbie Martin: Right.
• 6:26
  Abbie Martin: And I'm looking at this bracelet, and we're really like not going together, me and this bracelet.
• 6:30
  Abbie Martin: And I he kind of reads my mind, I guess, and notices that I don't go with the bracelet.
• 6:34
  Abbie Martin: And I remember his exact words.
• 6:36
  Abbie Martin: And he says, You'll scuff it up in no time.
• 6:40
  Abbie Martin: I'm like, Yeah, I will scuff it up in no time.
• 6:44
  Abbie Martin: And I still, I still have the bracelet, which is sweet.
• 6:47
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, so that's my last interaction that I I really solidly remember before my wreck.
• 6:54
  Abbie Martin: It was it was neat.
• 6:55
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, I'll probably never see that guy again, but yeah.
• 6:58
  Chris Jones: That is neat.
• 6:59
  Chris Jones: It's almost like he was supposed to be there, right?
• 7:01
  Abbie Martin: Before maybe, maybe, yeah.
• 7:03
  Chris Jones: All right, so tell us what happens then.
• 7:05
  Chris Jones: You get to Thailand and you're gonna be there for a while.
• 7:08
  Chris Jones: What?
• 7:08
  Chris Jones: Yeah, and you don't remember any of this.
• 7:10
  Chris Jones: So everything you're about to share is what you were told by other people, correct?
• 7:16
  Abbie Martin: That is correct.
• 7:17
  Abbie Martin: That is correct.
• 7:18
  Abbie Martin: This has been reported to me from the eyewitnesses.
• 7:21
  Chris Jones: So what did they say?
• 7:23
  Abbie Martin: So I met a small missions team from my the church I was attending at the time, met me in Thailand.
• 7:30
  Abbie Martin: And it was the ministry we were serving was one that my church supported.
• 7:33
  Abbie Martin: And so I met those people, which I kind again, now we're getting into like maybe I remember it, but I don't think so.
• 7:40
  Abbie Martin: So I meet them in Thailand and they're just gonna be there for a couple days and then fly home.
• 7:45
  Abbie Martin: But I had said, I well, I want to stay longer, so I was gonna stay for three weeks.
• 7:49
  Abbie Martin: And so, you know, at some point in the first few days of me being there, they were like, Well, the ministry has an extra motorbike.
• 7:57
  Abbie Martin: In Thailand, motorbikes are super popular.
• 7:59
  Abbie Martin: It's kind of like a you know, moped that's a little with a little more oomph to it.
• 8:05
  Abbie Martin: Like a like an oomph up scooter.
• 8:07
  Abbie Martin: I'd never driven anything like that, but I was all game and I was like, Yeah, sure, I'll, you know, learn how to drive it and I'll, you know, drive it around the town and run errands or whatever you need me to do.
• 8:16
  Abbie Martin: And so they're like, Well, you know, let's get you trained on how to drive the thing.
• 8:20
  Abbie Martin: And, you know, it's not complicated.
• 8:22
  Abbie Martin: Well, it shouldn't be complicated, but I had never driven anything with two wheels besides a bicycle.
• 8:27
  Abbie Martin: And so, girl who was interning for this ministry, real sweet gal named Jade, a couple of years younger than me, she took me to some little side streets in this town, you know, showed me the basic, you know, how-to on driving the motorbike for a few minutes, probably like a 10-minute lesson, I would say.
• 8:45
  Abbie Martin: And then she asked me if I felt confident enough to drive it down the main road, you know, a larger road going through this town.
• 8:51
  Abbie Martin: That I I could just follow her short distance and see how it went, you know?
• 8:56
  Abbie Martin: And I was like, Yeah, sure.
• 8:57
  Abbie Martin: I can do that.
• 8:57
  Abbie Martin: You know, I'm feeling like real confident about my motorbike driving skills.
• 9:01
  Chris Jones: And you have no memory of this.
• 9:03
  Abbie Martin: I don't have any memory of any of this.
• 9:04
  Abbie Martin: Nope.
• 9:05
  Chris Jones: That's just what they told you.
• 9:06
  Abbie Martin: This is what they tell me, yeah.
• 9:08
  Abbie Martin: And so I follow Jade.
• 9:11
  Abbie Martin: She's in a truck, and I'm following her down the main road in Thailand.
• 9:16
  Abbie Martin: And it comes time to make a left-hand turn.
• 9:20
  Abbie Martin: And so when you're driving something like this, you know, a motorcycle or whatever, you have to lean when you turn.
• 9:24
  Abbie Martin: And apparently I hadn't mastered that in my lessons.
• 9:27
  Abbie Martin: And so when I I am trying to make this left-hand turn, I don't lean properly.
• 9:32
  Abbie Martin: And so instead of turning, there's a curb that's going around the turn.
• 9:37
  Abbie Martin: And so I hit the curb.
• 9:38
  Abbie Martin: And we think I whiskey throttled it and, you know, really got some speed up before I hit the curb, you know, slammed on the gas instead of the brake.
• 9:46
  Abbie Martin: Because when I hit it, I hit it hard enough that my body went flying off the motorbike and there was a metal lamppost there on the side of the road by the curb.
• 9:56
  Abbie Martin: And so my head, mostly the right side of my face, collided hard with that metal pole, left me unconscious and bleeding on the side of the road.
• 10:07
  Chris Jones: And of course, you did not have a helmet on.
• 10:09
  Abbie Martin: I know I did.
• 10:10
  Abbie Martin: I did have a helmet on.
• 10:10
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, I had a helmet on because it was mostly my face that took the blunt of the collision.
• 10:16
  Abbie Martin: So yeah, I had one on.
• 10:18
  Abbie Martin: When I collided with a pole, broke my eyebrow here, was cut to the bone.
• 10:22
  Abbie Martin: And we imagined that that was, you know, my helmet that probably cut in there.
• 10:27
  Abbie Martin: So yeah, so I hit that.
• 10:29
  Abbie Martin: So I fractured that bone above my eyebrow, and this was just like gushing, and you could see the bone above my eyebrow.
• 10:35
  Abbie Martin: And then my two front teeth got knocked out, and one of them, or maybe both of them, I don't know, went through my bottom lip.
• 10:43
  Abbie Martin: So my lip was gashed open.
• 10:45
  Abbie Martin: And then unseen damage was that my skull had been fractured in a few different places, multiple is what they said, multiple places.
• 10:53
  Abbie Martin: And my brain had it just, you know, had started swelling and bleeding.
• 10:58
  Abbie Martin: So Jade watched it all through the rearview mirror.
• 11:01
  Abbie Martin: She's a, you know, is a good loving teacher and wanted to see how I was doing.
• 11:05
  Abbie Martin: So she watched it all happen and she was for sure it killed me.
• 11:08
  Abbie Martin: And so she hopped out and then ran to me.
• 11:11
  Abbie Martin: A couple of Thai people who'd seen it ran to me, and she said that when she got to my body, she could see air bubbles coming in and out of the blood in my nose and mouth.
• 11:21
  Abbie Martin: So she knew I was breathing.
• 11:23
  Abbie Martin: So they took me from an ambulance via ambulance to the local hospital there.
• 11:28
  Abbie Martin: So they take me to this little hospital that is not equipped to handle a traumatic brain injury.
• 11:34
  Abbie Martin: So they put me in a room with like 10 other people.
• 11:37
  Chris Jones: And this is more like a clinic.
• 11:39
  Chris Jones: Is that correct?
• 11:40
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, exactly.
• 11:41
  Abbie Martin: It's like a it is a clinic.
• 11:43
  Abbie Martin: So at this point, missionaries are called and people are called that are, you know, that are part of the ministry that are coming to like, you know, what do we do with Abby?
• 11:51
  Abbie Martin: I spent hours in this hospital.
• 11:54
  Abbie Martin: And from what they tell me, is that is that I probably would have died had I stayed in that hospital because they just couldn't take care of me, you know?
• 12:01
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 12:01
  Abbie Martin: And so finally they got all the logistics taken care of so that I could be taken by ambulance seven hours south to Bangkok that had a really nice big hospital called Bumingrad International Hospital.
• 12:13
  Abbie Martin: And through all of this, these hours of being in this small hospital, I was unconscious.
• 12:20
  Abbie Martin: And from what the eyewitnesses have told me, you know, whether I was conscious or not, I would gain some kind of semi-consciousness and I would moan and like make these cry moan sounds and call for Jesus.
• 12:34
  Abbie Martin: And so they said that several different times I would, with eyes still closed and not aware of anything going on around me when they would try to talk to me, I would just say Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, repeated.
• 12:46
  Abbie Martin: And then I'd go quiet for a few hours and then one, you know, again, say Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
• 12:50
  Abbie Martin: And so that went on for a few hours until finally I just went to sleep and stayed asleep for five days.
• 12:56
  Abbie Martin: And so in Bangkok, you know, they hooked me up to all the stuff, life support and, you know, a feeding tube and all of the things to keep me alive.
• 13:07
  Abbie Martin: You know, it was kind of like a hopefully she lives sort of scenario.
• 13:12
  Abbie Martin: And so they they hook me up to all of these things.
• 13:15
  Abbie Martin: I am in a coma.
• 13:17
  Abbie Martin: And, you know, what happens when someone's in a coma, you just hope that they wake up.
• 13:21
  Abbie Martin: And so my parents, who are the best parents that have ever walked on the earth, they were called and notified, you know, about my wreck.
• 13:32
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 13:33
  Abbie Martin: And my dad, super homebody, like had no intention of ever flying across the big ocean.
• 13:40
  Abbie Martin: Like he loves home, love being at home.
• 13:43
  Abbie Martin: As soon as they were called and told about my wreck, they booked flights to Thailand.
• 13:49
  Abbie Martin: They just came, you know, as soon as they could so that they could be with me.
• 13:52
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 13:53
  Abbie Martin: So they got there, you know, as quick as they could, and then they just stayed by my bed while I slept.
• 13:58
  Abbie Martin: And I have, you know, pictures that my mom just snapped a few when I was in the hospital.
• 14:04
  Abbie Martin: And my dad was always right by my bed.
• 14:07
  Abbie Martin: And he had this little suck, because I was drooling a lot, right?
• 14:10
  Abbie Martin: Because I had I was on life support and had tubes down my throat.
• 14:13
  Abbie Martin: And so I was just drooling all the time.
• 14:15
  Abbie Martin: And he would stay by my bed with this little slobber sucker thing and just suck the slobber off my mouth all the time.
• 14:21
  Abbie Martin: So yeah, they stayed there with me.
• 14:24
  Abbie Martin: They prayed.
• 14:25
  Abbie Martin: I, my pastor, Pastor Chad, was supposed to fly.
• 14:29
  Abbie Martin: His trip was over and he was supposed to fly back to the States because he had been there, right?
• 14:33
  Abbie Martin: On the short-term mission trip.
• 14:35
  Abbie Martin: But he canceled his flight and said, I'm gonna stay with Abby until she wakes up.
• 14:39
  Abbie Martin: So he also made quite a sacrifice to stay there with me in the hospital.
• 14:44
  Abbie Martin: Everyone just did a lot of praying and pleading with God to keep me alive.
• 14:49
  Chris Jones: This isn't like you uh fell and broke your arm.
• 14:51
  Abbie Martin: No, no.
• 14:52
  Chris Jones: Yeah, you you probably shouldn't be here right now.
• 14:55
  Chris Jones: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:56
  Chris Jones: This is this is some serious stuff.
• 14:58
  Chris Jones: And you're in a coma.
• 14:59
  Chris Jones: How how long was you in the coma?
• 15:02
  Abbie Martin: I slept for five days and then uh woke up on day five.
• 15:07
  Abbie Martin: And you know, there's a lot of questions, a lot of fear for everyone present, because you know, this are brain work, you know, being one of the Do you remember this time?
• 15:18
  Abbie Martin: No, no, no, no, no.
• 15:19
  Abbie Martin: No, I have weeks that are just gone from my memory.
• 15:22
  Abbie Martin: Wow.
• 15:23
  Abbie Martin: And so, no, definitely don't remember any of the hospital days.
• 15:27
  Abbie Martin: And so my parents gave me, because again, I'm I can't talk because I'm hooked up to all this stuff.
• 15:31
  Abbie Martin: And so they gave me a pen and a paper.
• 15:34
  Abbie Martin: And I don't remember, I could I should have looked up what the very first thing I wrote was because I don't remember it offhand.
• 15:39
  Abbie Martin: But I know very one of the very first things I wrote was I'm really hungry and and and where am I?
• 15:46
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 15:47
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 15:47
  Abbie Martin: They weren't putting enough food in my feeding tube, apparently.
• 15:51
  Abbie Martin: But anyway, just you know, whatever I wrote was wonderful news for my parents because it's like her brain works.
• 15:58
  Abbie Martin: She's she still knows the alphabet, she she still knows how to write.
• 16:02
  Abbie Martin: So, and you know, you hear stories about people waking up after a traumatic brain injury, and they are now a mathematical genius or they can speak three new languages.
• 16:12
  Abbie Martin: And unfortunately, that did not happen for me.
• 16:16
  Abbie Martin: I just such a story woke woke up confused with a headache.
• 16:20
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 16:21
  Chris Jones: Wow.
• 16:21
  Chris Jones: Wow.
• 16:23
  Abbie Martin: And people like the amount of people that prayed is something I ought to think about more about too.
• 16:29
  Abbie Martin: It's just amazing.
• 16:29
  Abbie Martin: Like because I come from a really small town of 1,300 people.
• 16:33
  Abbie Martin: Well, I think all 1,300 were praying, like, plus anybody else that I've encountered in my people I didn't know.
• 16:39
  Abbie Martin: And still today, because I live back where I grew up, I'll meet someone that we've never met and they'll say, Are you the girl that had the wreck in Thailand?
• 16:49
  Abbie Martin: I prayed for you.
• 16:50
  Abbie Martin: Wow.
• 16:50
  Abbie Martin: It's not rare that that happens.
• 16:52
  Abbie Martin: And it's just, yeah, it's just amazing the love that people showed me.
• 16:56
  Chris Jones: It was a local movement to to pray for Abby.
• 16:58
  Chris Jones: Yeah.
• 16:59
  Chris Jones: That's beautiful.
• 17:00
  Chris Jones: That's beautiful.
• 17:01
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 17:01
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 17:02
  Chris Jones: All right.
• 17:02
  Chris Jones: So you come to you tell them you're hungry.
• 17:05
  Chris Jones: You have no memory of this though.
• 17:06
  Chris Jones: And everybody's still with their.
• 17:08
  Chris Jones: So what what's the account?
• 17:10
  Chris Jones: What's everybody telling you was going on?
• 17:12
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 17:12
  Abbie Martin: I don't remember at all what they told me.
• 17:15
  Abbie Martin: I it took me, I would say, months to realize the significance of the risk.
• 17:20
  Abbie Martin: Like I just didn't, you know, because of my brain healing, I guess, I couldn't, I couldn't process, like, oh, I almost died.
• 17:28
  Abbie Martin: And this is really serious.
• 17:30
  Abbie Martin: Like, I didn't have any of that processing.
• 17:32
  Abbie Martin: It was just like, whatever, I'm hungry.
• 17:34
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 17:34
  Abbie Martin: You know, like I didn't, I couldn't, I couldn't process it.
• 17:37
  Abbie Martin: And so I do know that much.
• 17:39
  Abbie Martin: Okay.
• 17:39
  Abbie Martin: So yeah, they while I was still sleeping during those five days, because my face is like all ripped up, you know.
• 17:46
  Abbie Martin: And so a plastic surgeon sewed me up.
• 17:49
  Abbie Martin: He sewed my eyebrow that was all gushed up, my my lip that was ripped open.
• 17:53
  Abbie Martin: He's he sewed up.
• 17:54
  Chris Jones: But you still don't have your front teeth.
• 17:57
  Chris Jones: Yeah, still didn't have any front teeth.
• 17:59
  Abbie Martin: No.
• 17:59
  Abbie Martin: And so I was pretty rough when I woke up, you know, and it's not anywhere on my radar, like, you know, what do I look like?
• 18:05
  Abbie Martin: But I rem I do remember faintly the first few weeks of being back to the States.
• 18:10
  Abbie Martin: Like I have really vague memories of seeing myself in a mirror and being like, whoa, I like look a lot different than I did.
• 18:18
  Abbie Martin: And again, I don't think I had the ability to process like that it was maybe not a great look for me.
• 18:24
  Abbie Martin: Like I didn't care at all.
• 18:25
  Abbie Martin: Like I had zero, you know, vanity at that time.
• 18:28
  Abbie Martin: But yeah, it it definitely affected my appearance.
• 18:31
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 18:32
  Chris Jones: When do you start getting your memory back?
• 18:35
  Abbie Martin: I remember the so like I I say vague memories.
• 18:40
  Abbie Martin: And I do have those.
• 18:41
  Abbie Martin: Like I have a vague memory of a friend coming to visit me.
• 18:44
  Abbie Martin: And we like we would always like give each other like arm massages.
• 18:49
  Abbie Martin: And I remember her kind of rubbing my arm and it really ticked me off because I was, it's often a symptom.
• 18:57
  Abbie Martin: What what's the word I'm looking for?
• 18:58
  Abbie Martin: Like a side effect of a traumatic brain injury is that you're you're angry and like a kind of aggressive.
• 19:04
  Abbie Martin: And so I kind of remember that.
• 19:06
  Abbie Martin: Like I remember her getting on my nerves, and usually I would, I would never have been annoyed by that.
• 19:12
  Abbie Martin: And so I I do I remember being like just real short-tempered.
• 19:15
  Chris Jones: What part of your brain was was damaged?
• 19:18
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, that's a good question.
• 19:20
  Abbie Martin: My frontal lobe from where, you know, my face hit the pole and then my brain, you know, hit the skull, and then also my occipital lobe in the back of my head because my brain, you know, like bounced back and crashed into the back of my skull.
• 19:36
  Abbie Martin: So in those three three, two damages in the frontal lobe and then one in the occipital lobe.
• 19:42
  Abbie Martin: So I so I have these really vague memories of just kind of like being annoyed, just short-tempered with people.
• 19:48
  Abbie Martin: I would say the clearest first memory I have after the wreck is a moment I had in a in a conversation with God that was very significant and a huge influence in my relationship with him that still influences me today in my interaction with God.
• 20:06
  Abbie Martin: And during those first few weeks, and maybe even into a couple months, you know, I just had a lot going on in my emotions.
• 20:14
  Abbie Martin: And I had a lot of sadness and just kind of just heavy, just heaviness.
• 20:18
  Abbie Martin: And at some point I started to just feel really guilty for the wreck.
• 20:24
  Abbie Martin: Like it was, it was my fault, you know.
• 20:26
  Abbie Martin: Like I'm the idiot that got on the motorbike, I'm the idiot that, you know, didn't turn properly.
• 20:32
  Abbie Martin: And I just started feeling a lot of shame and like just as and a lot for my parents.
• 20:38
  Abbie Martin: Like I cost them thousands of dollars.
• 20:40
  Abbie Martin: I cost them so much worry.
• 20:41
  Abbie Martin: And, you know, and I just felt like a big burden.
• 20:45
  Abbie Martin: And so this started to build and grow and get heavier inside of me.
• 20:51
  Abbie Martin: And so I remember that.
• 20:52
  Abbie Martin: I remember those, some of those feelings of just bad, heavy, not good.
• 20:58
  Abbie Martin: And eventually started thinking like, it would have been better if my life had just ended when I had the wreck.
• 21:06
  Abbie Martin: I'm not doing anyone any good.
• 21:08
  Abbie Martin: And I wish I wish I hadn't lived.
• 21:10
  Abbie Martin: I it would have been better for everyone.
• 21:12
  Abbie Martin: Like those sort of thoughts.
• 21:13
  Abbie Martin: Very dark, really dark, deep, heavy.
• 21:16
  Abbie Martin: And so I'm in that sort of place.
• 21:19
  Abbie Martin: And I have a moment with God where I'm have turned my attention to him, and I feel like here deep down, and you know, where I feel like God can communicate with us with his spirit, I feel like he's asking me to remember what I said right after the wreck in my moments of semi consciousness, what I was saying.
• 21:42
  Abbie Martin: And so I thought and I was like, okay, I was saying Jesus.
• 21:45
  Abbie Martin: I was calling out to Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
• 21:48
  Abbie Martin: And I felt like God said, When you were calling my name, I was calling yours.
• 21:54
  Abbie Martin: And when he said that to my spirit, it was so Such it was such a relief.
• 22:02
  Abbie Martin: It was a surprise.
• 22:04
  Abbie Martin: And it was it it lifted me.
• 22:08
  Abbie Martin: And I I took time to imagine it.
• 22:11
  Abbie Martin: Like I pictured myself in Thailand, laying on the side of the road, bloodied, broken, zero to offer.
• 22:22
  Chris Jones: Yeah.
• 22:23
  Abbie Martin: And and so I imagined God being there.
• 22:26
  Abbie Martin: I imagined, I pictured it.
• 22:28
  Abbie Martin: I pictured God like leaning over my body, saying, Abby, Abby, Abby.
• 22:34
  Abbie Martin: The feeling that accompanied that of picturing that was it was just so gentle and it was like unconditional love.
• 22:42
  Abbie Martin: And I I felt so important.
• 22:45
  Abbie Martin: And I felt I it was like, well, if God, if my maker takes the time to see me and call my name when I'm almost dead, I must be all right.
• 22:55
  Abbie Martin: And so I stopped wishing I was dead after that.
• 22:59
  Abbie Martin: Like it was a it was a significant enough dialogue between me and God that it changed my thinking about myself.
• 23:07
  Abbie Martin: And I I can from from then on, I can say like I wanted to live because of that.
• 23:13
  Chris Jones: Was this something that kind of internally came up through you and it just was there, or was this external?
• 23:19
  Chris Jones: How how did you hear this?
• 23:22
  Abbie Martin: That's a great question.
• 23:24
  Abbie Martin: I would describe it like was in a place of wanting, you could say like a place of prayer or worship where I was already turning my attention to God, like just trying to quiet myself, still my mind, and be like, okay, God, you know, where are you at in here?
• 23:41
  Abbie Martin: Like that was sort of the posture that I was in.
• 23:44
  Abbie Martin: And then in that stillness, I I felt like I guess I could describe it as a thought that was that it felt like not my thought.
• 23:55
  Abbie Martin: You know, in more poetic language, I would have described it as like, you know, God whispered to my heart.
• 24:01
  Abbie Martin: But practically, I think how I would explain it is that I thought a thought in my head that I didn't feel like was coming from me.
• 24:10
  Abbie Martin: And I felt like it was God getting my attention and wanting to say something to me.
• 24:16
  Chris Jones: Has God spoken to you like that before or after?
• 24:19
  Chris Jones: Is this one of the is this the only time?
• 24:23
  Abbie Martin: Well, I'm not, you know, I don't want to sound like a saint here, but I I feel like how I interact with God, I feel like if we are turning our attention to love and saying, okay, what would love say in this moment?
• 24:37
  Abbie Martin: What would you do about this person I'm really ticked at right now?
• 24:40
  Abbie Martin: What do you what would you say about this relationship or love, what would you say about my heart that really hurts right now?
• 24:47
  Abbie Martin: And I think how I experience it is that when I do that, there's an answer that, like, I okay, love would say this.
• 24:55
  Abbie Martin: Love would say to forgive that person I'm really mad at.
• 24:57
  Chris Jones: Yeah.
• 24:58
  Abbie Martin: Right now, love would say, Abby, you're still good, even though you've done this, this, or this.
• 25:03
  Abbie Martin: And I believe that that's the God inside of us communicating with us.
• 25:07
  Abbie Martin: Okay.
• 25:08
  Abbie Martin: So yeah.
• 25:10
  Chris Jones: After you heard this, did the things immediately change, or was this like something that was the start of the change?
• 25:18
  Abbie Martin: Oh, I'd say it was more like a start.
• 25:21
  Abbie Martin: And it's not like, oh, from then on, I only have wonderful thoughts about myself.
• 25:24
  Abbie Martin: You know, it wasn't like anything magical.
• 25:27
  Abbie Martin: But, you know, I think in our in the deep place of us where I believe that God interacts with us, whenever we feel loved there, whenever we feel seen, it it changes us.
• 25:42
  Abbie Martin: I I think being loved unconditionally changes us.
• 25:45
  Abbie Martin: And that's what I was experiencing was unconditional love that I didn't work for, I didn't earn, I didn't, I did, I was, I did nothing impressive to get it.
• 25:56
  Chris Jones: Right.
• 25:57
  Abbie Martin: But I got it anyway.
• 25:58
  Abbie Martin: He was still calling my name, he was still seeing me in my worst.
• 26:02
  Abbie Martin: And so that just just having that thought is what God's like.
• 26:07
  Chris Jones: Kind of changed.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it it changes when we experience God like that.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, it changes how we see ourselves and how we see other people because he's the same for everyone.
• 26:18
  Chris Jones: And that is what's changed your direction and pulled you out of the descent.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: And like, and like I'm okay.
• 26:25
  Chris Jones: Yeah, I'm gonna be all right.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:29
  Chris Jones: So what does that road to recovery look like?
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Well, I stopped wishing I was dead, was the main thing, I guess.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: That it started looking like.
• 26:37
  Chris Jones: Started seeing life differently.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: And at that time, you know, I was still had a lot of immediate healing to do.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: I was still having really bad headaches.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I was still, you know, several pounds underweight.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: I'd lost a lot of weight in the I see you.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, there was still a lot of healing to do.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: But then as I continued healing, I just did so with the perspective that was more hopeful and God likes me way more than I thought he did.
• 27:04
  Chris Jones: Yeah.
• 27:05
  Chris Jones: No matter what happens, it's gonna be okay.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:10
  Chris Jones: Now, as this goes on and life happens, you get better, you physically heal.
• 27:16
  Chris Jones: What does those moments look like in the mirror?
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I went to the dentist pretty quickly and got hooked up with some new fake teeth, which helped my parents quite a bit.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, fake teeth, the fake teeth I have acquired don't look quite like my originals, but you know, they're there.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: It's an improvement anyway.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: And then the scars, so you know, I have one here and on my lip.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: They sent me home from the hospital in Thailand with tons of tubes of aquafore.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Like, I don't know, they were also little too, like 50 little tubes of aquaphore and just told me, you know, as many times a day as I want, just rub aquaphore all over my scars that would help them to heal.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: And they feeled all right.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can still see them, but they're not bad.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: They could be way worse.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: And my, you know, my eyebrows are not exactly even and my lips not exactly even, but yeah, it could be way, way worse than what it is.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, I don't remember having a moment of like I'm looking in the mirror and you know, with like this dramatic, oh, you know, I have scars.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: But, you know, I don't I don't remember that.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: I might have had moments like that, but today what I'm like is you know, I had these scars, but they're all right, and they could be worse.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: And yeah.
• 28:28
  Chris Jones: So you get home and you start getting better.
• 28:30
  Chris Jones: Your attitude changes, you start healing physically.
• 28:33
  Chris Jones: After you heal back up, you go back to India.
• 28:38
  Chris Jones: Is that right?
• 28:39
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, I went back to a few different places.
• 28:41
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 28:41
  Abbie Martin: What I wanted and what how I saw my life was that I would just always live overseas.
• 28:47
  Abbie Martin: You know, I would probably find some land that stood out more than the other lands, and I would just live there forever.
• 28:53
  Abbie Martin: So that's pretty much how I lived my 20s.
• 28:56
  Abbie Martin: Went to several different countries in Southeast Asia to work with.
• 28:59
  Abbie Martin: But, you know, I would sign up for like three month or six-month commitments here or there.
• 29:04
  Abbie Martin: And then I made a friend named Kelly who lived in Hong Kong and worked in the red light district there, helping ladies who were in the red light district.
• 29:12
  Abbie Martin: I just loved that.
• 29:14
  Abbie Martin: Just, just love the ladies, loved that ministry.
• 29:18
  Abbie Martin: And so I ended up moving to Hong Kong and lived there for total of about three years.
• 29:25
  Abbie Martin: Worked with the ministry.
• 29:26
  Abbie Martin: I lived in a safe home.
• 29:28
  Abbie Martin: When a lady was ready to leave the sex industry, she could come live in the safe home with us and we would just like help her raise money and get ready to go back to her home country.
• 29:37
  Abbie Martin: So I did that for a year, maybe two.
• 29:39
  Abbie Martin: I think I did that for two years.
• 29:41
  Abbie Martin: Anyway, just it was a very significant, meaningful couple years and met ladies that I love dearly and still consider like family.
• 29:50
  Abbie Martin: And then it just my time in Hong Kong was like, okay, I think that this is, you know, summing up.
• 29:56
  Abbie Martin: I I don't think I'm gonna be here for the rest of my life.
• 29:59
  Abbie Martin: And so made some plans, like maybe what ministry could look like in the States for a little bit, and then would probably head back overseas.
• 30:07
  Abbie Martin: But during my plan making in the States, I was living in Louisville working with people there that were living on the streets.
• 30:14
  Abbie Martin: So I did that for about a year and just couldn't get over the guy that I've been crushing on for about nine years.
• 30:22
  Chris Jones: And so about what year was this that you're back in the States?
• 30:26
  Chris Jones: And yeah.
• 30:27
  Abbie Martin: So I lived in Louisville working with folks there through 2019.
• 30:31
  Abbie Martin: And then in February of 2020, I started dating my man.
• 30:36
  Chris Jones: Your man.
• 30:37
  Abbie Martin: And that that kept that kept me in the States, yeah.
• 30:41
  Chris Jones: So you found home.
• 30:43
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, I found home.
• 30:44
  Abbie Martin: We started dating in February, got married in 2020, October.
• 30:48
  Abbie Martin: So we've been married for five years.
• 30:51
  Chris Jones: They're the one, they're the one.
• 30:53
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, that's right.
• 30:54
  Chris Jones: So when did you start noticing that you were having issues?
• 30:58
  Chris Jones: Because you healed up, but now there's some other things that start happening.
• 31:03
  Chris Jones: What what did you start noticing?
• 31:04
  Chris Jones: When did you start noticing these things?
• 31:06
  Abbie Martin: So a few months after the wreck, I began having, and it's hard to explain.
• 31:12
  Abbie Martin: My brain would do this thing that would last like 20 or 30 seconds.
• 31:17
  Abbie Martin: And the best way I can explain it is like deja vu.
• 31:21
  Abbie Martin: When deja vu happens, you know, you're like aware that it's happening.
• 31:25
  Abbie Martin: You don't really have any control over it, and you're like, hmm, this is a weird thing.
• 31:28
  Abbie Martin: It's not deja vu, but it was again, that's the best I can explain it.
• 31:32
  Abbie Martin: It's like this thing would happen, my brain would like have all this stuff go on that I couldn't, I couldn't control.
• 31:38
  Abbie Martin: And it was uncomfortable, but I was aware that it was happening and I would think, oh, my brain's doing the weird thing.
• 31:44
  Abbie Martin: I hope it stops soon.
• 31:45
  Abbie Martin: And my heart rate would go up while it was happening.
• 31:47
  Abbie Martin: And then afterwards, like I'm I'm it I would be like, oh, like it was just uncomfortable.
• 31:53
  Abbie Martin: That would happen every few months.
• 31:55
  Abbie Martin: And so I just thought it was some sort of weird PTSD, and it wasn't a big deal.
• 32:00
  Abbie Martin: Like, I it didn't prevent me from doing anything.
• 32:03
  Abbie Martin: If I was driving, I wouldn't wreck, I could keep driving, you know, it wasn't, it didn't seem like a big deal to me.
• 32:08
  Abbie Martin: But it would happen like clockwork every two or three months for years.
• 32:12
  Abbie Martin: My sister Kara would just casually mention once in a while, like, Effie, maybe you should see a neurologist.
• 32:17
  Abbie Martin: And but I was like, no, because we were told, at least what we think we were told, when we left Thailand, there was no lasting damage to my brain that I would it was fully functioning, fully recovered.
• 32:30
  Abbie Martin: And so that's what we all thought for years.
• 32:32
  Abbie Martin: And so finally, 12 years goes by.
• 32:35
  Abbie Martin: I have one of these weird brain things, and I pee my pants during it.
• 32:40
  Abbie Martin: And then my sister, Era's like, Abby, you need to see a neurologist.
• 32:44
  Abbie Martin: I booked the appointment, and so it turns out that the MRI let us know that I do have lasting damage in my brain.
• 32:55
  Abbie Martin: And so it was damaged in the three places, twice in my frontal lobe and once in my occipital lobe.
• 33:02
  Abbie Martin: That was in 2024 that I finally went to the neurologist.
• 33:06
  Abbie Martin: We also learned from him that the weird brain things that I had been having for all those years were seizures.
• 33:14
  Abbie Martin: They were just mild seizures.
• 33:16
  Abbie Martin: And so he put me on a seizure medicine and basically said, you know, you're okay.
• 33:22
  Abbie Martin: We just have to monitor your brain.
• 33:24
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 33:24
  Abbie Martin: And so it was just, it was a shocking and crushing thing to learn that you thought you had a brain that was fully recovered that is actually damaged.
• 33:37
  Abbie Martin: And so it's taken, you know, that was coming up on two years ago.
• 33:42
  Abbie Martin: And it's taken a lot of, I've done a lot of processing and like, you know, what does this mean?
• 33:48
  Abbie Martin: Like, how do you live with brain damage?
• 33:49
  Abbie Martin: And how has it, how has that changed my past 12 years?
• 33:53
  Chris Jones: So what does that mean today?
• 33:55
  Chris Jones: What does that look like?
• 33:57
  Abbie Martin: Well, you know, I don't, I can't like pinpoint and say this behavior or these thought patterns here are because of the brain damage.
• 34:08
  Abbie Martin: Because, you know, everybody changes.
• 34:10
  Abbie Martin: We're, you know, our personalities, I think, change some throughout our lives.
• 34:13
  Abbie Martin: And so I I I can't separate and say, oh, this is because this, this, and this is because of the brain damage.
• 34:20
  Abbie Martin: This, this, this is just from being a human.
• 34:22
  Abbie Martin: I don't know.
• 34:23
  Abbie Martin: I don't I don't have those answers.
• 34:24
  Abbie Martin: I do know, you know, that I have a really pretty poor memory, that I got some OCD tendencies, and that I've had crazy emotional mood swings for years that have been hard.
• 34:36
  Abbie Martin: They've been difficult.
• 34:38
  Abbie Martin: But I'm on this medicine that prevents the seizures that also help stabilize your emotions.
• 34:42
  Abbie Martin: And I think they've gotten a little bit better.
• 34:44
  Abbie Martin: And so all of that I'm, you know, is like brain damage stuff.
• 34:49
  Chris Jones: Yeah.
• 34:49
  Abbie Martin: But you know, just like living 12 years thinking that you had fully recovered, and then finding out, oh, I'm I'm actually, you know, my my thoughts, my processing, my life is forever changed because of August 25th, 2012.
• 35:07
  Abbie Martin: Because I hit a metal pole, I will never be the same.
• 35:10
  Abbie Martin: And I think that that goes it's like that for a lot of us.
• 35:17
  Abbie Martin: You know, a lot of us are it's not because we hit a metal pole and we're brain damaged, but you know, I I went through that divorce or I had that way too early funeral or that diagnosis.
• 35:28
  Abbie Martin: And we think, well, I can recover from that.
• 35:30
  Abbie Martin: I I can get back to 100%, but a lot of it we can't.
• 35:34
  Abbie Martin: So we have to live with the damage.
• 35:36
  Abbie Martin: We have to live with the scarred faces or the damaged brains or the broken hearts.
• 35:41
  Abbie Martin: And that's just, you know, comes from being human, that we we have lasting damage that we've got to live with.
• 35:47
  Chris Jones: What would you say to those people who are experiencing that kind of trauma and that kind of suffering and adversity?
• 35:54
  Chris Jones: What would you tell them?
• 35:56
  Abbie Martin: I tell them that we're in it together, that they're not alone, and that being a human is hard for all the humans, and that I'm sorry.
• 36:04
  Abbie Martin: I would tell them that I believe God sees them where they're at, and that he loves them more than they would ever understand, and that he's with them.
• 36:16
  Abbie Martin: I think that's what I tell them.
• 36:20
  Chris Jones: I uh I have a question.
• 36:22
  Chris Jones: And you don't have to just jump out with an answer.
• 36:25
  Chris Jones: You might want to think about this.
• 36:27
  Chris Jones: What happens if you don't hear from God in that moment where he says, Abby, when you were calling my name, I was calling your name.
• 36:35
  Chris Jones: If you don't have that moment, what happens in Abby's life?
• 36:42
  Abbie Martin: You know, it just it's really hard to say, and I you know, I don't think anyone can say because of the healing that my brain was doing at that time, and who you know, who knows?
• 36:54
  Abbie Martin: I I don't have an answer to that.
• 36:56
  Abbie Martin: I know that that interaction with him was very important to me and my um you know my self-esteem and just seeing the way God is.
• 37:07
  Abbie Martin: I'll say this that it it still today like affects how I view God.
• 37:14
  Abbie Martin: And you know, I'm a I'm a born and bred striver.
• 37:17
  Abbie Martin: Just I gotta get better, I gotta do more, I gotta give more, I gotta be kinder, just all the time.
• 37:24
  Chris Jones: Yeah.
• 37:24
  Abbie Martin: And so that type of interaction with God of, okay, I I'm I have zero anything, I'm at my worst, I'm hurt, I'm ugly, I'm bleeding, I'm I'm that.
• 37:36
  Abbie Martin: I have his attention and his even approval that he even in that moment, he's he's proud of me.
• 37:43
  Abbie Martin: It was like is like the feeling that I have.
• 37:46
  Abbie Martin: That helps get rid of the striving.
• 37:49
  Abbie Martin: Because it's like, well, my goodness, if he loves me unconditionally, then I'm good right now.
• 37:53
  Abbie Martin: And not to say that we shouldn't try to come back, you know, become better.
• 37:56
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, you know, have goals and stuff, but yeah, it helps me for sure to lay down some of that striving because God is just saying, no, no, no, you're good now.
• 38:07
  Chris Jones: Yeah.
• 38:08
  Chris Jones: I don't think there's anything you can do to make God love you anymore, just like there's nothing you can do to make God love you any less.
• 38:16
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, that's right.
• 38:17
  Abbie Martin: That's right.
• 38:18
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 38:19
  Chris Jones: I think when people hear this, it's easy to think that in the worst times that you can pray and beg God and then he will be there.
• 38:28
  Chris Jones: And I do believe that he will be there.
• 38:30
  Chris Jones: But then you had told me that you had an another experience, like with your father.
• 38:35
  Abbie Martin: So the the brain injury was hard.
• 38:39
  Abbie Martin: You know, it's a rough thing that life has presented that I'm living with, but losing my dad, way harder.
• 38:46
  Abbie Martin: Way worse.
• 38:48
  Abbie Martin: By far the hardest thing I've had to walk through yet.
• 38:51
  Chris Jones: When did you lose your dad?
• 38:53
  Abbie Martin: I I lost him two months after I got married at the end of 2020.
• 38:58
  Abbie Martin: He died on December 19th.
• 38:59
  Abbie Martin: He got COVID, couldn't, couldn't kick it, and died in the hospital.
• 39:04
  Abbie Martin: And so, thank you.
• 39:07
  Abbie Martin: He was the best dad in the universe, just amazing.
• 39:11
  Abbie Martin: And so he left a humongous hole that we're all, you know, we're we're we just miss him every day.
• 39:18
  Abbie Martin: When I was in the hospital in the ICU, you know, people prayed, people read certain Bible verses, they fasted, they proclaimed, you know, I I come from a charismatic sort of place.
• 39:28
  Abbie Martin: And so, you know, you pray for healing and you pray for you pray for miracles.
• 39:34
  Abbie Martin: And so seemingly, you know, that's what happened to me.
• 39:37
  Abbie Martin: I got a miracle.
• 39:39
  Abbie Martin: My, you know, my people prayed hard enough and I lived.
• 39:42
  Abbie Martin: And that's kind of how I always viewed it.
• 39:44
  Abbie Martin: So then when my dad got sick, we did all the same stuff.
• 39:48
  Abbie Martin: We prayed, we fasted, we read the Bible verses, we proclaimed the word of God, you know, we did all this stuff, but it ended in a funeral.
• 39:57
  Abbie Martin: Since my dad died over the past five years, I've just had lot done a lot a lot of processing and thinking and like, okay, what do I believe about this?
• 40:06
  Abbie Martin: Like, what does prayer do?
• 40:08
  Abbie Martin: Like, why are sometimes there miracles and sometimes there aren't?
• 40:12
  Abbie Martin: And I have a total of zero answers.
• 40:15
  Abbie Martin: But how I see it now is that I I I don't know.
• 40:24
  Abbie Martin: Well, you know, I got better, I got to walk out of Thailand, I wasn't in a body bag.
• 40:29
  Abbie Martin: And if the people hadn't prayed the certain prayers or if they hadn't fasted those days, would God have not healed me?
• 40:37
  Abbie Martin: Like I, you know, I don't know.
• 40:38
  Abbie Martin: I'm not I'm not sure the the part that prayer played.
• 40:42
  Abbie Martin: And I I believe that it did play a part, and I believe that God did help.
• 40:45
  Abbie Martin: I just I don't know exactly, you know, like how that all worked.
• 40:49
  Abbie Martin: So I don't I don't think I got to walk out of Thailand because pe my people prayed hard enough.
• 40:54
  Abbie Martin: And I don't think that my dad died because his people didn't pray hard enough.
• 40:59
  Abbie Martin: I think the answer to both is I don't know.
• 41:04
  Abbie Martin: And that God's with us.
• 41:05
  Abbie Martin: He's with us when we when we walk out of the hospital, and he's with us when we have to go to a funeral.
• 41:11
  Abbie Martin: Our dad doesn't walk out of the hospital.
• 41:13
  Abbie Martin: That's the biggest thing that I believe now is just God being close when it's really good, and God being close when it's really bad.
• 41:23
  Abbie Martin: That's how I see him now.
• 41:25
  Chris Jones: I think that's a pretty incredibly strong message.
• 41:28
  Chris Jones: Sometimes you walk away and sometimes you don't walk away.
• 41:32
  Chris Jones: Life is life and he's still God.
• 41:35
  Abbie Martin: That's right.
• 41:36
  Abbie Martin: That's right.
• 41:36
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 41:37
  Abbie Martin: In the years of grieving my dad, it's not all been like, you know, trying to figure out my new theology.
• 41:43
  Abbie Martin: It's also been really, there's also been a lot of good and love-filled things that have happened as I've grieved my dad.
• 41:51
  Abbie Martin: And one of those is just as I think about his life and like the way he lived it and how he prioritized his days, like we were everything.
• 42:00
  Abbie Martin: His daughters and mom, and my mom, his wife, we were all he cared about.
• 42:05
  Abbie Martin: And he made the way he lived every day very apparent.
• 42:09
  Abbie Martin: Like that was we were his only priority.
• 42:11
  Abbie Martin: And so as I'm looking at my dad, of course, I'm seeing that God must be the same.
• 42:17
  Abbie Martin: You know, that God must be just crazy about us.
• 42:22
  Abbie Martin: And then, as in the midst of all this, as I've become a mom, you know, my daughter Roz, she started doing this thing where she smiles so big, her whole face is taken over with a smile and she scrunches her nose.
• 42:36
  Abbie Martin: You know, I've been able to see some beautiful sights and do some cool stuff in my life.
• 42:41
  Abbie Martin: I've, you know, zipline through the jungle in Thailand and rode a hot air balloon in Southern California and spent a summer watching the sunrise over the Pacific Ocean in Mozambique, and, you know, rode a cable car through the Swiss Alps.
• 42:57
  Abbie Martin: But none of that, none of the experiences, none of the beauty I've seen comes even close to the wonder of watching Roz scrunch her nose when she smiles.
• 43:08
  Abbie Martin: It is just unbelievable beauty.
• 43:11
  Abbie Martin: And so, you know, motherhood has me drawing some conclusions about God that he must be the same.
• 43:18
  Abbie Martin: But see, watches the cosmos and watches galaxies collide and the rings around Saturn spin, that he must be like, yeah, that's cool.
• 43:27
  Abbie Martin: But have you ever watched Abby make pancakes for her kids?
• 43:31
  Abbie Martin: Or have you ever watched Chris sit at his desk and edit a podcast because he wants to encourage people?
• 43:39
  Abbie Martin: That we, that humans, all of us, are the thing that move God.
• 43:43
  Abbie Martin: That we he is, I believe he's obsessed with us.
• 43:46
  Chris Jones: And there's something in what you're you're saying that reminds me conversation I just had the other day about faith is less about believing and more about trusting.
• 43:57
  Chris Jones: And that when we trust, we do.
• 43:59
  Chris Jones: We just have to trust that it is what it is supposed to be, whatever that is.
• 44:05
  Chris Jones: But we still are very much loved and that God is still there, even if we don't understand, and we just have to trust that we're not always going to get the answers, and that's okay.
• 44:16
  Chris Jones: That's uh that's an incredible story, Abby.
• 44:19
  Chris Jones: There's so much in that that we all can learn from and and be given some insight.
• 44:27
  Chris Jones: And and I and I think you put it beautifully.
• 44:30
  Chris Jones: God sees us all exactly as that amazing person that He just has so much love for.
• 44:38
  Abbie Martin: That's right.
• 44:39
  Chris Jones: Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story.
• 44:43
  Chris Jones: But tell us what you've got going on.
• 44:44
  Chris Jones: Uh, because you say you have a candle business.
• 44:47
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 44:47
  Abbie Martin: Yeah.
• 44:48
  Abbie Martin: Little marketing here.
• 44:49
  Abbie Martin: So I'm a stay-at-home mom, but I can pour candles, you know, as I'm a stay-at-home mom.
• 44:54
  Abbie Martin: So that's nice little gig.
• 44:56
  Abbie Martin: My candle company is called Sunrise Sunset Candles.
• 45:00
  Chris Jones: We'll put a link in the episode so people can click on it.
• 45:04
  Abbie Martin: Yep.
• 45:04
  Abbie Martin: So they're earth-friendly, you know, they're made with clean oils, not gonna there's no toxins, not gonna give you cancer.
• 45:10
  Abbie Martin: They have wooden wicks and recycled containers.
• 45:13
  Abbie Martin: So I'm running a little recycling plant on my front porch, is how I like to put it.
• 45:17
  Abbie Martin: And people just leave jars on my porch all the time.
• 45:19
  Abbie Martin: And then I turn them into candles.
• 45:21
  Abbie Martin: Nice.
• 45:21
  Abbie Martin: So yeah, I make candles, and then, you know, mostly my whole life is just, you know, being with my kiddos, raising them and being amazed by them.
• 45:29
  Chris Jones: So if people want to talk to you, is that okay if they reach out?
• 45:33
  Abbie Martin: Well, sure.
• 45:33
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, I'd love for them to reach out.
• 45:36
  Chris Jones: Okay.
• 45:36
  Chris Jones: Well, I'll share your contact information in the episode so people can get in touch with you.
• 45:40
  Chris Jones: And I hope everybody goes and buys a bunch of candles.
• 45:44
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, me too.
• 45:45
  Abbie Martin: Me too.
• 45:45
  Chris Jones: And it'd be awesome.
• 45:46
  Chris Jones: Abby, thank you so much.
• 45:48
  Chris Jones: This has been fantastic, and I appreciate you sharing.
• 45:51
  Abbie Martin: Yeah, I really appreciate you having me, Chris.
• 45:53
  Abbie Martin: Thank you.
• 45:54
  Chris Jones: Thank you.
• 45:55
  Chris Jones: Thank you guys for joining us today.
• 45:58
  Chris Jones: I hope you got something out of it.
• 46:00
  Chris Jones: Because sometimes we make it through the storm and sometimes we don't.
• 46:04
  Chris Jones: But we can always trust that he'll give us what we need to endure this storm.
• 46:09
  Chris Jones: If you like the flavor of the sauce, then follow and share.
• 46:13
  Chris Jones: And if you can relate to having scars that speak, then reach out to me.
• 46:19
  Chris Jones: Maybe we'll get you on the show.
• 46:20
  Chris Jones: Thanks, guys.
• 46:22
  Chris Jones: We'll see you again next week.