The Scariest Day of My Life

On Tuesday morning as I laid my head back on the table and was carried backward into the CAT scan machine I began thinking things I never had before. What if this was the moment that doctors found out something was terribly wrong with me. How would I handle it? What would happen to my family?

Four hours prior to my head scan I had passed out in the shower. My eyes rolled back in my head, and all of my weight fell from standing to my head hitting the shower knobs, the faucet, and the tub— this is what my wife tells me. She saw the whole thing. I had called her into the bathroom after shutting off the water because I had started feeling the worst head rush that wouldn’t go away. I told her I felt light headed and she told me I was really pale. The next thing I remember I was being called awake by a frantic wife and a screaming child.

My wife thinks in total I was out for 30 seconds or so. To my wife it felt like an eternity. As she rushed me to the ER, with tears in her eyes, she told me that she thought she had lost me. Those are the words that I cannot believe were uttered to me. I’m 27 years old, relatively healthy, and no signs to anything wrong—and in those few moments I could have been gone. Forever.

After two hours sitting in the waiting room with the most uncomfortable neck brace on, I was brought back to have an EKG, blood work, vital sign testing, and eventually the CAT scan. As the machine spun around my head I was trying to comfort myself. The words that popped in my head seem cliché, but I believe this to be the right time for them—“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want… though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil. For your rod and your staff comfort me.” (That’s a bit paraphrased… but it’s the words I knew in the moment)

Fortunately I came away from this weirdest day of my life almost completely unscathed. No broken bones, no head wound, no neck brace. The most I have is a spot under my jaw that looks like I cut myself shaving. However, I feel I have gained quite the perspective. I want the words I used to comfort me to be the way I live my life. I think it would be completely wrong to come away feeling like I needed to take control of my life—seize the day, live every moment to the fullest, have no regrets, YOLO, etc. If I learned anything from the experience it’s that I was in complete control going into the shower and in an instant that was taken from me. It would be wrong then for me to think I could ever have that control over my life.

I want to walk away from this knowing that God is in control always. Conversations I’ve had with my wife since, morbid as they may be—but appropriate, is that if anything had or does happen to me I want my family to know—God is Good. Always. He is always in control and He is good. In life or in death, whether He gives or takes away, He is good, sovereign, and in control. Not that I was good enough, not that I deserved anything, but that I trusted in the one who made me to bring me to whatever end He saw fit. My family is in my care as I live, but I know that if or when I am taken from this life, the only comfort is that we belong to Christ. We are in His care. As sheep from His fold, His rod and His staff comfort us. And I will follow His leading as long as I live.

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Austin Hilmer

About the Author:
Austin serves on staff at Westchester as Associate Pastor of Corporate Worship