Eventually, my condition stabilized enough to begin physical rehabilitation. I was sent to a veterans physical rehab hospital in the Midwest united states. They believed I was always going to  always be paralyzed from the neck down. I should focus on accepting my condition and learning to live whatever life I had left. By that time I was on heavy doses of morphine and valium to minimize the severe spasms and pain. 

I was still traumatized and coming to the realization that I had lost everything; How could I possibly regain what I lost? I could start working out. But that created a conflict.

I wound up being a horrible patient there. I refused to do there community readjustment classes until they started giving me the rehab to walk again, and they wouldn’t do that because I was to unstable to try. You couldn’t blame them for their position. I’m sure every person that came in there had those hopes and I was probably just another person who wouldn’t accept the obvious. However, I made them my enemy and we battled for weeks and weeks turned into months and finally, after 1 year since my accident, they labeled me an uncooperative patient and discharged me.

But I left my own way. On check out day, I stopped in front of the nurses desk, got up and pushed my wheelchair out of the hospital. But let me back up a few months.

Over time, movement began to slowly return, and I would excersise, on my own, whatever I could. The feeling in my limbs never returned. But slowly, some of the movement did. Soon, the staff was aware of this and absolutely forbid me to try to stand because they were afraid of me falling and reinjuring myself; my neck was very unstable. So, when the nurses put everyone to bed, I would wedge my electric wheel chair between the wall and the bed and pull myself up and practice standing, and eventually stepping.

At this point I had absolutely no feeling from the knees down, but the muscles worked enough that I could work out and get stronger as time went by. I thought about God during this time and was sure He was involved, but I didn't understand and thought Him random at best.

So I went back home to Oklahoma on an emotional high, ready to conquer the world. That is when I was forced to consider who I was now. I was 25. All of my training and skills in life were construction and cars and running engines in a navy ship, Those skills were useless now.

. So not clear on what to do, I enrolled in college and got married to my wonderful wife Jamie in 1991. But I would be well, then sick over and over with all sorts of complications, and eventually I developed a problem with my foot that in 1992 had put me back in a wheelchair. After about 8 months of struggling to fix it, they finally did a surgery that would fix the problem by removing the bone in one toe and replacing it with a metal rod. After waiting about 2 weeks, the day had finally arrived to remove the  stitches. On the way there, a truck hit my mothers car. My feet went into the floorboard and the rod came out of my foot upon impact and also rebroke my shoulder blade..

I recovered physically, but it damaged me mentally. I began to wonder about this God issue and why he would lead me so far, only to abandon me now. Hadn’t I been good enough. I may not have known God but I wasn’t an idiot. I believe He had intervened in my life in a major way. What did I have to do to earn his favor again. What was the key?