Testimony
In 2014, my husband and I were in a head-on vehicle collision north of Toronto, Ontario, on Highway 69. The impact was equal to a total speed of about 125 miles per hour. It was a fatal crash for the driver who hit us, and in that moment, we did not know if we would survive.
Watch Marina share her testimony on Youtube (7:22) - click image.
I incurred four lacerations to my bowels and was nearly dead by time I reached the hospital. But God preserved my life. At the crash site, within seconds, I was surrounded by emergency workers who prevented me from moving, thus saving my life. A top surgeon was waiting for me at the hospital when I arrived and realized that there was no time for tests to determine my injuries. She immediately administered life-saving surgery by examining all of my organs by hand, and then another top surgeon repaired the damaged areas. Again, my life was saved.
The next urgent need was to make sure I did not lose hope and give up on life as the horror of what had happened gradually dawned on me. When I woke up after surgery, my husband’s fate was still unsure, and I felt completed disoriented—hardly able to communicate and suffering chronic memory loss. Again, God was present. For the whole first week of my recovery, a team of truly tender-hearted ICU nurses did not leave my side, even for a moment.
Eventually, I was told I had experienced significant physical injuries and suffered a minor brain injury. In the days that followed, I was diagnosed with severe posttraumatic stress disorder, among other emotional and mental incapacities.
Although my mental state was poor and I was constantly anxious, we discovered that it could have been much worse. In the process of trying to reconstruct how the crash occurred, a detective interviewed my husband. The detective shared that the computer program his department uses could not produce a scenario where my husband survived. My husband responded that at the last moment, when the breaks disengaged and all was lost, he threw his body over the caddy and leaned over the passenger’s side as far as he could so that his body would protect me from any projectile or broken glass. He had held my head back against the headrest to minimize my whiplash. This act not only saved me from a much worse brain injury but also saved his own life from being crushed by the engine that was pushed upward into his driver’s seat.
Our road to recovery has been long. I needed to learn how to overcome depression, anxiety, and hyper attentiveness. Regaining my cognitive functions was a slow process and required me to completely reorder my life. I had to accept that the memories of my past might never return.
Most painful of all was the diagnosis that I would not be able to have children. If I did get pregnant, I was told, it would be very painful and risky.
But God’s ways are beyond our imagination. God takes the most impossible situation and turns it for good. God takes the broken pieces of our lives and puts us back together. God picks us up when we can’t walk any further. When all seems lost, God redeems our life and fills us with joy.
Today, my life is a testimony that with God all things are possible.
My husband and I live in South Florida, where our injuries continue to heal. By God’s grace, we have a wonderful little daughter, Willow Grace Hannah, who is the daily delight of our lives.
Despite aches and pains—ongoing reminders of how far God has brought us and what could have happened that fateful day—we have a joyful life, with many laughs and daily dance parties in our living room, often to Christmas music.
We worship and serve at Christ Fellowship Gardens Campus, where we are blessed with genuine community and rest for our souls.
