WOUNDED BUT NOT BROKEN: FINDING PURPOSE THROUGH PAIN
THE PHYSICAL JOURNEY:
The Attack
On 7 November 2023, Simoné (my then girlfriend, now wife) and I were studying for two final exams and worked late that night at Stellenbosch University. At 10pm, we left the Engineering Building and walked towards my car. As we were walking, Simoné heard the footsteps of three guys behind us. Suddenly, all three guys rushed towards us and one of them immediately stabbed me in the chest.
The man who stabbed me kept trying to fight me while the second guy ran away almost immediately and the third guy seemed to hang around as backup. I used my hand as well as my laptop and bag to try and block the blows from the guy who stabbed me – all in an effort to protect both myself and Simoné. During this incident he also stabbed my hand and I could see the bone. I threw the things I was holding at them and I told Simoné to run and we both ran back towards the building.
Up until this point I hadn’t realised that I’d been stabbed, because of the adrenalin but I felt warmth and wetness on my chest and when I looked down I noticed blood pumping at the same rate as my heart. I put pressure on the wound (as every good movie taught me to do).
As we were running back to the building, car lights approached and the driver of the bakkie stopped to ask us what had happened. I explained that I had been stabbed and he offered to take us to hospital. I hopped into the back of the bakkie with Simoné, and the driver took us to the Stellenbosch Mediclinic, which is about five kilometres from where we were. Simoné was holding me and holding my chest, trying to stop the blood and wondering if I was going to die in her arms. We prayed together and then we started to praise the Lord singing “Our God is an Awesome God.” We didn’t know what else to do and the song just welled up.
The Hospital
I didn’t realise how badly injured I was and as they brought a stretcher to the bakkie I got up to get onto the stretcher. I was taken into the ER and the doctor on duty started to sew the wound closed. The knife had gone straight through my lung, causing it to collapse and filled my abdominal cavity with blood. The doctors immediately took action in draining it.
My parents and Simoné’s parents came straight away. Shortly after this, I was moved to the Mediclinic Vergelegen in Somerset West where they have a cardiac unit and heart surgeons. The doctors did various scans and I was in the ICU for 5 days and then I was moved to the general unit.
CTOn the day that I was supposed to be discharged, the doctor said, “I don’t feel comfortable. Let me just run one more CT scan.” With this final scan, they discovered that my aorta had indeed been nicked, as they were not aware of this before due to the likelihood of survival being too small to consider the injury. They said if the knife cut a larger slit of just 1 or 2 mm, it would have killed me. I was immediately sent back to ICU and scheduled for surgery, where they stitched up my lungs and performed a posterolateral thoracotomy to inspect the damage done to my aorta.
The doctor’s said there was the danger of a pseudoaneurysm, and I stayed in the hospital for about two and half weeks. There were a few complications and then the long journey to healing.
What I’ve recounted so far is what happened physically, but there was so much that happened spiritually too.
THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY:
As I lay in the hospital bed, one of things I wondered about was, ‘Why weren’t we protected from the attack’? Psalm 23:4 was highlighted to Simoné later on that reads, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Jesus doesn’t prevent us from walking through the valleys, however, He is with us.
I also realised that the men didn’t hurt who I was, only my body. I thought about what it means for Jesus to protect me. Is he just protecting my meat box or is He protecting my spirit and soul? I realised that because of God’s word, they couldn’t attack me unless I let them. They couldn’t take anything from me emotionally or spiritually unless I let them. Most of the apostles in the Bible walked closely with God, but their bodies suffered heavily in this world. God’s protection of what matters is different from what I initially thought of as a simplistic protection of my body.
Forgiveness vs Revenge
Simoné went for counselling and it turned out that some of what the counsellor encouraged her to do, I was already doing in the hospital. Processing the incident. I used the word of God to strengthen my mind.
A lot of people asked if I had forgiven the attackers, or if I wanted revenge or bad things to happen to them. I honestly didn’t. My first knee-jerk reaction was not “kill them” or “hurt them” even though some people around me thought it should be.
I spent time in the hospital reading Colossians and I felt Jesus say, “I died that night for you, in your place. I gave my life up for you and you are a sinner, likewise can you forgive them?”
I don’t want to grow a seed of bitterness. It’s too much of a hassle to take on the responsibility of revenge. In Romans 12:19, God says “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” I know God is just and he will make what happens happen, whether they are punished in this life, or beyond, or whether they come to repentance and receive the same forgiveness that I have received. The only reason I can forgive is because I know God is good and just.
Taking Thoughts Captive
Whenever a thought popped into my head that wasn’t from God I was able to take thoughts captive immediately because I knew the scriptures.
God’s goodness, faithfulness and His justice undergirded me and I knew that God died for the guys who attacked me too. However, there was one doubt I struggled with…
Matthew 7:21-23 was going around in my head:
21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
I came so close to losing my life and in the hospital I still wasn’t sure at that point if I was going to survive. I asked Jesus, “Lord do you know me”? This was an internal battle and I hadn’t shared this with anyone. I prayed a lot in the hospital. “Lord, I need to know. Do you know me?”
One morning when Simoné came to visit, she said that she’d had a dream and wanted to tell me about it. She said that she had been worried about whether I was going to live and that night she had a dream where Jesus came down on a cloud and she asked him if I was going to be okay. He answered “I know him.”
I was shocked. Jesus had answered my question.
The Value of Our Relationship with Jesus and Our Identity in Him
When I was in the hospital, after the doctors discovered the nick in the aorta, they weren’t sure why I was alive. They didn’t have scientific answers that I could hold on to and I was acutely aware that my life was in God’s hands. His hand was keeping me alive and at any moment he could remove His hand if he chose.
What I realised was everything that you see is temporary and everything we don’t see is eternal. Sometimes the spiritual feels distant but I could feel that everything I was seeing physically was so far away and God was the only anchor. He was the closest thing to me.
I realised that everything around me was fading. Who I thought I was faded away. All the people I loved, I could lose. All the school work, all the work I did over the years. None of this would cross over to eternity with me. The only thing that remained was my relationship with God. Everything I’d invested in my relationship with Jesus in my life is the only thing that will count when I die.
Moving forward
I am very grateful that not only has God given me another chance in life, but also given me a new perspective on how to use this wonderful gift that is the present. I have learnt a lot from this experience, however I wouldn’t wish this hurt on anyone.
Moving forward, I have many hopes and dreams in the future knowing that my faith in the Lord is all that matters, no matter what I do, and oh what a beautiful thing that is.
For anyone reading this, I’d say, focus on what matters and trust in the Lord. – Dylan Farge
