A Changed Life

That which occurred seemed like a nightmare, but it was not. Once I was a healthy and strong man; but I became disabled. Another transformation was about to take place in a way I never would have imagined.

It was August 8, 1987 when I had a drastic change in my life. I was passing by a bar and decided to go in for a drink. I was not aware that there was a man inside who wanted to kill me. I had my drink and calmly walked toward the door. Then I felt a strong pain in my back and fell to the floor. That man had just stabbed me in the back with a knife. The blade penetrated to my spinal cord, leaving me a paraplegic. I would never be able to walk again.

At the hospital, I was examined by a doctor. After looking at the x-rays, the doctor told my mother if I did not die I would be disabled for the rest of my life. My wife asked if I wold be able to walk; and the doctor answered that if it should happen it would only be by a miracle. In medicine there was so solution for my condition.

A Disabled Man

There I lay in the hospital bed a disabled man. All of my thirty nine years I had been a strong and healthy man. I worked as a taxi driver in São Paulo City, Brazil, and enjoyed my job very much. It was not the earnings to be made in my job that caused me to enjoy driving, because they were not that much. The freedom I had to spend all my time in the streets is what I enjoyed. I felt the job left me free to occupy myself with women, games, drinking, smoking and partying. My desire was to have fun and I did not, in any measure, consider the future.

My disability threw my mind into a whirlpool of thoughts and fears. How would I make a living? If I were never able to walk again, how could I live lying down or sitting in the same place? The lose of liberty left me without hope. I had spent one month already lying on the hospital bed when the first bed sores appeared. The lack of sensibility in my skin and my inability to change positions in the bed caused sores to appear where the skin was in contact with the sheets. Because the sores would not heal, my condition worsened day by day.

In an attempt to give the sores an opportunity to heal, they left me lying on my side night and day. They would not let me lie on my back any more. Soon sores appeared on both sides of my body. This caused the nurses to instruct me to lie on my belly. I spent many days in the same position – alone with my thoughts, my complaints, my pains. I did not want to believe this was happening to me. In my bitterness I thought, "My God, what suffering!"

Things Get Even Worse

Very shortly an infection occurred and created a fever so high that medicines were not able to control it. The quantity of drugs given to combat the infection made me weaker and weaker. I developed a very serious anemia. The pallor caused by the anemia gave the resemblance of a corpse. At this point the doctors decided to transfer me to another hospital.

Arriving at the new hospital, I underwent a series of tests. These tests revealed a severe and very serious infection in the urinary tract. It was destroying my body. The infection was the reason for my fever. There I received better treatment for the bed sores. High doses of antibiotics were given in an effort to stop that infection. One month later I began to feel I was loosing my hearing. Tests revealed the excess medications damaged my auditory nerve and soon the doctor said I would need a hearing aid if I wanted to hear anything again. In my sad state of mind, it was no more a concern to me. I was already disabled and unable to walk. If I were to become a deaf person, what did it matter? I had ad lost all hope and the desire to live.

Back Home

I spent two years in that hospital. They were two ears of sorrow, pain, and despair. Days were filled with my looking up to the ceiling, looking at the walls, or looking down at the floor. Some bed sores had healed while others were breaking out. Infections would leave me and then come back. One day the doctor told me it was time for me to go home.

To return home was a very great shock. I had left home walking on two healthy legs; now I was coming back carried by others. It was July, 1989. Of my former health, there was nothing left. I was a destroyed man. Trying to escape from my problems, I began to drink regularly and smoke day and night. I constantly looked for ways to escape from reality that had turned its crude face toward me. I was irritable and vicious, even when I could get up to sit in a wheel chair.

Very soon fights with my wife, who worked all day to provide for me, followed. She would come home at the end of the work day to find me totally drunk and violent.

Running Away from Reality

In January 1990 I made the decision to return to my home in Alagoas, a state in the Northern part of Brazil. If I had to die, I thought it better to die where I was born. I could no longer stand the life I was forced to live. I instructed my wife to buy an airplane ticked and she, poor woman, did all she could to accomplish my will. She worked all she could and borrowed money from friends and relatives until she was able to buy the ticket.

Before my departure, I received a visit from some Christians who gave me a Bible. I read only a verse or two but they made no sense to me. I had no desire to read that book. I felt I was condemned and had no interest about what God wanted to say to me.

On February 11, 1990 I traveled to the state of Alagoas. By the end of that year my health had begun to get worse. The bed sores returned worse than ever; and the infection in my urinary track also came back. To make things worse, the town into which I moved did not have the same resources that were available in São Paulo City. This made my treatment even more difficult. At this time I was continuing with smoking and drinking without stopping.

Trying to Regenerate Myself

I vividly remember a rainy day in August of 1991. I had already been four years confined to a bed or a wheel chair. I felt I could not stand to live this way any longer. As I was drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette in the kitchen of my mother�s home, with whom I had gone to live; I began to feel a heat inside me. The bed sores began to hurt, causing such great agony I thought I was going to die. It was at this moment I thought about God. I prayed the only way I knew, "My God, my Father, if I do not die now, I want You to give me strength to not put another cigarette in my mouth." From that day on I was able to live without smoking, but I continued drinking.

December 15, l991 came; it was the day of my anniversary. I could not drink that day because I had a bad cold. When Christmas came, my desire was to drink without stopping. It was eight in the morning before I was able to ask someone to buy me a bottle of brandy. I started drinking it with my brother. We had done with that bottle by eleven, but I wanted to drink even more. They finally had to take me back to bed because I had collapsed in the wheel chair. I was killing myself little by little.

I Did Not Want God

When New Year�s day arrived, I asked my family to buy me some beer. They were all against my will. I had almost died from the drinking at Christmas, but wanted to drink again. Because they insisted on that, I made a decision: it would be the last time I would drink. They agreed they would bring me the beer. I took it as a challenge. It was my farewell to years lost in that vice. When they brought the beer, I drank only two glasses that put an end to my career as an alcoholic. My determination was coming back, but my Bible, still lying in a drawer, was forgotten. I still did not want anything to do with God.

My health began to get worse again and I tried to find room in the hospital in Arapiraca but was not able to do so. I tried to find room for treatment in a hospital in Maceió, the State capitol. I waited during the whole year for an answer that never came. I wrote to my wife who had stayed in São Paulo telling her I would like to come back home. She replied, insisting that I should be patient.

One Disappointment After Another

In November 1993, I had another disappointment. With help from the Mayor of our town, my father was able to get an ambulance to take me to Maceió. I made the trip happily with the thought that I would finally receive good treatment. When the doctor and the hospital director saw my condition and the bed sores I had all over my body, they simply decided they would have nothing to do with me. They sent me back! Even the hospital staff thought it would not be worth while for them to spend time with me.

For two years I had been unable to sit down in my wheel chair because of the sores. At night I would sleep on a water bed and during the day they put, lying on my belly, in the wheel chair stretched out like it was a litter.

A Light At Last

My humiliating return from Maceió made me think there would never be any solution for my problems. I was able to get to sleep very late that night. Strangely, when I awoke, I felt the Lord Jesus was comforting me. That moment I opened my Bible and read a few verses. I realized it was time to make a decision, but I was still very uncertain. I was paralyzed, without any hope. In spite of my having, by the strength of my own will, stopped smoking and drinking, I still had no peace.

On November 20, 1993, at about two o�clock in the afternoon, a van stopped in front of my house. Three men and one woman came out. When they se me lying there they asked me what had happened. I told them my story. One of them asked me if I was aware that the Lord Jesus had as much power to heal me as He had to save me from my sins. I answered that I did. He then opened the Bible and read in Mark 16:16, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned."

That verse from God�s Word convinced me I needed to believe on the Lord Jesus. I needed to accept that the Lord Jesus died on the cross in my place to pay for my guilt. I accepted the Lord Jesus that day and received Him as my Savior. Thanks to God I was then a new creature. My sins had all been forgiven and heaven became my sure and eternal destiny.

Back to My Wife

I wrote my wife telling her what had happened to me. She answered, telling me to come back to São Paulo because I would be welcome. She also had been converted. I thanked God. He began to show me that He had never abandoned me. He had always been there, waiting for me to accept all the love and care He wanted to give me. On January 6, 1995, I came back to São Paulo to my home. I was very well received by my wife. She soon took me to the Hospital das Clínicas where I could receive treatment. It was not long before I was on my to recovery from the sores and the urinary infection.

A New Beginning

I had many things to learn. I was impatient and unwilling to wait for anything. The difference was I now had God�s Word to teach me and the Holy Spirit to apply it to my life. One day, reading James 5:7, I understood what God wanted for me. He gave me the patience I needed. Glory be given Him for this! "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he received the early and latter rain."

From that day I began a new life with my wife, a life of peace and happiness. Even until this day it seems as though we are living in a honeymoon. What a beautiful thing it is when a couple of believers live in the presence of the Lord. It does not matter how great are the problems. The blessed Lord will always provide a solution.

A Savior Who Cares

Today I know the Lord Jesus loves me. Because He died on the cross for my sins, God has forgiven me. If the Lord wanted to reach me through my anguish, I could rest in knowing His will is perfect. What are the years of my suffering compared to the suffering His loved caused Him to endure for me? Today I can truthfully say, "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want." (Psalm 23:1) Now, even when I am depressed in the bed of pain, I cry to Him from the bottom of my heart: "Heal me, O Lord and I shall be healed, save me, and I shall be saved: for Thou art my praise." (Jeremiah 17:14).

For all that He has done for me, I want to serve Him wholeheartedly. I earnestly want you to pay attention to these words. Perhaps you have not suffered like I have, perhaps you were not stabbed like I was. Perhaps you cannot even imagine what it would be like to be paralyzed, but just like me you are a sinner in need of a Savior, in need of the forgiveness of your sins. God used suffering to attract me to Himself. I hope and pray He does not have to use the same means to get your attention.

Christ died on the cross to save us; He received from God the punishment you and I deserved. All that He suffered was so that you and I could be freed from our sins and death. But it is necessary for you to accept this, that you believe on Him as your personal Savior. It is necessary that you receive from Him the forgiveness of your sins in order for you to have peace. I sincerely hope you come to God, right there where you are, and make the decision to trust the Lord Jesus as your only and all sufficient Savior. Talk to Him – He is waiting for you!

"How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" (Hebrews 2:3).