On May 3rd, 2012, I was in a near fatal car accident and suffered what was assumed to be a career ending traumatic brain injury (TBI). Miraculously, I returned to doctoring in just five months.
However, because of complications of my TBI, I was forced to retire from my medical practice just three years later, in January of 2016. This was a very difficult time for me, full of questions about me and my family's future.
What was it going to look like?
What would I do now?
What would be my new purpose?
It was about this time I began to have this never ending, nagging feeling that I was supposed to tell people my story. You see, God had been working so many miracles in my life. He had miraculously saved my life and I had recovered to an extent no one thought was possible. He had also miraculously changed my heart which changed me more than anything else had. I felt like I needed to share these things and what I'd been learning with others.
But because of some language and verbalization issues I had developed as result of my TBI, my words would never come out the way I intended them to come out. So for some time, I stopped trying. Because I couldn't tell my story in a way I felt it deserved, I chose to not tell it at all.
But this wasn't sitting well with me. When I explained to someone the situation I was in, they suggested that I try journaling. They thought writing might be a good way to get my thoughts out. The problem was I didn't like writing and was never any good at it. But I tried it anyway.
And you know what, it proved to be worthwhile. I seemed to have a much easier time explaining myself when writing over speaking. Then one day, I decided to share some of what I'd written with some friends of mine and they suggested I do a blog.
Again, I was initially resistant to the idea of blogging, thinking that I didn't have what it took to write in a way that was worthy of my story. But after some continued encouragement to do so, I decided to start a blog. This was in the summer of 2016.
Soon after this, my family and I moved to Franklin, TN. It wasn't long after this when a friend of mine convinced me to submit a book proposal. He was confident that my story and the journey I'd been on following my brain injury was worthy of being written about in a book. I decided to do this, and within a few days of submitting my proposal, I was offered a book deal with a publisher.
So now it is the summer of 2018. My book, Finding Normal: An Uninvited Change, An Unexpected Outcome, is completed and is set to come out in stores later this year on November 6th.
As I wait for it's release, I pray that my book will bring hope to all its readers. I pray that when they read it, they might might see a God who can make "beauty from ashes. They will see a God who can take a seemingly hopeless and pointless tragedy and transform into something absolutely beautiful. And they might trust the same God can do the same thing in their lives, too.
* If you don't want to wait until November to read Finding Normal, go to jeffhuxford.com and order your signed copy right now! The book is also available for pre-order on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and BooksaMillion.com