Paintings

Art has always been a very important part of my life. Before the coma I was an art major and had been creating art for as long as I could remember. Unfortunatly I lost almost everything I ever owned when I got sick, however by the grace of God I did manage to hang on to a few of my old paintings. I would like to show the progression of my art before the coma to my art after the coma. I think you will be able to see that I sort of had to relearn a lot of things. and ofcourse I am always learning. Here are the paintings from before the coma and here are some of the paintings from after the coma...

and finally getting back to my old self....

so what do you think?

Tribute

If you ever listen to Moody radio around 8 pm on a weeknight you'll probably be hearing Walk in the Word with Dr. James McDonald. Well, a few months ago he was doing a series called "Seven Words to Change Your Family" Word number three was honor. As in honor thy father and mother. Well he challenged his listeners to not only write a tribute but speak it alound infront of people. At the time I thought the idea sounded silly and it would never be something I could do. Then months later I marvel at how my parents help me in every way that they can. I'm thinking to myself, how can I ever repay them? Well, I don't think I can repay them but the least I could do is let them know how much they mean to me. So, I wrote a tribute and read it alound in front of our immediate family at our Christmas Eve gathering. And now I would like to share it with you.

Tribute to my Father and Mother

God is the number one most important thing in my life.
Family is the second.
My husband, who completes me.
My son, who is a part of me.
My sister, who understands me.
and my parents, who made me.

Exodus chapter 20 verse 12 is the fifth commandment.

Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth the.

How do I begin to honor you? Where would I be without you? Who would I be without you?

You have loved me and protected me and tried to steer me in the right direction, although I have often resisted and went my own way, you still love me.

When I was younger I thought unconditional love meant that you had to be happy with whatever choices I made. That to truly love me you had to accept all of my decisions however wrong they may be. Now I realize that your love is unconditional because you love me despite the bad decisions I have made.

You have given me life, not once but twice. You stood by me when I was sick and refused to give up faith. Then you nursed me back to health. You have turned your lives upside down to take care of me and even now you are still there for me. You not only help me but yhou hlep my family as well. You are a constant love.

These words alone cannot express how much you mean to me or how much I appreciate and love you but I hope it gives you an idea.

Love always,

Becky Susanne Altman

Okay so this is what I read to my parents. It cannot even begin to sum up how wonderful they are. I pray for Jesus to teach me how to be a good parent. I want to bring up Lukas so that he knows the Lord. Maybe he won't make the mistakes I made, maybe he will, but I want him to know the Lord and know that God will always be there for him. All he need to do is seek his will. If you're parents brought you up knowing the Lord, thank them. If they took care of you at all, thank them. Parenting isn't easy, and I've only been one for 16 months. I wish that everyone could know the Lord and feel the love that he gives us. Thank you Jesus for your love and for giving me such wonderful parents who love you and showed me your love.

12-20-10

"Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God"
1 Corinthians 10:31

This verse recently became one of my favorite verses. It is so simple and beautiful and yet if someone had said this to me earlier in life I would have stared at them blankly. When I was in college I was certainly not living to glorify God. I was living to please myself. Even now I have to remind myself that life isn't about God serving me, it's about me serving God. I find myself thinking to God how do I get out of this problem or how does this benefit me? When I need to be thinking how can I benefit God. It is a simple verse but a powerful reminder. Do all to the glory of God.

check this out.

I would like to share a link to a post that I truely like.

http://www.cbmw.org/Blog/Posts/The-Truth-According-to-Katy-Perry


Amen to that.

messege from a friend

I would like to share an email that a good friend of mine Shannon Key sent me yesterday. She said it all so beautifully I'm just going to quote the email and let that speak for itself.

"I love seeing how God is working in your life, I don't know if I ever told you but the last time Andrea and I came to visit you in the hospital in Rome, I was camping with my family the weekend before. My family and I had been praying for a complete healing and I knew that God was going to heal you. I believed it with all I had. Well the last night of camping I had a dream that when we were at the hospital that I walked into your room and it was empty. My heart dropped and someone tapped me on the shoulder I turned around and it was you. And you were whole. I knew then that God had healed you. So when Andrea and I went you were so responsive. I remember you having chapped lip and I said Becky you need some chap stick and you took your finger and pointed at your lip. I told my mom about the dream and how you were so responsive. It wasn't long you were out of the coma and you just kept getting better. God worked a miracle for you physically but He used your experience to work a spiritual miracle for me."

end quote

Okay, if that doesn't give you goose bumps.

I truely believe God spoke to Shannon. He spoke to her in a dream and she knew He was healing me. Thank you Shannon soooooooo much for sharing this with me and allowing me to share it with the world.

I am overwhelmed at the love that has been shown to me and my family. Thank you to all the people who prayed for us, and took care of my parents while they were taking care of me. I pray that God blesses you all.

paths

It's so easy to look back at my life and see all the things I did wrong, all the bad decisions I made. I think if only I had it to do over what a change I would make, how much better my life would have been. That isn't to say that my life isn't wonderful now, but that is because I have a wonderful God. He has blessed me with a second chance. I can't go back and change the past but with God's grace I have been given the chance to start again.

I have always believed that everything happens for a reason. Now I'm not so sure it's all black and white. Everyday I have a million choices and whatever I choose may affect me differently, but nomatter what God is there and if I choose to seek his help he will help me. I believe what I'm trying to say is this: We may choose the wrong path and yet God still loves us. By His grace, by Jesus dieing on the cross and three days later being resurected, we can be forgiven. We can admit our sins and ask for forgiveness.

"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
-Romans 5:8

choices

I heard someone on the radio say



"It's not about what choices we made or what we did or didn't become. It's having faith in God where we are now."



Knowing that He has a plan for us and no matter where are in life we need to just have faith in Him always. He is in control. This goes back to what I was saying about making the wrong choices, leaving the path of God. It's easy to think that once you have made mistakes that there is no hope. You've gone so far off the path that you are ruined. Well that's not the case. Nomatter where we are in our lives all we have to do is lay it out to God. Repent, give it to God and He will forgive us and He can get us back on track.



I am so blessed that He is my God. The only God who sent His Son so that we could be forgiven. How gracious. How merciful. The least we can do is worship Him, live in His word and do His will.

progress?

"Show me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truths, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day."
-Pslams 25:4-5

How can I live my life to glorify God? What can I do to show the world His glory? I feel like I'm growing spiritually then BAM! Something happens to pull me down. Like I've hit a brick wall. How can I be growing in the Lord when the world around me is falling apart? From the simplest thing to having a messy house to the more important things like getting along with my husband. If I fail at these have I failed at everything? I realize I am a work in progress, but sometimes I wonder if I'm making any progress.

Having Faith and Memories

The harder I try to be a good Christian the harder it gets. There is always some sort of obstacle trying to get in my way. It certainly makes it harder sometimes to keep the faith. I wonder what would have happened if my family had given up faith while I was in the coma. I doubt I would be alive right now. They would have unplugged me. I am so blessed to have a family who cared so much that they turned their lives upside down to stay by my side and keep faith that I would recover.

I've been told, that while in the coma my left lung collapsed. I had some sorta blockage somewhere, I had a staff infection, my organs began to shut down, I had influenza (I think) I got down to 85 lbs, a lot of my hair fell out and I lost a tooth. Which I am very much aware of because my front tooth is gone. I had a trach and a feeding tube.

I don't remember the trach and I don't remember much about the feeding tube except -

~dream sequence~

I remember that depending on how I laid in my bed I could hear voices. Like different radio stations. These were not the voices of people in my room. If I laid my head in a certain place on the mattress I might here a room full of children. I remember when they left I was very sad. In another position I could hear two boys outside the hospital trying to get in. Another position might let me hear other people talking. One such position held a pair of people who told me how I could commit suicide. They told me if I pulled the feeding tube out of my belly I would lose all the nutrients and die. So I did. I think I did this more than once and I would get in trouble by the nurses. I remember one time right after being fed through the tube I pulled it out and it leaked fluid on the bed. I laid on the wet spot until the nurses found out what I had done. I don't remember neccesarily wanting to die, but apparently I did.

When I was released from the hospital I still had the tube in my belly. I don't remember what it felt like though, or even looked like. I had to wear bandages over the wound for a while though once it got taken out.

Isn't it strange what we remember?

Faith

I once heard someone say that God couldn't turn a square into a circle. I believe it was a preacher and he was trying to make some sort of point. All I remember thinking is yes he can. God can turn a square into a circle. He's God. He can do anything.

I did what?

According to my family I've been in the back of a police car, an ambulance and a helicopter. Are you kidding me? I don't have the faintest recollection of any of these things. I'm not saying I would cherish a ride in a police car or even an ambulance, but to not remember the experience... it seems a shame. Especially to not remember a helicopter ride.

I thank God that I don't remember the terrible things that my body went through while I was sick. I only wish my family didn't have to suffer through it. I can only imagine what they went through. To this day it blows my mind that they stood by me through all of it. Not just through the coma but afterwards.

At age 23 (almost 24) I had to move back in with my parents. I was pretty much like a child again. My mother had to sleep in the same room with me for months because I had horrible nightmares. I went to therapy four days a week to relearn many basic things that most people take for granted. My recovery process was long, and yet they stood by me the entire time. (More like carried me)

You might think that I have all sorts of questions about why I got sick. Why me? What caused it? Why did I survive it? So on and so on, but I don't.

I know why.

God saved me.

He knew He had to get me out of the situation I was in. He allowed me to get sick and hit my rock bottom so He could get me back on the path of His will.

He has a reason for me to live and although I'm still not exactly sure what that reason is, I know that he is leading me toward it. Or perhaps I'm living it right now.

I believe we make our own decisions. God has a path for us and we can follow it or we can go our own way. That doesn't mean that He will not help lead us back to his path. We may take a detour or two but if we believe that Jesus died for us and repent of our sins he will forgive us and give us another chance. I have been given another chance.

I'd like to quote a prayer from a book I am reading right now.

A Prayer for Joy

Help me, O God,

To listen to what it is that makes my heart glad

and to follow where it leads.

May joy, not guilt,

Your voice, not the voices of others,

Your will, not my willfulness,

be the guides that lead me to my vocation.

Help me to unearth the passions of my heart

that layed buried in my youth.

And help me to go over that ground again and again

until I can hold in my hands,

hold and treasure,

Your calling on my life...

-from Windows of the Soul by Ken Gire

I know that the events of my life have happened for a reason. I know that God has shown mercy on me and I want to glorify Him. It is the smallest thing I can do. I've been praying that He would show me what it is I am to do. I know I must be patient (which is not my best quality).

Apparently staying on topic is also not my best quality. Let me regroup.

Forgiveness

We constantly hear that Jesus died on the cross so that we may be forgiven of our sins.
What does that mean? I think that most people don't really think about it. Either they don't care, think it doesn't apply to them or just take it for granted that they can do what they want because we have a loving forgiving God.

I feel blessed because God showed me in a big way what it means to be forgiven.

Before I got sick I was not living the life God wanted for me. My junior year of college I made every bad decision I could. I tried every drug I could get my hands on. I did not care about the consequences. I was thinking only about myself. One bad decision led to another and another until I ended up married to someone who also only cared about drugs and alchohol. He wasn't a Christain and I thought surely I would change him, even though I myself was certainly not acting like a Christain at that time. Money was tight, times were tough, although I didn't realize it because it's hard to see the reality of things when you are high all the time.

Moving to Vermont seemed like the answer to all our problems. Away from the judgement of my family, free to do whatever we wanted.

Ofcourse running away is never the answer. Especially when you are running farther away from Christ.

How blessed are we though? That God is full of Grace. That Christ died on the cross for our sins. I may have been running but God was with me every step of the way. He was watching after me. I credit part of this to my family because I know they were praying for me. I know they were asking God to protect me.

Getting sick was the biggest blessing God could give me. He brought me home to Him and He brought me home to my family.

Oh there is so much more to be said and so much left out. I pray that the right people read this. The ones who need it. I trust the Lord will bring those that he sees fit.

continued

Ok, where were we? Oh right, waking up from the coma. Well, I'll spare you the gory details for right now.

Let's skip ahead two years to 2004. I've been though a lot but now I feel like I'm recovered. Which I know realize was sort of like a drunk person thinking they are sober. I started attending a technical college where my father worked and the first week of school I met my now husband.

Skip to present. 2010. We've been married since September 2007 and we have a wonderful amazing 15 month old son.

How did it all come to this? God's Grace.

God took me out of a bad situation and saved my life in more ways than one. At the time it may have seemed horrible. It may have made no sense at all but God knows what he is doing. He gave me new life. I may have laid in a hospital bed for five months but God got my attention. His forgiveness and grace is more than I can even imagine. Although I have felt it touch my own life.

Know that you know the jist of the story, let me explain.

hospital bed

This is the only example I could find of a caged hospital bed. This one looks much nicer than the ones in the hospital. It seems like I remember mine zipping at the top on the outside. I found it to be very frustrating.

the beginning

My story is a great story, one so amazing and full of God's grace that I do not know where to begin. So I'll just take a deep breath, trust in the Lord, and start.

I grew up as most Southerners do, with a religious family. We went to church although as a child I disliked it. I was shyer than most and disliked having to interact with others. (I've completely outgrown that). I knew who the Lord was and was baptized at a young age... but okay, let's get past all of this. Let's get to the nitty gritty of why I'm starting this blog.

In 2002 I went into a coma. A five month coma. The doctors said I would not make it. They said if I survived I would be a vegetable for the rest of my life. Now, I'm no expert but I don't think a rhudabaga could be typing this. So, here is my story.

It was August 2002. I was living in a small town in Vermont. I remember not being happy because my living situation was less than ideal, but there must have been something else wrong me. Apparently I lost my memory. I remember not being happy and deciding to move back to Rome, Ga where I had gone to college and met my then husband. We got a moving van and packed up. The next thing I remember is being in Kingston, Tn driving through the fog looking for my ex father in laws house. The next thing I remember is sitting in Rome, Ga crying. Then looking at an apartment we were supposed to move into.

Skip five months and I'm in a caged hospital bed.

Have you ever seen a caged hospital bed? They zip on the outside so the occupant of the bed cannot escape.

I cannot claim that memories from this point on are in any sort of order or even if they are true. The mind is powerful thing and my mind was messed up. My thoughts get all scrambled up from what people have told me, what I have dreamed and what I think really happened. So bear with me while I regroup.