Scribed In Light

because some of us were never meant to stay safe outside the flames. We were designed to run in. To rescue. To rise again. To return bearing light

I used to think the pain ended once I survived it – once the smoke cleared after the heartbreak, once I pieced my shattered life back together with grit and grace…

When I broke through and rose above a volatile, toxic, and soul-crushing childhood…

When I finally stood on the other side of a cataclysmic, hellish divorce…

When the Early Onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis was behind me…

When my son outlived the prognosis none of his specialists believed he’d beat…

When my daughter battled a liver growth the size of a large grapefruit, a liver ablation, and liver resection all within 2 years of one another…and fought for her life for another two years.

When I lost my mother to cancer…after having only 12 days with her.

I thought the battle was over. I thought I had earned peace, but instead of rest, God handed me a flashlight and whispered, “Go back…someone’s still in there.”.

Strangers started showing up – hearts heavy with the very same wounds I had just learned to bandage.

It wasn’t irony. It was divine deployment.

Divine DEja Vu

It still catches me off guard. I’ll be out in the world, just living – grocery shopping, at the gas station, waiting at a doctor’s office, riding in an elevator – when suddenly, a complete stranger turns to me and starts to share the intimate aches of their life…and somehow it’s the very same trench I just climbed out of.

Their marriage is barely breathing. Their child’s diagnosis is still echoing in their bones. Their clinging to their sanity after years of physical and emotional abuse. They’re lost in the fog of a medical storm with no roadmap.

For a moment, I’m stunned at the similarities. I empathize with their pain, confusion, fatigue, and breathless attempt to hold on.

But then, something stirs in my spirit – a whisper reminding me that I know this place.

I do. I’ve walked this road. I’ve cried these tears. I’ve wrestled with the same darkness and somehow made it through. Now, without needing to fix it, preach to it, or rescue it – I simply find myself beside them. Holding space. Helping gently. Guiding quietly.

Not because I’m strong. Not because I have all the answers. But because I remember what it was like…how it felt…how it almost broke me…and because I remember the way out.

In the end, what branded itself on my soul is this: Every fire I survived taught me how to carry water for someone else still burning…and that’s not irony, It’s divine intercession..

I will never forget my experience at Michigan Children’s hospital. It was early 2006 and my son, Philip Austin, had just been admitted to start the Ketogenic Diet in hopes of gaining seizure control. I was beside myself…in every possible way. Heartbroken at the suffrage of rare complex seizures and what it took from me to chronically breathe life into my son over 30 times a day….and now – starting him on a radically bland and scrutinous diet to see if he gained better odds with gained seizure control.

This diet starts in a hospital due to safety precautions while gaining ketosis- because you begin with literally the tiniest amounts to eat. Just a dusting of julienned lettuce in one of those tiny McDonald’s ketchup condiment cups. Alongside the same amount of burger and a few dots of ketchup, tomato, and pickle. I mean it when I say a dusting….crumbs. Could you imagine knowing a burger was coming and THIS is what they place before your rumbling tummy?

That boy was starving, slipping into ketosis, and his emotional state made me want to hurl myself straight out the 4th floor window. His suffering, his tears, his begging for more simply broke me in more ways than I can fully express. Can you imagine being starved… and this is what is brought to you as a meal? I carried such guilt at having made the choice in hopes of gaining seizure control for him. It was an hourly fight not to scoop him up and run him the hell out of there that entire week.

I gave my word to Philip Austin early on in his medical nightmare – while he was still lying in his hospital bed, and just opened his eyes from a five week coma. He was in a debilitated state and unable even to talk, or control his movements.

We were told he would never make it back home and would need long-term residency in a specialized care clinic. They spoke this at his bedside – standing overtop his thin, gaunt body – the same boy who had just opened his eyes for the first time in five weeks after they assured us multiple times each day that it was their job to prepare us that he wasn’t going to make it.

Five weeks of telling me he would never open his eyes again, never call me mom again. We would never lock eyes again. Five weeks of nearly losing him multiple times a day…and the moment that baby opened his eyes, they layered even more negativity over him – speaking as if he weren’t even in the room with us.

I looked down at my son, whose eyes were still fixed on them all standing around his bedside, hovering over him like he was invisible. He rolled to me….

He fought to control his arms, to reach for the bedside rail and pull himself up to me – trying with all his might to lift his head so I’d focus on him. His eyes were full of terror. Enormous crocodile tears formed – pooling and slipping down his cheeks.

Unable to speak a word, his gaze told me everything. I raised my hands to the doctors. Then I leaned down to his level, placed both hands on either side of his cheeks, and spoke carefully and purposefully to him.

I locked eyes with him and told him, ” Son, I’ve climbed into this trench with you…and I’m not climbing out without you . Either God will carry us out…or you will walk out yourself.”

I assured him he wasn’t alone, that I knew him…knew his fierce spirit…his undeniable faith…and that I understood what he could not yet say. I informed him these doctors did not know him…his spirit…or his faith. I reminded him that his spiritual father had been his doctor, and that he was a beloved miracle and that God would have the last word on his health…not his doctors, and that he had already proved that by opening his eyes.

Then I turned to the doctors and removed them from his room. I informed them that going forward, they would council outside of his room with the door closed and would conduct all bedside discussions outside the room, away from his hearing.

Three months later when he walked out of that hospital – a thing they swore he’d never be capable of – I took him up to the PICU floor and walked him the full length of the unit. Not in rebellion – but in humble grace, to show how good God had been. I wanted them to see they should never again offer another patient, mother, or family such a lack of hope.

Often, along this journey with Austin, I challenged myself – not just as his mother, but as his guide. I fought hard not to let my mother-heart hinder his path or cloud the purpose that had been entrusted to him.

In a mother’s ache, anxiety, and fierce need to protect, I had to lean on something deeper. I knew that the adversities I had overcome had trained me in ways I could never have fathomed at the time.

They enabled me to go further in life than I ever could have without them…even within the reach to assist others in ways I’d never have had the insight to, had I not walked that mile before them.

I knew the story of Mother Mary – on her knees in brokenness – at the foot of Jesus’ cross….sobbing for her son…broken herself in the weight of his agony. Not wanting to rise. Not wanting to leave him. Yet even in this place, He guided her to see that his suffering held purpose.

So, I learned to kick my moms-heart to the curb while dropping to my knees to breathe life into my sons lungs- rendering medical care, interventions, and stabilizing him until he was once again able to maintain on his own. When they said he’d never talk…I stepped out of the way with my protection and worked even harder at helping him find his voice.

When they told us he would never walk or run again, I practiced drills with him – multiple times a day – for balance, mobility, and strength.

He had to relearn to drink, eat, clothe himself, read and write. I placed a giant chalkboard on the wall and retaught him all the basics… even English, math, and history.

It’s a very long story – and one filled with divine miracles. However, for this post, I want to lean into the truth that it was a daily grind. Sometimes hour to hour. A constant stepping aside of my mom’s anxiety, brokenness, and fierce hunger to protect him from a fight I couldn’t control and wasn’t mine to fight.

I would crucify the fear. Lay down the urge to shield him from everything. Take a deep breath – and step forward into faith – trusting that God had him. If that baby wanted to climb a tree, we climbed with him, surrounding him from beneath. If he wanted to swim, we swam beside him, holding him while he kicked and floated…until eventually he swam on his own.

We told him yes. We helped him overcome his hurdles and deficits by staying present, rooted in truth and focus.

We guided him to turn his disabilities into capabilities. When others said, ” He can’t do this.” we pivoted, and showed Austin, and them how he could.

I will never forget years later….nearly a decade – a lady stood behind me in line. She looked pale, fatigued, her eyes held that haunted look behind them. When it came time for her to order she just stood there….staring…lost. I reached a hand out and placed it softly on her shoulder asking if she was okay…how can I help?

She broke then….everything came tumbling out at once. How her son was perfectly fine, sustained a simple virus, then ended up in a phenobarb coma due to seizures, and the doctors didn’t think he was going to make it. I drew in my breath, shared my story, and was able to hand her a detailed guide and map of what steps she needed to take and how to climb out.

So, what happened in the Michigan hospital… during Austin’s ketosis journey… was not shocking. His room mate, a young boy, had been admitted for having contracted a simple virus and encephalitis. He was doing fantastic with medications and interventions and healed enough to move to our floor and became Austin’s roommate. His mom and I would take turns watching one another’s boys so we could slip out for a shower or take a walk to decompress from the strain of watching our sons suffering. One morning I woke and she was beside herself. Her son was swollen…so swollen…his lips so broken open that every swallow left him in sobs and bleeding. When he urinated…there were pieces of flesh and blood. He was so sick and the doctors kept placating her concerns by saying it was just the virus and needed to run its course. They offered him no interventions like a foley or a feeding tube. What concerned me most was the way his face and neck was swollen…and they didn’t assess or intervene in any way.

Fortunately, I had walked this mile already with Austin…and I knew enough about his condition, and medications to know full well what I was seeing. He was showing all symptoms of Steven’s Johnsons Rash. A very serious side effect to all of the medications that had been dumped into his system from trying to fight his onset.

I had her ask for a laptop so she could research it herself and become better informed on how to address the doctors and advocate for her son. They needed a pic line, a foley, a feeding tube, medication for that mouth, and pain meds. He was truly in bad shape., and vital need. She called her husband in after researching and they both advocated and got him the help he needed.

Had I not been there with Austin, furthermore… had I not walked the same mile with Austin – I would have never had the insight, the education, the guidance to reach out and help her and her son.

Just recently a young lady showed at my house to help a friend pick up a piece of furniture. Through random conversing she just opened up and started sharing about her intermittent memory loss, and moments of confusion. She began to sob about how scary it was to become lost in her own home. Immediately it triggered memories when I was fighting dementia myself. I stepped forward and held her and shared my own personal journey as well as guided her through how I reversed those presentations myself.

It’s amazing how life works. The hurdles we face, the hiccups, the outright traumas. At first, they stun us, knock the wind out of us, leave us wondering if we’ll ever get back up. Yet, in hindsight, we begin to see the thread — the hidden training ground — and realize we were never meant to keep the lessons to ourselves.

Every scar, every sleepless night, every tear has value in the economy of compassion. Nothing you’ve endured is wasted when it becomes the map someone else needs to find their way home.

So the next time the wind howls and the fire closes in, pause. Look around. This may not be punishment. This may be preparation. You may be gathering the very tools you’ll one day press into the trembling hands of someone still in the dark.

And when the day comes that you are called back into the flames, you’ll go — not because you love the heat, but because you carry the light.

“He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.” — 2 Corinthians 1:4

“The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.” – Corrie ten Boom

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.” –Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” –Helen Keller

May you go gently. May you go bravely…and may you know this: you are appointed for this.

In love and grace,

Tina N. Campbell | Scribed In Light