How I Lost My Fingers And Why Your Story Matters

We all have a story.  In this episode I share mine and encourage you to share yours. Our stories are powerful tools we use to not only remind ourselves of what God has done but to encourage others as well.

My story is a little dramatic. I almost died. I lost a thumb and an index finger. And you might think how could anything good come from that?? Listen and you'll hear a story of the mighty, life saving love of God. 

This is my testimony. I would love to hear yours. Please share.

Transcript

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing. This is the podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

And generally, this is the part where I say we are specifically designed for women who feel like they're starting over in the middle of their life, and that is so true.

But today's podcast is really geared towards a really wide audience, men and women, because today, we're going to be talking about something that I think affects a lot of us. We're going to be talking about the power of your story.

I think we all have a story, and I think it's important to share that story. So if you'll remember in the beginning, I said that when I rebuilt my life, I focused on five areas. I focused on my spiritual health.

I focused on my mental health. I focused on my physical health. My financial health and growth and goals.

And I said every podcast would fall under one of those categories, and today's podcast falls under spiritual health. And the idea of how important it is to remind yourself and tell yourself what God has done, what God has done for you.

This is important for so many reasons. It's important to tell your story, to remind yourself. And I'm not just saying it.

The Bible gives us a huge clue about how important it is. In Revelations chapter 12, verse 11, it says, they triumphed over him by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. So just slight context here.

When it says him, it's referring to Satan, the devil. Just a couple lines up. He's called the accuser of the brethren.

He's been thrown down. Revelations can be a little squirrely and hard to understand. I get that.

I'm not saying I'm the authority on it. But this verse right here is a clue in how we overcome. Have you ever said, you know what?

I'm a Christian, but I'm still struggling. I'm struggling in my life. I'm struggling.

I still face battles. It's hard. And there are many ways that we can overcome spiritual battles in our life.

I mean, the Bible offers us lots of clues. But one of the ways that we overcome one clue that's mentioned here is one that we often overlook. So we talk about the armor of God.

We talk about lots and lots of things. And those are super important. I'm not discounting those.

But one of the ways that, like I said, I feel like it doesn't get as much attention is this idea of the word of our testimony. So we're already believing in Jesus. We're a believer.

The blood of Jesus covers us. So we overcome by the blood of Jesus and the word of our testimony. Why is the word of your testimony so important?

Like it's in the Bible. Like this is a clue. Why?

Because when I share my testimony, I remind myself of what God has done for me. I remind myself that God came through when I felt hopeless. I remember that he carried me during such a tough time.

I remember that it did work out. And especially during a really hard season, we've got to remember what happened before. We've got to encourage ourself.

You know, the Bible talks about encouraging yourself in your innermost being. Well, this is a way to do that. Remind yourself of what God has done.

So telling your testimony, remembering your testimony, reminding yourself is for your spiritual health. You personally, it encourages you. It builds your faith.

It reminds you, yes, God did that for me. And that is so important, because we can forget. We get distracted by the bills.

We get distracted by the broken relationship. We get distracted by all the things that need to be done at work and all the things that need to be done at home. And life is demanding.

And we get distracted by all the problems. I get it. I've been there.

Reminding ourselves that God has come through for us is vital to our spiritual health. It's like taking your vitamin C. It's taking your daily dose of vitamin B12, that daily dose of vitamins, reminding yourself, you know what?

I'm not making light of where I am in life. Yes, this is hard, but God has come through during the hard times. Okay?

So it is important for you to remind yourself. Why else is our testimony so powerful? Because they encourage others.

So when you tell me what God has done for you, you're encouraging yourself, right? But you're encouraging me. I still remember stories that people have told me.

I remember things that God has done for somebody else. And because whatever story that was, however simple or dramatic or whatever, it resonated with me, and I hold on to that. And I'm like, God, you did it for them, you can do it for me.

How do we know how impactful stories are? Well, this is a spiritual principle, it's in the Bible, right? That using your testimony is influential, and it's a way to overcome, because it influences others, right?

It impacts others. We see this as a spiritual truth, a way to bring this concept home to you that you can understand, is the world mimics the spiritual truth fabulously, right? We have influencers.

My background is in marketing, right? So media, the way we get people to do things, how is the best way to get somebody to do what you want, whether to buy something, to start a new habit, whatever it is, you tell your story, right?

Reviews, everybody wants you to leave a review, right? You go somewhere, you get an email, hey, if you'll leave a review on Google, right?

So we know this because we know that when somebody else says, hey, this worked for me, that has a bigger influence than just somebody spouting off facts and figures.

When you can put it in context of an individual and how they tried this diet, and they lost weight, okay, I want to try that. It worked for them, it can work for me.

So we see this in the world, and we see how fabulously it works, and we see how many people this has impacted all over. I mean, companies hire influencers, right? I mean, we're familiar with that term now.

We're familiar with this whole idea. But God has let us know this way before social media was a thing. It's in the Bible.

We overcome by the word of our testimony. We influence others. We encourage others.

We, our stories sometimes encourage somebody to take action. It's influential because when you share your story, it puts it in the context of a real person. It's not just a theory.

It's not just a possibility. It just maybe happened over there. But it is something that actually happened to a person.

And when you put it in context of a reality, of a real person, that carries weight, and it influences people to strengthen their faith, to take action, to encourage them.

So our stories are powerful, powerful tools that we really should use so much more than we do, okay? This is a tool that you have. God has come through for you, and you've got to remind yourself.

So today, I'm going to share one of the stories of how God came through for me. And I have a lot of stories. God has been so faithful to me.

I could tell you countless stories, but I'm picking this story because it's the most dramatic. There's a shadow of death because I did almost die. There is so many things, so it just kind of has a more dramatic flair to it, if you will.

It's true, it happened, but it just is like, whoa, wow. It's one of those kind of stories. And it's the story that I cling to.

It's the story that I go back to, and I remember, and I hold in my heart, God came through for me. God loves me. And it matters to me.

So I'm going to share it with you, and I'm going to encourage you then to share your story. Okay? Sound good?

All right. So we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. So I am sharing my testimony with you right now.

This story, what happened, happened a while ago. It's been over 30 years now. So I'm going to take you back to the 90s.

I'm 16 years old. It's the summer before my senior year of high school. So yes, I am 16.

I did start school a little bit early. 16, sweet 16, the summer before my senior year of high school. It is, well, you know, your teen years are just confusing in general.

That's no surprise. My dad was a pastor. And this summer, I was really struggling a little bit with my faith.

I've been raised in the church my whole life. But this summer, I was just like, is this real? Like, I got to examine this.

Like, are you for real? And I have a journal. I wrote in my journal.

I can go back to that journal and show it. I really did. I wrote in my journal, and I said, all right, God, I'm looking at my friends, okay?

I had a few friends that definitely partied. I knew people that partied, and they looked like they were having a lot of fun. I am not gonna lie.

And I had a little bit of a goody-two-shoes nature. I'd always kind of colored inside the lines. I mean, to some extent, maybe I colored outside lines.

I'm not saying it was perfect, but I really did try to follow the rules. You know, I was a people pleaser, a rule follower for the most part.

And this summer, I remember really questioning whether or not that was the path I wanted to take, because, like I said, my friends were doing fun stuff, and I wanted to do fun stuff.

But I had this faith that I followed, and these rules in that faith, and so I just kind of wrote out all these thoughts to God, like, is this worth it?

And this is a conclusion that I came to as I wrote through this journal entry and all these thoughts in my head about, they're having fun and I'm not. I'm trying to toe the line. I'm trying to do what I've been told is right.

Is it worth it? What does it matter? And this is a conclusion I came to.

And this is the way I kind of finished my general entry. I said, God, if you're real, if it's personal, if I'm not just some number, but if you love me, then it's worth it.

If I am an individual to you and not a number, if it's personal, okay, I'll walk the line. But if it's not personal, it's not worth it.

If you don't really know me, then I kind of just want to give up here, and I want to have fun because that looks way more fun than what I'm doing. And in the last thing I wrote was, do you love me? And that underlined me.

Do you love me? Okay. So that's where I am in my head.

It becomes relevant later on in the story, I promise. I shared that part for a reason. So about two weeks later, the date is July 15th.

That is a very important date because it is my sister's birthday, July 15th. It is also the date of many important events in my family's story. So many things happened on July 15th.

So the first thing that happened on July 15th was obviously my sister's birthday, but my dad got ordained into the ministry on July 15th. He graduated from seminary on July 15th. He started a church on July 15th.

So many things happened on July 15th. So it's just a day in our family's history. But this particular summer, that was 16th, we celebrated my sister's birthday.

Back in the 90s, it was really common just to have a family dinner. Like, what do you want? What's your favorite meal?

She had a friend over. She opened gifts. Mom made shrimp.

It was a good meal, right, for dinner. However, this particular time, my friends had invited me to a Braves game that evening. So we ate dinner, but I had asked my sister ahead of time.

I'm like, hey, look, can I go to this game after we celebrate your birthday? Is that gonna bother you? And she is a huge baseball fan.

So she was like, please go to the game. So we had dinner, a big family dinner, and then my friends came and they picked me up, and we headed to see the Atlanta Braves. All right, because I was living right outside of Atlanta.

Now, my friend that was driving, it was a convertible. It was an older model convertible. None of us at 16 had brand new cars, but it was an older model.

And I remember the guy who was sitting in the passenger seat had the big boombox. I'm just trying to paint this great 90s picture for you so you know where we are.

So of course, we had the boombox separate because the car stereo wasn't loud enough, because we weren't souping up car stereos at this time in the 90s yet, and my friends obviously couldn't afford to soup up their car stereos.

So the poor man's way of doing that was to carry the boombox on your lap. The passenger seat, front seat, that was their job. They held the boombox and cranked up the music.

So just so you know and get in the good headspace of where we are. And I lived on the north side of Atlanta. So going into Atlanta, you cross the perimeter, right?

So to get to the Braves game, we had to go into Atlanta back then. Now it's different. And so we're coming up on the perimeter.

And I don't know if you're familiar with the Atlanta area, but if you're not, there is an intersection as you cross the perimeter that surrounds Atlanta from the north side, and it's called Spaghetti Junction.

And if you look up some of the biggest intersections in America, it's probably at least in the top five. It is like the biggest, most intimidating intersection.

All of these, you know, you've got I-20, I-85, I-75, I-285, all of these intersect right here. And it does all these huge major roadways, you know, piled up on top of each other. It kind of looks like spaghetti.

So that's how it gets its name. So we're coming up at Spaghetti Junction. We're in the far left-hand lane.

We're running late because we're teenagers, and we had to stop and do five different things before we got going. And so we're zooming in the far left-hand lane, and suddenly my world changes. I thought at the time we had like a flat tire.

It was actually a little bit worse than that. We lost an entire wheel. So the rear passenger wheel assembly completely came off, and it hit a car to our right.

And it bounced off them and flew over our heads and hit a car in oncoming traffic. But what we did, we skid out of control.

And so I go from like the wind blew in through my hair, 16, heading to a game, just carefree, to my world gets completely turned upside down. So we skid out of control. We hit the median wall.

We're in the left-hand lane. We hit the median wall. We flip upside down, and we skid upside down for about 250 feet.

We don't have the top on, and I am not wearing a seatbelt. I could taste the grit in my mouth. I could smell the heat from the friction.

I could hear the metal grinding and resisting as it scraped against the asphalt. I remember thinking to myself, I've never been in a wreck before. At least, this isn't a bad one.

That was the thought is we're skidding upside down. I opened my eyes, and the little white flecks in the pavement were like streaks. We were skidding so fast.

They were just making like white streaks. And so I thought, I don't really want to see that. That makes me uncomfortable.

So I remember closing my eyes. You process information very differently when something super traumatic happens like that. You just don't...

It's information overload. There's so much going on. You process it like your mind almost slows down a little bit.

So the car finally stops, and we can't get out. I can't get out. I'm in the backseat.

I can't get out. And there's somebody in the backseat with me, and I don't know if he kicked the window, but eventually we were able to get out. But there was this moment of panic, like we're stuck under this car.

But then we were able to get out, and he crawls out, and the other people that were in the front seat, and the guy that had been in the backseat with me my day, they start running.

It's gonna blow, it's gonna blow, and they just run as far as they can. And I just remember thinking, you have seen too many movies. And I was just overwhelmed by all the sensory information.

I didn't have the energy to run. So I just walked over to the retaining wall, the median wall that we had hit, and flipped over, and just propped up against that.

Now, when I was on my hands and knees, crawling out from under the vehicle, when you're in that position, you can't help but look down, and I noticed that my left hand was missing some fingers.

You know, big tongue was gone there, and I thought, oh, I've seen the blood. It probably will start to hurt soon. So have you ever been in the kitchen and chopped vegetables, and you look down, and you're like, where's that blood coming from?

And you've nicked yourself somehow, but you didn't notice it. And then once you saw the blood, then it started to hurt? Like, has that ever happened to you?

I remember that. And so I remember, as I propped up against the meeting wall, and I put my hands as far out on either side of me as I could, but I thought, I've seen the blood. It's gonna start to hurt soon.

God, please, sense somebody quickly before the pain kicks in. And no sooner had that thought crossed my mind than this man comes running up. Like, traffic stopped, okay?

Like, it was a big enough accident it made the news. Like, it was a little bit dramatic. Cars started stopping.

So one of the first people to stop was this guy. And as he's running, he's ripping off his shirt, and he wraps it around my bloody left hand, and he's like, get down on the ground! Get down on the ground now!

Get down on the ground! Well, I know now that he was trying to help, like, me not lose any more blood than I was losing, like, to kind of, you know, help with that as much as he could. Laying flat is better than standing up.

But all I could think at the time, remember, I was 16. Remember, we're in the 90s. So I had worn a white fitted shirt, khaki shorts, and I had, of course, white keds on, because if you'll remember, back in the early 90s, white keds were very popular.

And the ground, I thought, would be very dirty. And I did not want to lay down on the ground and get my shirt that was white all dirty. And I mean, my keds, you just don't, have you seen how dirty the interstate is?

I was like, no, thank you. And he would not take no for an answer. And eventually, yes, I did lay down on the ground there on the interstate, on the side of the road.

And I'm laying there, and more people stop. Fire trucks race up. I mean, traffic is blocked.

And this one woman stops, and she was so nice. She just came and sat beside me, and she was really calm. And you've got to understand, all this chaos is going on, like, sensory overload.

And in the middle of all the chaos and all the confusion, like, my life had been going one way, and then it was like a snow globe that had been shaken up and turned upside down. This one woman was calm, and she had this quiet strength.

And she just sat beside me and talked to me as I'm laying there on the side of the road. And she said, you know, what's your name? Where do you go to school?

What grade are you in? What kind of extracurricular activities do you do? And I did my best to answer her, and she was just so nice.

And her questions and her conversation helped me focus on those things that she was asking and talking to me about, and not the sounds and the shouts behind me of, we found her thumb, but not her index finger. Can anybody find her index finger?

I was completely, I've heard of being scatterbrained, I've heard of, but here I was, I had body parts just scattered across the interstate. They did find them, thank you very much. They couldn't reattach them, but they did find them.

And I didn't pop a nail, I had just gotten a nail set done of acrylic nails, and not a single nail popped, not even on the fingers I lost, best manicure I'd ever had. Anyway, that's a side note. I'm laying there, she's very sweet.

She helps keep my mind off all this super dramatic stuff. It just feels overwhelming, right? She's just quiet and steady, and she comes to me and she says, the ambulance is on its way.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, who is hurt? Like my friends ran so far ahead, like it's gonna blow.

So there was so much emergency service vehicles between me and my friends, I thought, oh, I didn't realize that somebody was seriously hurt, like I saw them run, I saw their back. So I assumed that they were okay.

And she said, no, no, sweetie, the ambulance is for you. And I said, oh no, thank you. I don't want to run the ambulance.

I'm good, I'm good. I just, I just want to go home, I'm good. And they did not give me that choice, just like the guy did not give me the choice to stay sitting on the median wall.

I had to lay down. I did not get the choice to not ride the ambulance. That was not a choice that I got to make.

So the ambulance comes, and they put me on a backboard, and they put this neck brace on me that, I don't know, I was 16. I had a somewhat slight frame. I don't know what kind of neck brace they put on me, but it came up past my nose.

And then they shoved an oxygen mask down between that neck brace and my face, so I could get oxygen. It was awkward, but good. I appreciate that they were all helping me out.

And this lady who had been there, who had been just like literally an angel, a godsend to me, said, do you want me to ride in the ambulance with you? And this whole time, I had kind of been okay.

Like, I was in shock, I was, but I hadn't cried, I hadn't broken down. But in the moment that she asked, do you want me to ride in the ambulance with you? I wanted to say no, like, that was my knee jerk.

Like, no, I'm fine, I'm good. But when she said that, when she posed that question, suddenly, I felt so vulnerable. I felt so small.

I felt so alone. And this woman had been so strong, and so calm, and I needed that. And I said, yeah, I really would like you to ride with me, please.

And she said, okay. And I never got to see her again. I never got to tell her, thank you.

I never saw her again, because when they loaded me in the ambulance, she couldn't ride with me in the back because she wasn't family. So she had to ride out front.

And then when we got to the hospital, she couldn't see me in the ER because she wasn't family. I never saw her again. This poor lady stopped in an accident, rode to the hospital with somebody, and never saw them again.

I just thank God for her more times than I can say. She kept me sane at a very chaotic, traumatic moment in my life. So I had had this calm source of strength, right?

But now, I'm in the ambulance. And there are two EMTs that are in the back with me. But they don't, of course, really talk to me.

They're radioing the hospital. And I heard them say, you know, 16-year-old female, traumatic amputation. I have the left thumb and index finger.

Like, I heard myself being talked about in really clinical terms. And they were talking to each other. And I know the reality is, I was in shock.

My vital signs were in a tailspin. But all I can tell you is that even though my eyes were open, my world just went dark. And there was this heaviness and this weight on me pulling me down.

And people talk about near-death experiences, and they talk about a light, and they say it's not scary, and I can agree with that, it's not scary.

But one of the things I don't hear anybody say is the weight of death, that there is a heaviness to death, and I felt that on me.

It was dark, it was heavy, and I was aware that when it went completely dark, when the darkness was total, that I wouldn't come back. Like I was on the edge, and if I slipped any further, there was no coming back. And I was intensely aware of that.

Like the lights were getting ready to go out for a bit. And in that moment, you know, I don't think I was ready to die. And so I said, all right, I need strength.

If I can think of what my dad looks like, that will give me strength to hold on. I will see, I can remember my dad, and that will help me hold on. So I tried to think, what does my dad look like?

I need to pull up a picture of my dad and hold on to that so I don't slip over the edge and completely go into utter darkness.

But my mind was kind of like a computer that was rebooting, and I was getting the circle going round and round, just spinning. And I couldn't pull up a picture of what my dad looked like. I couldn't tell you anything about my dad.

I knew I had a dad. I couldn't tell you what he looked like. My mind would not pull up an image of his face or anything about him.

And I said, okay, my mom. Same thing. Couldn't pull up a picture of my mom.

Anything about her. I couldn't tell you anything. My sister, nothing, completely blank.

It was just spinning. And I was so aware in that moment that I had no strength within me.

I didn't have the ability to tap in to any strength to say, well, if I look at this, if I hold on to this, I can hold on and not fall over the edge and be consumed by the darkness. If I had no strength within me, I was not strong enough.

I could not think of a single thing. My mind was on a total reboot pattern. And it was in that moment of utterly accepting my own weakness and lack of strength.

In this dark, dark moment, like physically could not see, but just so faint light. This one thought comes into my head. One thing, nothing else pulls up, right?

But one thought, and it was like just this thread of light coming down. And it was a song from my childhood. It was a song, yes, Jesus loves me.

And I get choked up, I'm sorry. I still to this day get choked up. Yes, Jesus loves me.

And so I started singing it. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong.

I felt so weak. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so. I had asked God a question about two weeks earlier.

I had written it down in a journal. Do you love me? And God didn't answer me that day.

He didn't answer me the next day. He saved the answer until the moment that his answer would literally save my life. That it was life-saving.

It was soul-saving, but it was also physically life-saving. I sang that song in the ambulance, very weak, cracked voice, I sang it in the ambulance. I sang it in the emergency room.

I know they thought I was crazy. They kept on asking me questions once I got to the emergency room, like, who's the president, this, that. I found out later I answered some of the questions completely wrong.

Definitely had my vitals, really took a minute. I mean, it took some work to get them back out. My blood pressure had completely plummeted, but I didn't lose consciousness.

I had found the source of my strength, and I didn't let it go. Up until that day, my parents had raised me in a faith, and I believed.

But I realized that everything up until then, their faith was kind of like a coat, and I carried it on my arm everywhere I went. It influenced my decisions. But on that day, I put the coat on, and it became mine.

It wasn't my parents' faith, it wasn't what they told me. It was mine. It became real to me.

And that's probably why it's such a touchstone and so monumental, because it did almost die. I didn't. And now I have eight fingers, and if you've ever met me and think, how did she lose those fingers?

Because people are curious. Now you know the story of how I lost my fingers.

I had a few other injuries that were minor, and I was able to recover quickly, because the biggest theme was how that shock and that trauma and getting your body to calm back down. So at once we got past that, it was clean up surgeries.

Yes, I'm missing a few fingers, but I get a discount when I get my nails done, because it's based on a 10-finger price, and I only have eight, so that's 20% off. But everything else was pretty kind of simple. I did have surgeries after it.

I had to get a skin graft, and eventually I got a bone graft to give myself a little bit of a nub where my thumb had been.

So there were follow-up surgeries, there was issues, but the main thing was overcoming that initial shock, you know, your body going into shock, that trauma that just sends your vital signs into a tailspin.

And I got over that, so the rest of it was annoying to live through. But I just had this sense of purpose, like God saved me for a reason. He could have let me come home.

It would have been a lot easier, I think, to just go home at that moment. But God said, no, I love you. And I need you to know that I love you.

And it has impacted my life to this day. And some people think that I could be self-conscious about missing my fingers, but I look at that scar on my hand, and I am always, daily, reminded of how much God loves me.

How much he loves me, how real and tangible his love for me is. And in that story, in that event, is like a mile marker in my life. I go back to it for direction.

My parents now live in a really small town. It's where my grandparents are from. And literally, you get directions by the mile marker number.

You know, at mile marker 12, you're going to turn left. This is a mile marker event in my life. There was a before and an after.

But when I need direction, when I need to know where to go, this is always a reference point. When you get to this mile marker, do you remember that God loves you? We all have stories like that.

Maybe you didn't almost die, maybe you did. Maybe you didn't have any money left and God provided. Somebody brought groceries.

Maybe you had a really bad medical report, and it got turned around. Maybe you had a broken relationship, and it got healed. I don't know what your story is.

But your story matters. And I told my story as an example, and now I'm encouraging you to tell your story. Remind yourself.

Tell yourself your story again. When did God come through? You wouldn't be where you are today if God hadn't intervened more than once.

I know his hands and his fingerprints are all over your life. I know that he loves you. Remind yourself.

When you were a child, as an adult, when you were in college, when you went here, and this could have happened, but it didn't, God protected you. Remind yourself. Tell yourself those stories.

And share them with other people. Please, please, please, it matters. It's so important.

It's a tool we have. It's how we defend against the enemy, because the enemy we know comes to steal, kill, and destroy. How do we overcome by the blood of the lamb in the word of our testimony?

Don't let something so powerful go unused. You have so many tools at your disposal. Let's pick them up and use them.

Now, I encourage you to reach out. You can find me online, www.workingonamazing.com. You can find me on social media.

Please come find me on Facebook, Working on Amazing. It's a page. I would love for you to post your story on my wall.

You can just DM me if you don't feel comfortable posting it. Get comfortable though learning to share your story. And if it's just in a private message, that's a great place to start.

Share your story. I would love to hear it because it will encourage me. And I know it will encourage you.

Thank you for joining me today. I look forward to hearing from you next time. Bye.