Fractured: For God's Glory

By Cecilia Collard

This book is an account of our lives over the last, almost three years since September 17th 2006, when my husband Jeff and I were in an accident on our motorcycle. It is about our injuries and our treatments and the people who touched our lives and how our lives may have touched theirs. It is about my personal walk with God, how my faith was tested and confirmed and how God continues to teach, guide and direct me in our relationship together. It is about a solid argument against coincidence and for the planned designed tapestry that is Gods plan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 16, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462818723

Cecilia Collard

Cecilia Collard lives in rural southwestern Michigan with her husband Jeff. She was born in Benton Harbor Michigan and was raised, in part, on the beach of Lake Michigan. She and her husband have been married for 35 years. They have one son and two grandsons who they love to spend time with. She is the second oldest of six and the oldest girl child of the family. She loves to write and often journals, but this book is her first attempt at formal writing. She loves gardening, nature in general, and God is her favorite artist and closest friend.

Book preview

Copyright © 2009 by Cecilia Collard.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Chapter One

FRACTURED: For God’s Glory

Chapter Two

The Accident

Chapter Three

The Hospital

Chapter Four

Answered Prayer

Chapter Five

Going Home

Chapter Six

Step by Step

Chapter Seven

The Fickle Bone

Chapter Eight

Starting Over

Book Summary

This book is an account of our lives over the last, almost three years since September 17th 2006, when my husband Jeff and I were in an accident on our motorcycle. It is about our injuries and our treatments and the people who touched our lives and how our lives may have touched theirs. It is about my personal walk with God, how my faith was tested and confirmed and how God continues to teach, guide and direct me in our relationship together. It is about a solid argument against coincidence and for the planned designed tapestry that is God’s plan.

Chapter One

FRACTURED

For God’s Glory

I have written my story a couple of different ways. I first wrote thinking it might be a small book. After letting a journalist friend of mine read it, and with her advice, I tried to shorten it up to make more of an article than a book. Letting different people read what I had written, although they loved it, they wanted more elaboration and thought that it could be a book. I am not sure which way is God’s will for this story of His to be written, maybe both or many, but I do know He has called me to write it and so I write.

I would like to give you a brief introduction of myself and my husband. We were both raised in strict Roman Catholic families. We both attended Catholic schools and went to mass regularly. We both experienced things within that realm that resulted in a rift for both of us. We considered that rift to be between us and organized religion, not between us and God. When we met we were already estranged from the church. He was eighteen and I was sixteen and already pregnant when we were married. We had our son in the spring of 1974.

I stayed at home with him until he started school. When he was in school I was working. By the time he was in third grade we were able to afford buying a bike here and there. Jeff would tear them apart and put them back together again, changing this or that then selling or swapping them for something else. There was always at least one bike in the garage being worked on, and because he had the tools and the garage, our friends were frequently there working on their bikes too. Our first fourteen years together were in Lansing Michigan on the north side. When it seemed that our son had gotten in with a bad element and violence was more and more evident and close to home, we relocated to Southwest Michigan. There, things were not so close together or rushed.

We made the decision to sell our bikes when we bought and built our home in 1990. We had lost Jeff’s dad to lung cancer in 1981 and my dad to kidney cancer just about ten years later. After dad died and because of answered prayer during his ordeal, I asked Jesus into my heart again and began attending bible studies and later, church, rebuilding my relationship with God. Jeff supported me in everything I wanted to do, but had trust issues with any church because of his childhood experiences. Although he did not attend church with me other than weddings, funerals and certain holidays, he also grew in his relationship with God.

Eventually we replaced Jeff’s bike with a Sportster but had not the money to replace mine. Jeff was in an accident that totaled his bike in 2005. He was not injured enough to be hospitalized,