One Thing Remains: One Couple's Traumatic Encounter with Amnesia and Their Life-Changing Journey to Restoration

By David Carroll and Shannon Carroll

FROM BROKEN TO RESTORED!

 

David and Shannon were living the typical stressed-out, busy, rat-race of American life until it all suddenly caught up with them and devastated everything. David's mind became broken with amnesia and their world, as they knew it, turned upside down. Being everything to everyone and doing "all the things" is a real and prevalent pressure among most families today. The financial, career, family and relationship demands add immense stress. In this book, you'll see how David and Shannon were able to overcome these patterns, change their lives and find true peace through the gift of amnesia.

 

One Thing Remains will show you how to truly find yourself – without having to lose your mind in the process. Through their transparent and raw story, you'll learn:

• God does not intend for you to live a stress-filled life
• How to accept suffering and learn to suffer well
• A total reset in your relationships is possible
• Community is essential
• God's Word is alive and can never be taken away from deep inside of us

A transforming adventure and fresh wind of excitement awaits you through this powerful and compelling story of brokenness to complete restoration!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignite Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781950710713

Book preview

Introduction

David

It’s 6 a.m., the alarm is going off, and already the demands of the day are building. It’s time to roll out of bed and be all things to all people—yet never be enough. It’s time to figure out ways to make ends meet and somehow survive—all with a smile, of course. Can you relate to that pressure? Does reading the previous sentence cause your heart to beat faster and anxiety to build as you think about your own responsibilities and life? If so, then you are just like us. Welcome to the club!

You’ve probably had a conversation within yourself that sounds like, Why am I doing this every day? What’s the point? Where is all this stress even getting me? There has got to be a better way, but figuring it out takes too much time and energy. We, like most of you, made plans and adapted our lives to fit those plans. However, in an instant, life as we knew it changed, and everything came to an absolute stop.

We are your average, American, Christian family. I have a background in Information Technologies and had always been bi-vocational (ministry plus a corporate job). In 2012, God called me to full-time ministry as a pastor of our church in rural Indiana. Shannon is a registered nurse, but left the hospital in 2016 to be home full time, homeschooling our two younger boys (we also have an older teenage boy) and run her own home-based business.

We thought that we were living our dream by developing a homestead and learning to be self-sufficient. The problem is, we tried to do too much at once—and we didn’t take care of ourselves in the process. Stress, long to-do lists, massive ministry demands, and few boundaries finally caught up with me. I ignored the warning signs and ended up becoming unresponsive one Sunday after church, only to wake up and think we were living ten-ish years in the past. Amnesia. This unexpected twenty-six-day experience with devastating amnesia turned out to be just what the doctor ordered—and definitely what I needed.

This book is about the journey and gift we received from a very bizarre trial. Did I just say gift and trial in the same sentence? Yes, you read it correctly.

Throughout this book, we will share examples from the Bible as it is not only a spiritual book, but also practical because it relates to every facet of life. James 1:2–4 says in The Message (MSG) paraphrase:

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work, so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

The trial we walked through completely gripped us in a way that was unsettling, frustrating, and—oddly—freeing. At the time we had two options: become victims and sink into despair or pause and think, taking time to explore the possibility of truly remarkable lessons that could be learned and incorporated into a new way of life.

I will tell you that, in all of this, there is a point. The point is not to be perfect, but to be real and honest with yourself. If you can come to that place; a place of transparency and raw openness, where everything is prepped and ready for thorough inspection, it is there that you can discover the passion and true purpose for your life. It is in this place of exploration that you can find yourself, perhaps for the first time, and embrace what matters most.

Shannon

We know that you’ve been through so much too—this life is gloriously hard sometimes. We honor YOUR story and path, and we are grateful that you’ve taken a minute out of your busy life to decide to enter into our story.

You’re going to get a sneak peek into a very raw and vulnerable time in our life. Our world was suddenly turned upside down, and we had to navigate some paths we weren’t at all prepared for. What’s wild is that this bizarre trial produced some of the most life-changing lessons for us. It’s strange to say now how grateful we are for this experience. It was the wake-up call we needed, and it turned our life on a completely different course than what we had initially imagined.

There are five primary lessons we learned through amnesia that we will communicate in this book. Because these truths completely changed and gripped us, we will highlight them throughout as Life-Changing Lessons. We would love for you to consider embracing these certainties as well, and we are providing a Reflection Prayer at the end of each chapter to assist you in this life-changing journey.

LIFE-CHANGING LESSON 1:

SUFFERING IS NORMAL.

This isn’t a popular message, but it’s one that needs to be talked about more often so we aren’t surprised when it happens to us. Suffering is an opportunity to grow, and we can all learn more about what it means to suffer well.

LIFE-CHANGING LESSON 2:

GOD DOESN’T WANT US TO LIVE A STRESS-FILLED LIFE.

You have permission to simplify your life and slow down! After reading our story, we hope that you’ll pause for a second and let our experience filter into an examination of your own life, specifically how you’re addressing the building stressors you experience on a daily basis. Stress is becoming such a devastating problem in our culture—PLEASE learn from our mistakes and put some boundaries and safeguards in place to avoid having an absolute breakdown like we did. Life isn’t meant to be that stressful . . . it’s not worth it.

LIFE-CHANGING LESSON 3:

IT IS POSSIBLE TO HAVE A RESET IN YOUR

RELATIONSHIPS AND LIVE WITH A CLEAN SLATE.

As you get an insider’s look at our marriage—before, during, and after amnesia—we hope that you’ll see that a clean slate is possible. If you come to us after reading this book and exclaim, I now have more hope for my relationships and am committed to offering more grace and love and forgiveness! we will know that this book has been a success.

LIFE-CHANGING LESSON 4:

COMMUNITY IS A GIFT FROM GOD.

There are a multitude of reasons why God intended for us to live in community. Our circle of friends and family carried us during our time of suffering, and we want to celebrate the role that others play in our stories—and the role that we play in theirs.

LIFE-CHANGING LESSON 5:

GOD’S WORD PREVAILS AND REMAINS.

We want you to see how miraculous God and His Word are. We don’t know where you are in your feelings and beliefs of God—and that’s OK. He meets us where we are. But this story wouldn’t be complete without sharing (1) how He miraculously healed my husband’s brain and (2) how we saw that the Word of God transcended memory. It still gives me goosebumps to think about and ponder. We think that you’ll love this part of our story!

We pray that our story brings you to that place of personal reflection and fills you with a fresh wind of excitement. Come alive, dear friend.

Please note that for the duration of the book, words set in italics will be from David, while words set in regular type will be from Shannon.

1

UPSIDE DOWN

IN A DAY

Shannon

Sometimes I daydream and wonder what it would be like to have a glimpse into the future—just to see ahead to the next hour, day, or week. I think about what it’d be like if God revealed how He was going to answer my prayers, before the answer actually comes. Many of us say we’d like to know what’s coming, right? I’ve been a part of many conversations during which we were verbalizing our longing to just know what’s ahead, what the next step is, how the answer will come, or how everything will work out.

But honestly, I’m grateful that God doesn’t reveal most things early. I’m not sure that I’d always want to know ahead of time what I’m going to have to walk through. We aren’t given grace for future events. We’re only given grace to walk through the now.

We’re only given grace to walk through the now.

And in God’s master design of our universe, He planned for us to be able to fully know only the events of the past: to remember and see what happened and how He worked it all out. Sometimes He gives us clues about what’s to come; though it’s rarely enough pieces of the puzzle. I think that He doesn’t tell us what’s coming because He ultimately desires that we learn to trust.

Looking back over our experience with amnesia, I see now how God used it to answer multitudes of our prayers. However, I’m grateful I didn’t know at the time that the answer to our prayers would come in the messed-up package of amnesia.

Two days before everything turned upside down in our world, I wrote the following in my journal. I was on day three of an intense Master Cleanse (ten days of a strict, liquid diet with a goal of completely giving my digestive system a break), we were in the middle of a major home remodel, and life was just plain crazy. This preemptive journal entry describes how our day-to-day world existed at the time. Maybe you can relate:

Day #3 of the cleanse . . . It’s not been terrible as far as detox symptoms so far. I was irritable with my family last night—but honestly, I think it’s because my blood sugar was crashing. David has been stressed and irritable too (busy church week), so last night was another not-fun-day in the Carroll household. Grateful for a new day.

We found out the drywall guys are coming on Saturday to start fixing my garage—and everything has to come out of there. UGH. It’s going to be a major project today, and I have a ton of other things to get done too. Oh well.

I’m reading through the Psalms while on my cleanse, trying to read and pray ten Psalms a day. As junk is cleansed out of my life, I want to fill and saturate myself with truth and let it wash over me. I have much inner cleansing that needs to happen. Cleanse me fully, Heavenly Father. I’m grateful for Your patience with me.

Little did I know what was coming—or how God was going to answer this prayer for cleansing.

David

How did it all start? I was the pastor of a local church, and it was the week after Easter, which is one of the