Today is October 7, 2026.

Seven years ago today, I suffered a massive brain aneurysm rupture.

Today, my husband and I are calling it “Happy Everything Worked Out Better Than We Could Have Possibly Imagined Day.”

It is a long name for an anniversary. But it says what we mean.

We are celebrating my life, and the life we have been given together. We are celebrating what God has done with the years since that hospital bed, and how discovering the love and power of His grace has changed the way I live.

If you are where I was, frightened, in a hospital bed, or in a season of despair you aren’t sure you will survive, I want to share this with you. I remember how it felt to be inside a story whose ending I could not see.

The prayer I carried into the pain

On the day it happened, I prayed the words I knew from James 4:7:

“Submit yourself to God, resist the devil and the devil will flee.”

In bed, in the days that followed, I steadied myself through the pain with the Our Father prayer. Familiar words gave me something to return to when so much was beyond my control.

All the years of hardship leading up to the rupture had taught me to pray. When this happened, prayer was already a place I knew how to go.

My neurosurgeon told me repeatedly, “People don’t live through what you lived through.”

I hear those words differently now, seven years later. I have had seven more years to love my family, to make things, to learn, and to discover what it means to be loved by God. Each year has given those words more weight.

Learning to surrender

In the hospital, in the space between life and death, I saw Jesus. Seeing Him alive and with me changed everything.

The rupture taught me that I am not in control. It taught me that Jesus is real, His grace is sufficient, and God can do the impossible. These truths became personal to me in that hospital bed.

I had spent years learning how to keep going through hardship. Now I was learning how to surrender, how to trust God with what I could not manage or understand.

That trust has continued to shape my life long after I left the hospital.

Getting to live again

Getting the chance to live again taught me to love God above all else. His presence has been the greatest gift of my life.

With my priorities reordered, I changed how I prayed and worshiped. I began taking care of myself as if my life were precious to God. It is.

That understanding reaches into ordinary days. It shapes how I care for my body, how I spend my time, and how I love the people God has entrusted to me. Getting to live again made me pay attention to how I was living.

Discovering the love and power of God’s grace has saved my life, reordered my priorities, and changed how I live and love. Today, His grace carries me like a current into more and more peace and joy.

Gratitude in all seasons

I learned to love God, to trust Him no matter what, and to be grateful in all seasons.

Looking back, I can see gifts I could not have recognized while I was suffering. His presence in that hospital bed. The chance to come home. The opportunity to live with a deeper understanding of His love.

I am grateful for the life I have now, including the peace I once did not know how to find. It is such a beautiful place to live. Suffering became part of the path through which I discovered it.

An invitation for you

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

Psalm 37:4

As I have learned to delight in Him, His presence has become something I desire above all else. I want to live close to Him. I want to receive His love and let it shape the way I love others.

The same God who met me in that hospital bed is with you right now. You can turn toward Him from wherever you are, with whatever words you have.

If you don’t know what to pray, begin here:

Jesus, I need You. Help me trust You with what I cannot control. Help me receive Your love and recognize Your presence today. Show me my next step. Amen.

Ephesians 3:20 reminds me that God is able to do more than we can ask or imagine. Seven years ago, I could not have imagined this life. Today, I get to live it.

And I want you to know there is reason to hope, even while you are still waiting to see what comes next.

What has God worked out better than you imagined? I would love to hear your story in the comments. And if you are still in the middle of the hard part, you are welcome here, too.

With love,

Sarah