This is an incredibly special moment for me, and I think for some of you too. I’d like to begin with a brief word of gratitude. First, to this Columbus community. Many of you were praying for me 9 years ago and waiting for me to wake up from a coma. I’m happy to report that God has answered those prayers in extraordinary ways. I’d like to thank as well Keith Maddox, Rick Peterson, and Logan Skinner at Bridge FM radio for their heartfelt ministry to this area, and special thanks to Brian Blair at The Republic Newspaper, for his exceptional journalism and documentation of my story since its inception. Finally, thank you to Columbus North High School, specifically Justine, director of the Auditorium, and students Elizabeth and Caroline, for helping make this event possible.
The message I’m about to give was purposed to inspire personal power to every listener, to aid in our joint quest for finding subjective peace in an objectively non-peaceful world.
Yes, the world is objectively unfair:
Some live in mansions;
Others house under park benches.
Some run marathons;
Others muscle a wheelchair.
Some write books;
Others can barely read.
Most live to their seventies,
Some die in their twenties,
And many die as babies.
Someone else’s vacation spot is another’s nightmare.
Woe to the objective life
How she’s never been fair!
9 years ago today, during my senior year at Columbus North high school, I was leading a bible study with a few dozen other students just across the road from this building. I led these studies once a week and was permitted to do so during both lunch hours. This was the final lesson in preparation for my senior project entitled, “Why I’m Not a Christian,” a conference answering some of Christianity’s toughest questions with local pastors and the dean of the college I was about to attend. I had the best of intentions and was genuinely committed to bringing the hope of Jesus to my peers. My commitment was evidenced by my voluntary withdrawal from varsity basketball halfway through the junior season. Rumor has it that Coach Ferguson still mourns over this decision.
At the time, I gave up what I call an objective vision for basketball greatness and took up a subjective vision for a life after God. I started a blog about my devotions, spoke on the radio with local pastors at WYGS here in town, witnessed to teammates and classmates at North, and listened to countless sermons and lectures from talents like John Piper, R.C. Sproul, and Timothy Keller. Overall, I was trying to fill my pallet with beautiful colors.
Now when that final lunch hour ended, I remember walking back to this school building with an immense sense of gratitude and purpose. I thought I was doing what I was meant to be doing. I remember texting my fiancé about how well the bible studies went. Yep, you heard that right –– I was 17 years old and she was 19, but that didn’t stop me from asking her hand in marriage a month before our worlds turned upside down.
See, I used to think that I was the one painting my life.
When the school day concluded, I went home and hopped on my skateboard, enjoying the usual ride up and down the Marilyn street hill. The weather outside was great, my ministry goals were set, my marital vision locked in – and the life I thought I was painting – picture perfect. There was a little neighborhood girl named Hannah who liked watching me ride the skateboard, and I tried showing her some cool tricks. There were no sidewalks; all we had was the road to play on. It wasn’t a busy road by any means, and the speed limit was set at twenty miles per hour. The driver of the Lexus, however, did not mind the speed limit, nor did he mind the pedestrian in front of him.
My neighbors have testified to the moment of impact: “It sounded like a gunshot!” As my body left the ground, so left my consciousness. I landed in the front yard of a neighbor’s house, while a stream of blood seeped out the right side of my skull. Both the driver and passenger were adorned with tufts of hair, bloody glass shards, and skull fragments. One of my sneakers was found sixty feet up in a tree a few weeks later, further highlighting the force of the impact.
A helicopter rushed me from Columbus to IU Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis where I was diagnosed with the highest level of diffuse axonal brain injury all the way down to my brain stem. I remained in a non-induced coma for the next 2.5 weeks. People were just waiting for me to wake up.
Comatose Cameron didn’t do very much – he certainly wasn’t painting his life anymore. Other people started painting for me. In specific, the doctors painted a grim portrait: that I would be a vegetable for the rest of my life or, if I did wake up, have the mental capacity of an eight-year-old. In addition, society painted a life of limitations and diminished expectations, a life constrained by the injury and defined by what I could no longer do. However, many of you in this community began looking to a greater painter – to see what he could do with all of this.
When I finally woke up from the coma, it became clear to me that the painting of my life was either just beginning or starting over. I had to relearn just about everything – how to walk, talk, and perform basic arithmetic all over again. Like shaking an Etch-e-Sketch, the brain injury blotted out the canvas of my life.
But I worked very hard and my physical recovery progressed rapidly: I went from a wheelchair to a walker in a week; from a walker to a gait belt in a month; and from a gait belt to seminary at the start of the new year. It soon became clear the painting of my life wasn’t finished yet – because I wasn’t finished yet.
Chelsea understood this well. Many people were expecting her to leave me; we were very young and she had her whole life ahead of her – but there she was: by my bedside every day while I was in the coma, sleeping on the hospital floor, barely eating any food; and experiencing incalculable amounts of grief. Randy and Julie, Chelsea’s parents, tried to comfort her while I was in the coma: “We understand if you do not want to stay with him anymore, but we want you to know that Cameron’s still in there.” Chelsea responded with: “I’d push him in a wheelchair for the rest of my life if I have to.” She truly loved me for me – not for what I looked likely objectively – I mean, when she met me, I had the nastiest clear-coated braces and – yet she was drawn to me. Chelsea saw beyond the objective problem and held on to a subjective person.
I found someone else to paint with me.
Despite some serious resistance and setbacks, Chelsea and I still got married on March 26, 2016 – the original wedding date – at the beautiful Commons building here in downtown. This is when I started to understand that I was not the only one painting my life anymore. Now I had Chelsea, whom I trusted implicitly.
A traumatic brain injury is known as an “invisible injury.” Even though my external recovery improved quickly, there were a lot of internal issues for me to work through: speech issues, emotional issues, and unprovoked suicidal desires that haunted me almost daily for a solid four years following the injury. Yes, the coma was dark, but life after the coma was even darker.
Notwithstanding my desires to die, I continued to live and achieve remarkable things: graduating college in 2018 along with Chelsea; starting a nonprofit organization to help TBI survivors; taking the law school admission test specifically because the doctors said the hardest things for me would be higher level thinking; going to law school at IU Mauer in Bloomington; fathering four children in law school, three of which were triplets, all with the same woman; becoming a licensed personal injury attorney in Indiana and Kentucky and working with Matt Schad, the exact same attorney who worked my case 8 years ago; and now today I’m a published author of a multi-dimensional memoir that recounts this journey on a very personal level with philosophical and theological musings, paired with poetry and fictional prose.
I’d be a fool to say that I painted this life by myself. And I’d be a fool to tell you that you can paint yours by yourself. But therein lies the subjective power for overcoming objective difficulty: when you see it differently, because you’ve surrendered yourself to someone else. This is how a terrible object like a cross is seen today on buildings, posters, t-shirts, and jewelry––because someone once died on it and then rose, both literally and figuratively, far above it; and not through objective power but rather through subjective power. As Jesus prayed in the Garden the night before his crucifixion: “Not my will be done, but yours.”
I used to think that I was the one painting my life. Then I married Chelsea and found someone else to paint with me. But as I recovered and moved beyond my brain injury, and as all of these beautiful events and achievements followed suit, I came to understand that I’m not the primary painter in life; and this proves good news for you as it was for me; because it means even when I look like I’m done, or the world acts like it’s done, or you feel like you are done, we can all rest assured, knowing he’s not finished painting.
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