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Re-Programmed by God!

Cornelia Raath

This is the story about an amazing young woman who had everything she could dream of -- until a terrible accident wiped her memory -- leaving her without the ability to count or remember anything from her past! The story is told by Cornelia Raath, a computer expert now re-programmed by God!

Cornelia Raath's Testimony/Life Story can be found at http://www.miaauw.co.za/

There was a time when I was amazingly successful in the world’s eyes. In my first 26 years I conquered more challenges than many people could hope to achieve in a lifetime. No challenge was too much for me and my brilliant brain!

I completed my degree in Electronic Engineering --  a difficult degree for many. Thereafter I worked day and night as an electronic engineer at the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa), completing the world’s first computer programme on Neural Networks -- the simulation of the human brain to make decisions, still used daily by Denel and the S.A. Air Force.  At the same time I studied Computer Science part-time through the University of South Africa.

Over weekends I got my adrenaline rushing by doing parachuting with the Air Force, also engaging in white water rafting and bungee jumping at the Victoria Falls (at the time the highest natural bungee in the world). Other regular pastimes were motor-crossing with my bike and Kung-Fu. No challenge was too difficult for me, physical or mental!

But then my life changed dramatically.

One evening, after repairing a friend’s computer, I was making my way to the gymnasium on my motorbike when right ahead of me a lady skipped a stop-street. I was thrown off the bike. My helmet came off and I hit the curbstone with a sickening impact that crushed my skull. A man driving behind me had seen the whole thing! In his eyewitness report he stated that when he reached me lying on the road, I was blue in the face, not breathing, my eyes turned back.

Basically, I was dead! But the man lost no time in giving me the kiss of life, and I began to breathe again.

I had been on my way to gym and had no ID on me. So I was refused entry to two private hospitals. Consequently I was admitted to the HF Verwoerd hospital as unknown and brain-dead, and left to die!

It was only the next morning that I received surgery. Once again the eyewitness came to my rescue, insisting they attend to me. In the operation that followed I was treated for cracked skull and brain hemorrhage.

It was only after I woke up from a coma that lasted three weeks that my new life, as I now know it, began.

My father had died a month before the accident, yet I had no memory of him. It’s as though I’d never known a father! All my knowledge and expertise from my university studies had vanished. All that I knew -- and know -- of my previous life is what I see in photographs, certificates, university articles and journals. I also had to learn to talk and learn to walk again. At the age of 28 I was medically boarded from my job --  a job that had clearly given me total work satisfaction, judging from the fact that my ultimate holiday experience had apparently been to work throughout the night at the CSIR!

For about two and a half years I avoided people because of all my inabilities and losses. Imagine, not being able to count anymore! Please, dear readers, don’t take the abilities you have for granted! Praise the Lord at every opportunity for every ability you have, however obvious and simple it may seem! Like counting, speaking, walking! Just to be able to speak again, to walk again, and to count, has made me so happy!

What brought about the change in me? I was surely touched by an angel! While attending the “Being Refreshed in the Holy Spirit” weekend, the Lord -- or his angel --  touched me at some time during the weekend. It was with a shock and great excitement that I suddenly realised, on the Sunday morning, that I had ten fingers - not the usual twenty I believed I had and had insisted I had since my accident. When confronted with this counting issue, I always believed I was the only person that could count in this world, based on having had a distinction in third-year maths at university! But the truth was I’d never been able to count since my accident more than four years ago.

Somewhere between being filled by the Holy Spirit, experiencing God’s touch, and so may prayers said on my behalf, I regained my ability to count! Praise God for answered prayers -- not in our time, but in his perfect time!

Certainly, I still have difficulty reading with comprehension, watching television with understanding, with concentration and, of course, there’s the severe memory loss. But then I've found the Lord as my Saviour.

As a new Christian I was faced with the concept of forgiveness -- forgiving a lady that was found guilty of reckless and negligent driving in two courts, but who still insists that I, as biker, was at the wrong place at the wrong time. In her eyes, she did nothing wrong. The ordeal resulted in me ending up in Denmar nursing home for a month, trying to work through my frustrations. Eventually I was able to send her a letter of forgiveness. Once I did this my life opened up -- in spite of my occasional frustrations at my inability to commit anything to memory, or recall anything from memory; also, in spite of being permanently in pain.

People who knew me before the accident said they had the impression I considered my brain as my god! With my brain -- and physical fitness, of course -- I needed no one else to overcome all challenges. Then suddenly the mainstay on which I had depended-- my brain! -- was gone! Now there’s a new dependence, for surely God wants me to rest my weight fully on him.

I’ve now come to realise it’s not at all important what milestones, qualifications, status symbols or business successes I’m able to achieve in this life. The only important thing in this life is to have a living relationship with the Lord -- to rest my weight fully on our heavenly Father. After all, the son of the living God has asked us who are heavy laden to bring our burdens to him, hasn’t he?

I prayed for a piece of Scripture to sum up my testimony, but not having the ability to read books, articles or paragraphs on the subject with understanding, I didn’t succeed -- at first. Then, while listening to “Impact Radio,” a text was given that expressed the message of my story in a nutshell! -- “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8: 36).

At the bottom of my Life Application Study Bible the following discussion is given on the verse:

Jesus said that a world centered on possessions, position, or power [in my case qualifications, worldly success and achievements] is ultimately worthless. Whatever you have on earth is only temporary, it cannot be exchanged for your soul. If you work hard at getting what you want, you might eventually have a pleasurable life, but in the end you will find it hollow and empty . . .

Are you willing to make the pursuit of God more important than the selfish pursuit of pleasure (and success)? Follow Jesus, and you will know what it means to live abundantly now and to have eternal life as well.

Whenever and wherever I am, my ever-present pain still blocks out many thoughts from my mind. It was the same thing a while ago during a recent Quiet Morning Counselling Course and Family Camp. I was unable to concentrate much on the message because of the ever-present, intense pain all over my body. But then God spoke to me and said I should inspire people to cope with pain rather than to focus so much on the pain itself.

“Okay, Lord -- here I go!” I said. I was desperately talking to Mike, my minister, a while ago about being too disillusioned to go forward in prayer. Disillusionment, and depression, like negative thinking, prevents one from seeing healing where it’s desperately needed. Mike really opened my eyes by his sympathetic reply -- that I should always keep in mind that maybe, just maybe, complete healing is not in God’s plan for me.

Nick Sailer, a Lay Preacher, spoke a while ago on healing, and it was while I was at home rewriting and going through my notes as well as his notes again and again that the Holy Spirit pointed this out to me:  we can experience God’s gift of healing in one or two ways: either the burden is removed or changed, or God changes us through his power of endurance. That is where our burden no longer causes us anguish, sorrow and pain. Instead, the miraculous God gives us the ability to endure and be victorious over our burden, and this makes us stronger and wiser in faith and brings us closer to him!

So, I’m also now learning to change my attitude towards my pains and aches. Rather than only complaining about it when asked how I’m doing, I now reply positively with: “Yes, I’m in pain, it’s true, but the Lord’s healing me!”

Finally, there’s one particular verse in the Bible that really sustains me and keeps me going from moment to moment. It’s Romans 8:18, where Paul says he considers that which we suffer in this present time to be insignificant compared to the glory that will be revealed to us -- in other words, our current pain, our suffering, in this microscopic timespan of our present mutable and fleeting time on earth is nothing -- nothing! -- compared to the glory we’ll experience in God’s timeless eternity!

Cornelia Raath

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Cornelia Raath's Whole Life is on the WWW. 

HerTestimony/Life Story can be found at

http://www.miaauw.co.za/

Now published in

This work is in effect a sequel to Touched by God: Testimonies of Christian Power, which brought together seven inspirational stories of God’s supernatural intervention in the lives of Christian believers—testimonies that presented extra-biblical proof of God’s divine power and love in the lives of Christian believers.