Cynthia’s Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) story (continued) 

 A scene from the movie, The Sound of Music, kept playing over and over in my mind. In this scene, Maria has run away from the Von Trapp family household and is seeking refuge in the convent from which she had come. The Mother Superior finally calls Maria to appear before her and asks why she had run away from the Von Trapps. “I don’t really know,” Maria replies. “I just couldn’t bear seeing him anymore.”  It turns out that Maria has fallen in love with Captain Von Trapp and, out of fear of the unknown and because she had no experience in how to deal with such a situation, she fled. The Mother Superior says to Maria, “When God shuts a door. He almost always opens a window.”

The phrase had always stuck in my mind and as I reflected on events in my past, I could see how God had presented an open door at various turning points in my life. As I examined the various turning points in my life:  my ultimate choice of careers, my decision to leave New York and enter SAIS, the process by which I ended up at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital, even the events surrounding my meeting my future husband, I began to see the possibility that there was a larger force in the universe at work, a greater Being who had a plan for my life and was constantly shaping events, leading me down a path to an ultimate, but as yet unknowable, goal.  In the end, I came to believe that these turning points were not just a series of coincidences.  I believe now, as I did then, that these turning points were all part of a divine plan to place me where I needed to be to receive the help I needed to recover successfully from my traumatic brain injury (TBI).  My spiritual journey has taken me from a point of despair to a place where I can enjoy true peace and contentment.

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Copyright 2008 by Cynthia Paddock Doroghazi