Medical Trauma, Faith, and Finding Grace Through Suffering

Some moments in life never really leave your body.

I remember the day, at 16 years old, that I went from thinking my daughter had something as minor as simple jaundice to being told:

“If your daughter doesn’t get a liver transplant, she will die.”

Everything changed after that.

The surgery was terrifying. Cara was only 8 months old, and we became the fourth family in the state of Texas to undergo a living-related liver transplant.

We were in Houston, five hours away from home, and my mom was the only person there with me. During surgery, she was going back and forth between Cara’s operating room and mine.

I still remember waking up briefly on the operating table in a panic, pulling at the breathing tube while masked doctors stared down at me.

Some moments in life never really leave your body.

Living Through Medical Trauma

I remember Cara being around five years old and having to hold her down to push feeding tubes through her nose and down her throat while she gagged and screamed—it was awful.

I remember the fear in her eyes before procedures and the panic afterward when the anesthesia would leave her confused and disoriented. Sometimes she would wake up terrified, not understanding what was happening around her, and as a parent, those moments do something to you too because you are trying to stay calm while your child is looking at your face to decide whether they should be afraid.

Medical trauma is something people do not talk about enough. People often think about trauma only in terms of one terrible event, but medical trauma can happen slowly over years through surgeries, procedures, chronic illness, uncertainty, fear, exhaustion, and constantly living in survival mode. I think both children and parents carry those experiences in ways that last far longer than most people realize.

How Faith Began in Hospital Rooms

Those early transplant days were also the beginning of my personal relationship with God.

As a 16-year-old single mom with a critically sick baby, living for weeks and months at a time far from home in Houston, I felt incredibly alone, isolated, hopeless, and depressed, and that was the season I started journaling.

I would sit in hospital rooms writing scriptures onto paper and praying for comfort, healing, strength, and God’s presence. Sometimes I did not even know how else to pray. I just knew I needed Him.

Looking back now, I can see that some of the deepest roots of my faith were formed in hospital rooms, exhaustion, fear, and complete dependence on God.

Resources That Helped Me During Difficult Seasons

During those long hospital stays, journaling became one of the ways I processed fear, prayer, grief, and my growing relationship with God.

If journaling or scripture writing helps you too, here are a few resources I genuinely recommend:

• Prayer & Reflection Journal — [https://amzn.to/4t8Q8V9]

• Scripture Writing Journal — [https://amzn.to/4dlg7UB]

• Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy by Mark Vroegop — [https://amzn.to/4tWkfk8]

  As an Amazon Associate, I may earn from qualifying purchases.

Over the last 33 years, I think this journey is part of how both Cara and I developed grit. We learned how to survive difficult seasons, endure uncertainty, keep showing up through fear and exhaustion, and still find reasons to love life and trust God anyway.

One of the things that has always amazed me about Cara is that after everything she has endured medically, she still carries so much light in her. She still smiles, she still loves people deeply, and she still believes in God’s goodness.

While recording this episode of the Grit and Grace Podcast,"I found myself deeply moved by how emotionally and spiritually insightful she was. There is something Cara understands about acceptance, suffering, God’s sovereignty, and grace that I am still learning myself.

“I Can Do All Things Through Christ”

One of Cara’s favorite scriptures has always been:

“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” — Philippians 4:13

I think that verse is often misunderstood. Paul was not talking about worldly success or achieving every dream imaginable. He was talking about learning how to endure both abundance and suffering and how to walk through uncertainty, weakness, need, and difficult circumstances through Christ’s strength.

That context makes the verse even more meaningful to me when I think about Cara’s life.

Over the years, I have watched her endure things many adults would struggle to carry with grace, including fear, pain, procedures, anxiety, physical suffering, emotional exhaustion, and uncertainty.

She still carries light, she still smiles, she still loves people deeply, and she still believes in God’s goodness.

She has walked through suffering with a gracefulness that deeply moves me as both her mother and simply as another human being trying to understand God through difficult seasons of life.

“But He Giveth More Grace”

One of the scriptures that carried me through many of those years was James 4:6:

“But He giveth more grace.”

That verse means a lot to me because God’s grace is already abundant and sufficient for us, but even when we feel like we have reached the end of ourselves and there is not enough strength, patience, or endurance left, He still gives more grace.

There were many times throughout Cara’s medical journey when I felt emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted, but somehow God continued to sustain us through it.

When I look at Cara now and the way she carries herself through life, I see that same grace reflected in her. She is not pretending suffering never affected her, but she has developed a quiet gracefulness through enduring hard things.

When Life Feels Bigger Than You Can Carry

I think sometimes in Christian culture people say things like, “God will never put more on you than you can bear.” That phrase is not actually biblical because there absolutely are moments in life that feel bigger than what we can carry on our own, especially when we are facing illness, trauma, grief, caregiving, fear, loss, or chronic suffering.

Scripture repeatedly points us back to dependence on God and on one another. We are told to cast our cares upon Him because He cares for us, and we are reminded to let patience have its perfect work through trials. Jesus Himself tells us to take His yoke upon us because His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

That does not mean suffering suddenly becomes easy. It means we do not carry it alone.

While we absolutely pray for healing and stand in faith for the people we love, we also have to understand that healing may come differently than we expected and in God’s timing rather than our own.

Sometimes healing is physical. Sometimes it is emotional. Sometimes it is spiritual. Sometimes healing is simply finding the grace to keep moving forward one day at a time while trusting God with the outcome.

Encouragement for Parents Raising Chronically Ill Children

For parents raising chronically ill children, I especially want to say this: you are not weak for feeling exhausted, and you are not failing because you feel overwhelmed sometimes.

Get in the Word—especially the Psalms—because there is so much honesty there about fear, grief, exhaustion, hope, and dependence on God.

Allow people to help you, allow community to support you, and let other believers help carry part of the load because people who truly love God are often honored to walk alongside hurting families.

And if you are in a season right now where you feel like you cannot carry one more thing, I pray you remember this: There is more grace. God is still present in suffering, and sometimes the deepest faith is formed in the hardest places.

Watch & Listen to the Full Episode

In this deeply personal episode of the podcast, Cara and I talk openly about childhood medical trauma, liver transplant journeys, faith, fear, endurance, God’s grace, and what it means to continue moving forward through suffering with hope.

We also discuss:

• the emotional impact of chronic illness

• parenting through medical trauma

• learning to trust God during uncertainty

• how suffering shaped both of our faith journeys

• what grace and endurance look like in real life

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🎧 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/jELHVWQxdwc

You can also listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts are streamed.

If this story encouraged you, consider sharing it with someone walking through caregiving, chronic illness, medical trauma, or a difficult season of faith.

If this ministry has encouraged you and you would like to support the podcast, you can give through Venmo: Tonya-Bruton.

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