In, Meant for More: A Testimony of Faith, I share a miraculous testimony of victory over defeat. By using the principles taught throughout scripture, I've learned how to heal from the most incurable ailments. In my testimony, I reveal how I recovered from a traumatic head injury caused by a drunk driver. How I healed my heart after losing twelve years of my life. How I recovered from the loss of my triplet babies. How I lost everything after turning my back on God...and how I regained and gained even more by following His plans for my life. This testimony was written by my hands through the word of God. It has been featured on TBN, Social Media and in major book stores. By reading this miraculous story, you will learn how to increase your faith and recover from the hardest trials and tribulations in your life.
In, Meant for More: A Testimony of Faith, I share a miraculous testimony of victory over defeat. By using the principles taught throughout scripture, I've learned how to heal from the most incurable ailments. In my testimony, I reveal how I recovered from a traumatic head injury caused by a drunk driver. How I healed my heart after losing twelve years of my life. How I recovered from the loss of my triplet babies. How I lost everything after turning my back on God...and how I regained and gained even more by following His plans for my life. This testimony was written by my hands through the word of God. It has been featured on TBN, Social Media and in major book stores. By reading this miraculous story, you will learn how to increase your faith and recover from the hardest trials and tribulations in your life.
Chapter One
The Beginning of the End
When I first began to write my testimony, I hated everything about myself. I hated what I had physically and mentally become. After years of studying the Word, the only part of my life that I still hate is the reason this happened to me. Iāve spent almost three decades trying to figure out why and Iāve gotten nowhere. All I can remember is that horrific night.Ā
Darkness filled the sky on a desolate highway, and I am reminded of that darkness every morning when I wake up weak and ill. Every time I have to swallow the pills and inject the medications that keep me āaliveā and āreplaceā what was taken from me. It never has, and I canāt imagine how it ever could. I will never be the same. This is the biggest chapter in my life, and I wish I could shred every single page.
I remember the freedom I felt when I drove off in my sixteenth birthday present. It was the beginning of a bright new future I worked so hard to achieve. I earned a scholarship to Harvard and was going to become a scientist, possibly a neurologist. I wanted to take away the pain that was engulfed in anyone with a disability. I was consumed by a strong sympathy for the disabled students in my class. But I had no idea that months later, I would be one of them. My sympathy quickly turned to empathy.
In every daily struggle, Iām trying to love this new me, but I havenāt figured out how. I really donāt want to accept this. I just want to go backā¦July 26, 1993. That date is imprinted in my brain: the lights, the tree, and the darkness. The only memory of that night is standing by my car asking my boyfriend to drive me home. I donāt remember why but he said no, and that I do remember. I got off work, had dinner with my boyfriendās family, took a nap, drove homeā¦where did it all go wrong? What if I had left a minute laterā¦a minute earlier? A tough reality to face. I will never know in this lifetime.Ā
It was a warm night. Stars filled the sky. I remember driving, singing, and envisioning my future. Life was good, and then it happened. Flashing bright lights and nowhere to turn. A head-on collision and a broken soul. I was left in a pool of blood with no one around but the man who stole my life. As I lay in a coma, choking on blood from a shattered jaw, he decided to steal more than my life. My CDās, birthday money, the new watch on my wrist, even the new shoes on my feet. Then he left. He just left me there to die.Ā
I was planted in a shallow grave beneath my car after it flipped several times. My seatbelt broke loose from the impact, and I was ejected through the driverās side window, shattering my jaw. I obviously do not remember the sound of my car rolling. I donāt remember how it felt to break a window with my jaw. I donāt even remember falling out of the window when my seatbelt broke loose. I donāt remember sliding into a shallow ditch while my car fell on top of me. I donāt even remember screaming out of shock as the paramedics lifted me into the care flight. It was past midnight, and my mom was driving toward the accident in search for me. She arrived just in time to hear every scream. She had told me that she ran to the helicopter, but the paramedics wouldnāt let her in. I canāt imagine the fear my parents must have felt as they drove for thirty minutes from the accident to St. Maryās Hospital.Ā
I was flown to our most advanced hospital in Grand Junction, CO, where I remained in a coma for two months. I donāt know anything that took place during that time. But Iāve heard the stories. My mom told me how strong I was, even in a coma. I fought the entire time, and I never gave up.Ā
Iāve lost sight of the day I opened my eyes, as I was severely drugged and weak from the side effects of being left beaten to death by a drunken driver. I could barely see or hear. Who are those niceā¦? Why canāt I open myā¦? Why canāt I feel myā¦? Wondering where my family was, even though my mind had erased each and every noun.Ā
Ā I didnāt react because I didnāt know how. I couldnāt open my mouth to scream, and my mind was blank. I needed answers, but I had no idea how to ask. I wreaked my brain trying to comprehend what was happening to me. I was exhausted, but I had slept for so long I couldnāt sleep anymore. By the end of every confusing day, while my mom was in the other bed in Hilltop Rehab Center, I would stay awake all night and play with the stuffed animals visitors brought me. I was a child again.Ā
My mom would turn on the TV, but I couldnāt contemplate one word coming through the speakers. I had no words to say, and no one spoke a language I could understand.Ā
I had many visitors, but out of all the people who came to my room every day, there was only one I remembered. He was the last person I saw. The last person I touchedā¦and the first person to break my heartā¦I felt it as soon as he walked into my hospital room. Out of all the pain, anger, and confusion, the strongest emotion I felt was fear. Fear of losing the only part of my life I could understand. I panicked the first time he looked at me. I was broken and torn. Desperate for his acceptance, and then he was gone. I was lost without a word to say.
With daily rehab and therapy, I relearned how to walk, talk and feed myself again after removing the wires that held my face together, that is. I relearned all of this with double vision. You realize the head injury is massive when the side effects are multi-vision. Everything I looked at duplicated itself two to six times. I was forced to wear an eye patch over my left eye to block out the blur and strengthen my sight. All I could do is wait through the months of testing and healing.Ā
As the months went by, I could finally open my mouth, but I didnāt know enough words to form a sentence. Due to the partial damage to my frontal cortex, which is responsible for processing nouns, it was extremely difficult for me to converse with others. Ironically, I still had my verbs. For instance, I could say āopen,ā but I had no idea how to say ādoor.ā It would take me at least five minutes to say a sentence because I couldnāt remember the word for the person, place, or thing. I didnāt know how to say a correct sentence or ask a simple question. I didnāt know how to tell anyone how weak, thirsty, and confused I felt. I didnāt know anything but verbs.
For a short while, I used my hands to talk for me. As time went by, the healing in my body and my brain began to progress. I was able to relearn and consume information. I couldnāt talk that well, but I could type. Typing was the first lesson I started in rehab. I typed and typed until I could finally read the words. Though I had a hard time writing a sentence, my typing speed was over 140 wpm. With daily rehab, speech therapy, and occupational therapy, I relearned enough in one year to return my senior year and graduate with my class. I couldnāt have done any of this without my parents, who took me almost a year to recall.Ā
I struggle to forget the day I walked back into that high school. I can still feel the lapse as my identity was ripped from meāan honor student one day and in special education the next. I was instantly consumed by fear right when I sat down. The teacher asked us to practice writing our names, so I stood up and said, āI donāt belong here!ā I was so ashamed and so embarrassed to return to a school where I was once esteemed. No one understood what I had physically gone through. I walked and talked and moved much slower than everyone else. I had two massive head injuries; what did they expect? I was mocked and made fun of by the very people who used to call me their friend. The same people who used to call me Dr. Belcastro. They witnessed my achievements and then marked me as Dr. Retard. I was changed that day. I was unacceptable to them, so I was immediately unacceptable to myself. I allowed their opinion to alter my future.Ā
I didnāt know who I was or who I was supposed to be for twenty-six years, but I remember what it felt like to be free from bondage. To be able to jump out of bed in excitement for a new day. To look forward to each year. I remember how my life was supposed to turn out. I remember, and thatās why Iāve spent every single day since in a deep depression. A depression that only faith could break.
Faithā¦that is the most significant concept in every individual life. Believing you were meant for more, and if you believe with all your heart, you can have whatever you ask for (see Mark 11:23-24). That seems like a simple solution to the failures life can bring us. If only there wasnāt an adversary seeking to devoir me every single day (see 1 Peter 5:8).Ā
Some days, Iām blessed with the energy to speak. Knowledge in the Word opens my mouth to claim what I say shall be (see Proverbs 15:2). These faith-filled days are the only days I live forā¦to feel His healing power surround me. I reach out my hands to take hold, but it invariably slips through my fingers.Ā
Iāve tried being the smartest. Iāve tried being the fastest. Iāve even tried being the strongest. But trying to be a Christian is the hardest type of person Iāve ever tried to be. Itās a never-ending glory sparked by a fragment of understanding and fulfilled by a pea size of faith. I know my faith is bigger than a pea! So nowās the hard part: I have to keep the faith, and this is just the beginning.Ā
What could possibly cause minutes of freedom to become decades of confinement? In her gripping retelling of how the head-on collision that seemingly ended her life led to her new life in Christ, Victoria Belcastro-Ray takes us on a journey of real-life struggles, despair and finding the source of all hope.Ā
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In this gripping account of being consumed by fear, physical rehabilitation and a depression only faith could break, we find the author's testimony wrapped in developing a relationship and belief in God, whose power far surpasses anything we could ever imagine. We journey with Victoria from the memory of her accident, to waking up in hospital and needing to relearn much of what she knew, to years spent balancing medications that kept her alive. Her testimony is a poignant parallel to how many of us approach life ā isolating ourselves with negative speech, sinking into deep acceptance of a "new normal" and consumed by "what ifs". This is a reminder that no matter how far removed we are from faith; Godās plan will prevail.Ā
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Wrapped in earnest human emotions, we are prompted to place our faith in God who has the power to do what no one else can. Victoria's journey to realising that her faith needs to be strong enough to receive her healing reminds us of the importance of understanding our identity in Christ.Ā Meant for MoreĀ is a reminder that God makes us a walking testimony even with the traumas of our past and that our faith may not look elegant, but our devotion to God matters more than appearances.
Rich in purely teachable moments and interwoven with scripture, Victoriaās story prompts the reader to confront themselves! Look in the mirror and identify whatās holding you where you are, turn to the Word when you feel like falling apart and stand firm in your salvation.
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Meant for More: A Testimony of FaithĀ is perfect for anyone struggling to connect with God whilst feeling trapped in illness, itās ideal for anyone struggling with their faith and finding purpose in life. There is power in the tongue, take control of what you speak and where you place your faith.Ā If you're feeling consumed by the storm and are struggling to find your faith, this is the book for you.
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Learn how to grow your faith and confront lifeās hardest trials withĀ Meant for More: A Testimony of Faith!