WATCH: Amputee Shares How God Led Him to Ask Judge to Cancel Debts of Man Who Devastated His Life Because ‘I Have a Saviour That Forgave Me’
Darrin Ray shares his powerful story of hope and redemption. | I Am Second
To the outsider, Darrin Ray has every right to live a life of bitterness and resentment.
Born with a bilateral cleft palate, Ray’s early years were defined by a series of surgeries and relentless bullying from his peers. Despite being raised in a Bible-believing home, the constant pain he endured as a child left him questioning God’s goodness.
“When I would undergo a surgery, doctors would put splints on my arms to keep me from touching my face, so I never developed good hand-eye coordination,” he recalled in an interview with The Christian Post. “I couldn’t play sports and I looked so different from peers that I was the constant target of jabs and bullying. I felt like God had abandoned me and made me ‘ugly’ because He didn’t love me.”
After enduring a difficult childhood, Ray finally reached a point where life seemed to be coming together. He was happily married, living in California with his wife and three-year-old daughter, and earning a stable income. Feeling God calling him to the ministry, he started seminary where he studied Christian counseling.
“Life was good,” he said. “I was a deacon and leader at our local church, and I was learning so much through the Scriptures about counseling.”
All of that changed on Aug. 20, 2006.
“I had gotten up that morning to go to church,” Ray, 50, recalled. “My daughter was in the backseat, and I got about a mile from my home in a 20-mile-an-hour school zone when a man who was intoxicated and high on prescription pills came the other way going 60 miles an hour. And he crossed the double yellow line and hit me head-on. The combined crash was like driving my car into a brick wall 90 miles an hour.”
The front of the car came down on Ray, crushing both of his legs, while the car battery exploded, covering his arms in battering acid. His left femur was broken in several places, while his right ankle was shattered.
“I was bleeding to death,” he said. “Paramedics had to use the Jaws of Life to peel the car from around me. It was a terrifying experience. Thankfully, my daughter had nothing but a scratch.”
Ray spent a month in the hospital where he endured a series of surgeries. Doctors informed him his right foot and ankle had been shattered and would require years of surgeries, including total reconstruction.
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