Overview:

The author shares a personal experience of her father who died but was brought back to life by a neighbor who knew CPR. He had sleep apnea and heart arrhythmia, and doctors installed a defibrillator to shock his heart back to normal rhythm if it ever stopped again. The author reflects on how God sometimes allows jolts to get our hearts back on rhythm and how we can use these times to strengthen and heal our hearts by God. She encourages readers to allow their hearts to be jolted, strengthened, and healed by God during difficult times.

38 years ago, my father died but was brought back to life.

I was in my college dorm room when I got the call from my younger sister that something had happened to my father.

She was crying uncontrollably and I could barely make out what she was saying. The only thing
I could understand between her sobs was “Daddy had died but was on his way to the hospital.”
Confused and concerned, I immediately hung up the phone, grabbed the keys to my car and
rushed out of my room. I could barely control my emotions and drive as fast as I could to the
hospital on the other side of town. All that kept running through my mind as I sped in rush hour
traffic was what could have happened to him.

I found out what my sister meant when I got to the hospital. He had actually died, but was brought back to life by a next-door neighbor who knew CPR. EMS technicians then transported him to the hospital where we got the diagnosis that he had both sleep apnea and heart arrhythmia.

Because of his sleep apnea, he’d stopped breathing while he was taking a nap. His heart had also stopped beating.

My father stayed in the hospital for months as doctors worked to repair the damage to his heart and vital organs. Part of the solution for his heart arrhythmia was to install a defibrillator which would shock his heart back to normal rhythm if it ever stopped again. Basically, when his heart stops, the machine sends a bolt of electricity that my father doesn’t even feel…but it keeps his heart beating on time. The rest of the family didn’t completely understand how an electrical shock wouldn’t bring him more pain but we were just glad that they were able to keep him alive.

I never thought that having a shock to the heart would be a good thing. When our
hearts become weakened or even dead to sin, God sometimes allows jolts to get our hearts back on rhythm. I’ve recently had some “shocks” that jolted my heart. What these jolts did was
remind me that even though I thought my “heart” was right, I still needed to work on genuine
forgiveness.

Psalm 37: 4 says that if we delight in the LORD, he will give us the desires of our heart.

Delighting in God means that we make a conscious decision to discern and follow his will even
in the most difficult circumstances. Like my Daddy, I didn’t realize that I had a problem with
that issue, until something happened that broke my heart. In the healing process, God showed
me how that jolt was not intended to “kill” me but merely to show me that my heart needed to be
strengthened.

Some of us are dealing with broken hearts- maybe because of the loss of our job, our loved ones, or even our freedom. As so many of us are dealing with changes in our lives because of these jolts, we could consider using the time to allow our hearts to be jolted, strengthened and healed by God.

Shewanda Riley is a Fort Worth, Texas based author of “Love Hangover: Moving From Pain to
Purpose After a Relationship Ends” and “Writing to the Beat of God’s Heart: A Book of Prayers
for Writers.” Email her at preservedbypurpose@gmail.com or follow her on Instagram
@shewandawrites.