Pastor Dewey Note: We are so very blessed to share this story about the life of Patti Waterman, pictured above. It’s also a story of a married couple who team together for our Lord, thank you David and Patti Waterman for all you do! What a testimony for us all! Thanks to Kevin Parker for his excellent write up in the Baptist New Mexican! By the way, if you do not get the New Mexico Baptists’ newspaper, I would strongly suggest it…..it is always full of inspiring news! I see this newspaper all over New Mexico when I travel! We are blessed to have such a Godly relationship with all these folks!
Though Paralyzed 38 Years, Patti Helps Others
By Kevin Parker of the Baptist New Mexican
At the Baptist Convention of New Mexico’s 2016 State Evangelism Conference, Arkansas Baptists’ executive director, Sonny Tucker, preached on compassion, a message that resonated with conference attendees David and Patti Waterman. For them, compassion has special meaning. Tucker had no idea they were in the audience as he told story after story of reaching out to people that many Christians were avoiding.
The Watermans attend Hoffmantown Church, Albuquerque. David was a bivocational pastor and missionary while he worked in construction. Today, he volunteers helping disabled individuals modify their homes to fit their needs. Patti was a teacher. Together, the couple possesses a unique perspective on caring for others.
Baptist New Mexican staff encountered the Watermans and their story in the evangelism conference’s exhibit area during its last day. Patti is a wheelchair-bound paralytic. Luckily, the table at the Information Services exhibit had a pneumatic cylinder supporting it. So, as the random conversation turned serious, BNM staff lowered the table with the microphone and recording equipment to accommodate Patti in her wheelchair. The conversation turned into a spontaneous, unplanned interview for an upcoming podcast.
Patti is paralyzed from the chest down. Thirty-eight and a half years have passed since the accident that harmed her. She says reaching 40 years from the accident “will be a great landmark.” “I praise God every day,” she noted, smiling and delighted to share her story, “Thank you for asking.”
Patti’s Story
In Elgin, Ill., at 17, she explained, she had been a cheerleader through both junior high and high school. She also had run cross-country track during high school, something that made soon-to-occur events difficult to understand. Four months after her graduation, a motorcycle accident in which she was a passenger changed everything. She flew over 80 feet through the air, landing on her head and shoulder. The choices she made that day have shaped her life.
In the hospital, the medical staff told her family it was likely she would not awaken from her coma. If she awakened, the staff told her family that she would be little more than a vegetable. The doctors were being honest and sincere. Yet, she did wake up and was not a vegetable.
Doctors told Patti she would never leave the hospital. She said, “they told me I should have died.” Of course she both lived and left the hospital. She also struggled through the experience of being a teenager in a nursing home filled with elderly people. In her husband’s words, she escaped.
The journey of her recovery required resolve. People Magazine ran a story in its May 1978 edition about a Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago chaplain who served Patti, as well as other patients. Chaplain Nina Herrmann briefly chronicles Patti’s struggle with patience after her 18th birthday. “I’ve been arguing with nurses and doctors because I want to do things for myself,” she reported Patti saying. “If you can hang on to your patience, you have the key to discovering yourself and God,” she counseled Patti.
Thankfully, at 12 years old, as her parents were going through a divorce, she had become a Christian. “I was able to find my strength in living,” she recalled. After her accident, and as a former cross-country runner, she asked God, “What’s up with this?”
Patti recalls telling herself, as she sat in bed, that she would never be able to work or have a career. She said to herself, “I’m never going to marry. I’m never going to have kids. I’m never going to go to college. I’m never going to get a job. I’m never, never, never.” Before that, she said, she was such an optimistic person, positive and hopeful.
“All of a sudden my world fell apart, I saw no hope in living,” she said. But, right away she began to see some light in life because of her faith. Ultimately, she experienced all those things she thought were lost.
Her story and dramatic progress attracted the attention of rising television star Barbara Walters, who interviewed Patti and released her story to a national audience in 1979. Patti’s determination was inspiring.
After graduating from college with a degree in teaching, she taught in southeast Texas and northwest New Mexico, impacting kids. She also married and became a mother to two children.
Her husband recalled meeting some of the students she influenced and hearing their stories. He called their stories “glowing accounts,” and recalled one particularly. One young man told of how she, unknowingly, kept him from committing a school shooting while he was in school.
But Patti’s successful recovery from her motorcycle accident didn’t mean leaving hospitalizations in the past. During the ’90s she had one surgery every year for seven years. Between 2007 and 2009 she spent another 18½ months in the hospital with her life deteriorating. Despite the effects of serious infections and multiple surgeries, she survived again. Most recently, she’s suffered five major head injuries. Through it all, she trusts God. David describes her as “stubbornly optimistic.”
Resonating With Tucker’s Sermon
Tucker’s message resonated with the couple because they know what its like to need compassion, yet be avoided.
David shared, “When I met her and started courting her, my friends would tell me I should look for a woman who could walk because I would be dealing with all the issues that ‘crippled’ people have.” They suggested he avoid her, suggesting it would be more convenient for him. Interestingly, David, too, has been temporarily wheelchair-bound in the past.
He noted that “sometimes, in spite of the fact that society and the church really know very little about the life difficulties of the disabled, most really don’t want to know.” He believes that “the families of disabled people can be won by how we treat the disabled in our midst.” He is talking about winning them to Jesus with compassion, just like Tucker was preaching.
Opening Opportunities and Extending Compassion
Today, Patti feels that her unique situation, surviving and living in a wheelchair, actually creates opportunities, rather than limits them. Because she is disabled and coping both spiritually and emotionally, she was invited to help run a Bible study for disabled people called Living Hope, through New Covenant Church, Albuquerque. Just before the opportunity arose, she had been asking God, “Where do you want to use me? Lead me.” After spending 25 years in Farmington, she was new to Albuquerque, with few connections and few opportunities.
The Bible study role excited her. She described liking the activities of leading and helping others. “God has your life set up, that whatever ails you, whatever you feel nobody else has, God has a plan for everything. No matter what happens … it doesn’t go by without him decreeing, ‘Yep, that’s OK; that’s fine; she’ll do fine or he’ll do fine; she can make it through that,’ ” she explains. She knows. She’s been there.
The Bible study includes people in walkers, people with physical issues and people with various mental and emotional disabilities. Each one has encountered some debilitating obstacle in his or her life. She calls their obstacles isolating setbacks. “They are having a hard time getting over it and moving on,” she said. “God uses us with setbacks in life to move forward in the most beautiful way where he will be glorified.”
David thinks the biggest message his wife brings is that “by being there, they look at her and see that she went and got a teaching degree and did all of this stuff. Suddenly, people have this hope that starts to grow, ‘Hey, she did it; I can, too.’ ” If we can show them that they have worth as Jesus sees them and that they can contribute to their family and their community,” David said, “that gives them hope.”
After telling about a recent injury caused by her condition, she described “coming closest to God in her deepest pit.” She wants others to know that they can find him there, too. In such moments, she talks to God out loud. She feels his presence. She knows that she’ll be OK, and she hopes her struggles open doors for others to interact about the struggles of disabled people. God has given her the kind of compassion she and David hope others will discover, as well.
Editor’s Take:
Patti and David’s story is packed with many take-aways for every Christian. They especially bring to mind the Bible’s story of four friends who dug through a roof and lowered their paralytic friend down to Jesus. They (1) had a friend who was a paralytic and (2) wanted to take him to Jesus. Each of us needs to look for the “paralytics” around us—people who are different from us and need our compassion. We need to befriend them, and we need a heart that wants to bring them to Jesus. So, who do you see around you? Who is avoided? Become a friend. Take them to Jesus. What can your church do to extend compassion to people hungry for it? What can you do? Read. Ponder. Plan. Then, do something!
The recording of the Baptist New Mexican’s interview with Patti will be released as a podcast at www.bcnm.com/bnm. If you’re interested in having Patti share her story with your group personally, contact the Baptist New Mexican at (505) 924-2311.
