A Redirected Life
Gabe Peters was confident in the path he was taking. Twice, that path was redirected. A sports injury and a brain tumor took him down paths he had not planned on. Through it all, God was calling out to Gabe. To a real relationship and the desire to bring glory to God instead of himself.
I grew up in a Christian home. A Four Oaks home. My family has been a part of Four Oaks for nearly as long as the church has existed. I attended a Christian School. God was a part of our everyday teachings and activities. I knew the bible stories and I tried my best to do what I was supposed to. I was a good kid with a kind heart who loved God.
At an early age I discovered I had a natural athletic ability which allowed me to excel at sports. I carried that success, and the attention it brought upon me, into high school. I had transitioned to a public school and I did not shy away from the newfound attention that came from being the charismatic, talented “new kid.” During my freshman year, I was lucky enough to meet a girl who I really liked and we began to spend a significant amount of time together. (This girl would later become my wife and mother to our three children.) Throughout high school I did not focus much on my grades. I had “better things” to do, like practice baseball or train in the gym. I was confident I was going to go pro out of high school or at least win a baseball scholarship to a great school. You simply do not need good grades when you have that kind of certainty in your life. During my senior year of high school, that certainty evaporated suddenly when I blew out my throwing arm, requiring a rebuild of my right elbow. The demand for banged up ballplayers is not as great as one might think and the next four years of my life saw a cycle of rehabilitation, recovery, and additional severe injuries. Now only a few Junior Colleges were willing to take a chance on “potential.” I ultimately came to a place where I was 22 years old and could clearly see the writing on the wall. Baseball as a career was no longer in the cards.
I shifted focus and finished up school. I was still very much in love with the girl I met my freshmen year, so I bought a ring and married my high school sweetheart. Fortunately, she had stuck with me through the craziness of those four years. I say “craziness” because during that time I had drifted from my relationship with God and was enjoying all the things the world had to offer. Sure, I’d show up to church on Sunday’s…sometimes. If you asked me if I was a Christian, I’d say yes, but my mind and my actions were not reflecting a heart full of Jesus. Once out of college, I pursued a job in politics with the legislature. For an extraverted socialite like myself, the work was right in my wheelhouse. I excelled and found myself in a position where my skills were again being desired. This time, with no tendons to tear, I moved into higher and higher positions.
In February 2017, I was on a work trip in Orlando. That is when the headaches started. I use the term headaches loosely; these were not your run of the mill headaches. These were the throbbing, room collapsing in around you headaches that only stupid amounts of Excedrin Migraine would even begin to take the edge off. At the time I did not think much about it. After all, it was only a bad headache. But as I arrived back into town, other symptoms began showing up like cognitive difficulties and numbness. It was time to drive myself to the ER. They did a CAT scan and after looking at the results the on-call doctor came in and told me the news.
I had a massive tumor in the middle of my brain.
It was prohibiting the cerebral spinal fluid the body naturally creates from draining down my spine, essentially creating a pressure chamber in my skull. No wonder the headaches! The doctor said that he had never seen it this bad and honestly was not sure how I was still alive. Later I would find out that because the pressure rose at such a gradual rate, my brain had adapted as the pressure increased. The additional symptoms did not show until the pressure became so high it began to push heavily onto the different lobes of my brain. I was immediately placed on a helicopter and life-flighted to Shands in Gainesville. An emergency craniotomy and a few subsequent shunt surgeries later, as much of the tumor as possible had been removed.
Incredibly, after a month shuttled between the Neuro-ICU and a rehabilitation therapy center it was back to life as usual. My new usual. My experience gave me a dramatically new perspective on what was important and what was not. Incredible amounts of prayer and support had flooded over my family. I was overwhelmed by how God protected and held me through that situation. It made me want to zoom out, take a step back, and reevaluate my life. I knew God had blessed me with a tireless, relentless ambition. An ambition I had used my entire life up to this point to “be great” and bring success and glory upon myself whenever possible. Better job, bigger house, impressing people and friends, you name it. Initially, I wondered if maybe ambition was the sin. Maybe I needed to dial that back a bit. But I grew to realize my ambition was God given; the misdirected, misguided application of that ambition was the actual sin. I had been using my ambition to strive to glorify myself when God gave it to me, along with my other talents, to glorify Him.
Throughout this journey, God revealed other truths to me. Truths I know I had been exposed to before but had not truly heard in my soul. That through the sanctifying work of Jesus on the cross, all my sins are forgiven. He stands in my place before the Father as my substitute and that all my flaws and mistakes do not matter because he covers them all. Amazingly, God used this experience to reveal the Gospel to me in a way that I had never seen before. A way that has completely transformed my life, made me into a new person who is confident in my God, and wants every action I take to bring Him glory. This experience is something that has altered my life forever. I am grateful to have lived through it, for the change it has brought in my life, and for the opportunity to share this story as an example of the amazing grace of the Father. To God be the Glory.