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Finding Meaning After Tragedy with Ryan Atkins
Meet my new friend, Ryan S. Atkins— husband, author, speaker, businessman, and quadriplegic.
In 2009, 21-year old Ryan was a college student on scholarship eagerly moving toward his dream business career. Then it happened—the car accident. He was paralyzed from the neck down, unable to use his arms and legs.
In this Pop-Up-Conversation, Ryan describes how he came to terms with his disability, turned to God, and learned to view suffering with an eternal perspective and living joyfully today with hope for tomorrow.
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A New Season
After Ryan’s car accident, it took a couple of months before he was able to understand the severity of his injury and that he likely would be in a wheelchair for life. He began focussing all his energy on rehab. But, after one year of working as hard as he could he realized that “nothing was happening.” This is when he turned to God and said: “I need someone greater than myself.”
This prompted him to return to church. The preacher read the story of Jesus healing the paralytic. “So he [Jesus] said to the man, ‘I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.’”
This began a season of intense prayer and hope for a miracle. He says he was much more focused on getting a healing than on the healer.
The Next Chapter
Ryan and his wife Stephanie (Image from RyanAtkins.com)
During these years Ryan became close to Stephanie, who had been a second grade classmate. Four months after the accident she went to visit Ryan and offered to help—at the time, she was a student in massage school. She admitted, “I was really nervous. I didn’t know if I could break his neck again.”
They became friends and later a couple who shared the depths of their faith with each other. A remarkable string of events and circumstances happened that convinced them that Ryan would be healed by their wedding planned for 2016. He would be the healed paralytic in the bible story. But, there was to be no miracle before their wedding.
Shutting Down
Ryan’s health deteriorated in the first two years after his wedding. He was confused and didn’t understand what was happening. He became seriously ill for many months. “It was like my body was shutting down,” he says.
Finally, in January of 2019, Ryan was hospitalized with seizures. He was very sick, but the doctors had no medical explanation. During this month-long hospitalization, his body was a battleground for powerful mind-spirit conflicts. He was lost and confused. On one side he felt foolish about his belief a miracle would happen, disappointed, worthless, and hopeless. But, on the other side, he experienced the power of being prayed for, cherished and protected by his wife and friends. “It was an intense spiritual battle….” and eventually … “a big deliverance.”
A Search for Meaning
He went home and felt better than he had in several years—alert, and strong. He asked himself, “Now what?” In his search for the answer, he read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl, a psychologist and prisoner in a concentration camp in Hitler’s Germany, observed the other prisoners. He came to understand that having meaning in your life is the key to getting through difficult circumstances. Ryan describes the three things Frankl says we need in order to have meaning in our lives:
Loving relationships with other people.
Meaningful work, a reason to get up in the morning…such as a project, volunteer activity, any responsibility, or job.
Having a redemptive view of our suffering…accepting that God is using our suffering to shape and mold us.
One Step Closer
““We each run our own race . . . God isn’t concerned with our status or success.”
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Ryan states emphatically that it was learning to view suffering with an eternal perspective that helped him move ahead with purpose and meaning in his life. It was during this period that he energetically moved to finish writing One Step Closer, his new book.
I asked Ryan about dealing with the awkwardness that can happen when an able-bodied person first meets someone with an obvious handicap, such as his paralysis. He recognizes this happens and is not purposeful. He tries to disarm and get to know new people and feels his blog and writing have made it much easier for him to reach out to those who might otherwise be uncomfortable. He invites readers to reach out to him.
In One Step Closer Ryan exposes himself in profound ways as he explains some of the insecurities he wrestled with: comparing to others, pride, shame and guilt. In so doing, he sheds light on universal struggles. We all have our own season of confusion.
Ryan tries to let go of striving for money, titles, physical health, and outward success. He also reminds us of the importance of remaining faithful: “Our job is to plant the seeds. God’s the one that makes them grow.”
Embracing an Eternal Perspective
“The only way I’ve found to really live with continued everlasting hope is to live through the lens of embracing eternal perspective … Then I can live with purpose … and have hope every day no matter what is going on in the world or what is going on with Covid, the election, or my body.”
Additional Links and Resources
Ryan’s book, One Step Closer offers insights and the inside story about dealing with a disability, as well as profound wisdom about how to find a rich, meaningful life in spite of whatever problems you might face. You can read the first chapter.
Visit FlatOnMyBack.com to read Ryan’s blog and find additional valuable resources.
Look into one of these top-three books that most helped Ryan on his journey:
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
All things New: Heaven, Earth, and the Restoration of Everything You Love by John Eldredge
You and Me Forever: Marriage in Light of Eternity by Francis Chan, a book about marriage that Ryan and his wife Stephanie found very useful.
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About Ryan S. Atkins
As a 21-year-old college student, Ryan felt as if he was on top of the world. November 20, 2009 marked the day he broke his neck and became paralyzed below his shoulders. He launched FlatOnMyBack.com in 2013 to share rehab updates with family and friends. He soon expanded to writing about faith, marriage, and the power of holding an eternal perspective. He the author of One Step Closer: How a Life-Altering Accident Led Me to Everything I Almost Missed. He lives with his wife Stephanie in Cincinnati.
You can subscribe to his email newsletter. Subscribers get exclusive writing, monthly book recommendations, unfiltered stories, and discounts on anything he releases.
About Donna
Dr. Donna Chacko promotes health of body, mind, and spirit through her website (serenityandhealth.com), her blog, and programs at her church. She is the author of Pilgrimage: A Doctor’s Healing Journey (Luminare Press, 2021).
Donna previously practiced medicine for forty years, first as a radiation oncologist and later, after re-training, as a family medicine doctor. What she learned taking care of immigrants and the homeless in Washington, D.C., continues to influence her programs. A central theme is that health of body, mind, and spirit is interrelated and connected to God, all as a package deal. Donna is a wife, mother, and grandmother and lives in University Park, Maryland.
Questions? Reach out to Donna Chacko.
How would you describe your relationship with work? What drives you to work and how do you feel about it? Is it stressful?