Impossible Just Takes a Little Longer: Living with Purpose and Passion

Chapter One

Finding the Courage to Transform Your Life

It was Christmas 1983, and I was happier than I had ever been in my life. I had just started my own company and I was engaged to the most beautiful girl in the world. I was in top physical shape, a competitive water-skier and snow skier. I played golf, tennis, racquetball, and basketball. I was a competitive bowler, and I ran several miles every day.

It was a time in my life when it was hard to imagine anything tripping me up. I was young, articulate, confident, and ambitious. I believed God had great plans for my future.

I celebrated Christmas Day with my parents and brothers and sisters at our home in San Jose, California, and then I prepared to leave that evening for Utah to spend the rest of the holidays with my fiancée, Dallas, where we would finish preparing for our wedding, which would take place in five weeks. I had made the California-to-Utah trip dozens of times through the years with friends and family. It was hardly a big deal. On that Christmas Day, I had a prayer with my family before I left, praying for the usual things. We asked God to watch over me and to provide me with a safe journey.

At about 7:00 in the evening, I said goodbye to my family, and got into a little car with a new friend of mine named John. We had decided to drive the southern route through Nevada in order to avoid any possibility of snow over the northern mountain passes of California. I took the wheel first. I was excited. In fifteen short hours, I'd be with my future bride. Dallasand I had met when we were teenagers and we knew almost from the day we laid eyes on one another that we were meant to be together.

After eight hours of driving, my eyes felt heavy and John took over. I climbed into the passenger's seat, fastened my seat belt, and went to sleep while my friend drove in the darkness.An hour and a half later, I was suddenly awakened as I felt the car swerve. We were forty miles north of Las Vegas on Interstate 15. John had fallen asleep at the wheel, lost control of the car, a little Volkswagen Rabbit, and was heading for a cement barrier along the right side of the highway. The tires rode the embankment to the top of the barrier, hurtled into the air, then the car flipped several times as it rolled off the side of the road.

The car finally came to a stop in a pile of twisted metal and broken glass. John quickly turned to his right to see if I was okay, but I wasn't there. Quickly he pulled himself through a broken window and called my name.

He heard only the quiet sounds of a gentle wind whispering back. "Art!" he yelled again, running blindly in the darkness, stumbling over the rough terrain.

No answer.

Finally, on hands and knees, John groped through the thick darkness, feeling his way, calling my name again and again. After what seemed an eternity, he heard soft groans.

I was laying on the desert floor. Blood was streaming down my face. John pulled his leather jacket from off his shoulders, spread it across my broken body, and then asked, "Are you all right?"

I told him I didn't think so. I told him I couldn't move my legs, that I couldn't feel my hands.

"God, please help me," I whispered, and then I slipped into unconsciousness.

It took more than an hour for an ambulance to arrive. I was raced to Las Vegas Valley Hospital, and during the entire trip, my friend John and the ambulance attendant tried to keep me awake, aware that I was in danger of shutting my eyes for the last time.

"What day is it?" asked the attendant.

I didn't know."What day was yesterday?" he asked.

I still didn't know.

"It was a special day, a holiday day, do you remember?"

I searched my mind. Nothing.

He tried again. "How many lights do you see on the ceiling?"

I responded, "Four." At least I was making some progress.

"Who were you going to see in Utah?" was the last question I remember being asked.

"My sweetheart — the most beautiful girl in the world," I said. Later, the ambulance attendant and John told me I was smiling. The smile softened my mouth, then I slipped once more into unconsciousness.

I would not smile again for a long time. After I arrived at the hospital, I was taken straight into an operating room, where I underwent four hours of surgery to try to mend my neck. It had been broken at the fifth vertebra from the top. If the break had been a little higher, I would have most assuredly been dead. Doctors made an incision about three inches long on the front of my neck to fuse the three vertebrae together. A tube was connected to the back of my neck to help drain off the excess blood. In an effort to keep me nourished, other tubes had been pushed through my nose into my stomach. Cold metal tongs of traction were bolted into the sides of my head, with thirty pounds of weight to keep the pressure off the wounded area. The sides of my head had been shaved to provide a clean surface for the tongs to be inserted,

When I finally awakened, a doctor leaned down and said to me, as gently as he could, "Art, you are a quadriplegic." I had lost the use of my feet and legs. I had lost the use of all my stomach muscles and two of three major chest muscles. I had lost the use of my right triceps. I had lost most of the...

The Impossible Just Takes a Little Longer. Copyright © by Art Berg. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.