Here's another story of 'A Stroke of Faith'

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

-Psalm 27:14

Mark Moore learned this lesson the hard way. Ten years ago he was hit by back-to-back strokes that could have taken his life. He spent a month in a coma and wake up to find his life forever changed. He re-learned how to walk.

His biggest challenges? One was impatience - recovery doesn’t happen overnight. “It’s incremental … you have to be patient,” he said in an interview earlier this week, coinciding with the release of his new book, “A Stroke of Faith: A Stroke Survivor’s Story of a Second Chance of Living a Life of Significance.” Just to be clear, the book isn’t directly related to this blog with a similar name.

Then again, it’s semi-related because like me, Mark had a stroke at a relatively young age, nearly died and struggled to recover. Also like me, he's finished races during his recovery. A year after his stroke, he finished a 5K (that's 3.1 miles) and went on to run a 10K.

The short version of his story: At 46, Mark was in the prime of his life. He was a successful businessman, loving husband, involved father and dedicated amateur athlete. That changed on May 12, 2007. Now having made an almost-full recovery 10 years later, Mark has dedicated himself to his family, extensive philanthropy within his community and to local organizations, and educating others about stroke awareness, prevention and recovery.

Faith led him to be more patient in his recovery. At work, he said, you accomplish something on a Monday and expect results on a Tuesday. Stroke recovery is much, much slower. He said relinquishing to God helped him develop that patience. Each time he wanted to quit, God seemed to send him a message: “Don’t quit. Trust me.”

Before his stroke, Mark says, he regularly attended church and put money in the offering plate – going through the motions on Sundays. That changed after the stroke. Now, he realizes, Sunday is not the only day set aside for God: “God is in control every day.”

Real faith, he found, means more than sitting in a pew. It includes worship, study, works and “spreading his message to the world.” Thus the book and, by extension, the interview. It’s an in-depth and compelling story of a man whose life was changed by “a stroke of faith.”