‘You don’t know how to start living until you know how to start dying’
LITTLE more than three years ago, the life of Kate George Weaver-Gibbs was to change for ever.
Married to former Wales and Lions rugby legend Scott Gibbs, Kate was left fighting for her life in hospital after being hit by a motorcycle.
She had been out walking near their home in Verona, Italy, in December 2016.
The serious crash left Kate in a critical condition, with skull injuries and a broken neck leaving her paralysed.
Christmas came and went while she was in a coma.
But a remarkable recovery has since seen her learn how to walk, remember and even brush her teeth again.
And yet, if given the choice to go back in time and change a thing, Kate says she wouldn’t.
That’s because her life-changing injuries proved to be a catalyst for big change in her life.
“You don’t know how to start living until you know how to start dying”, Kate explains, telling her story in a moving video for Southpoint Church, based in Cape Town.
She was baptised there last summer, at the self-proclaimed “church that people who don’t like church love to attend”.
During an inspiring interview she discusses her recovery, talks about the new perspective it has given her on life and her relationship with God.
“My story, which has brought me here today, is a long one but it’s also quite a simple one”, she says.
“I’ve always had a nice life – I grew up in the Welsh countryside, I’ve travelled a lot, I’ve got great friends on lots of different continents, I’ve always enjoyed good health.
“But it took 32 years of a nice life to see that nice life wasn’t a great life. It took an irresponsible motorcyclist, a smashed skull, a paralysed body, a Christmas in a coma, a broken neck, for me to see that Christ is the source of all of those blessings. It’s nothing to do with me, that everything I’ve got has been God-given, it’s not Kate-given.”
Powerful images of Kate lying in a hospital bed, connected to tubes, wires and equipment, with a black eye, her neck in a brace, and a bandage wrapped around much of her head graphically show just how badly she was injured.
Others show the scarring on her head and her battle to walk again.
“The last 32 months I’ve had to relearn how to clean my teeth and relearn how to walk, I’ve had to relearn my own memory, but it’s been amazing, because I’ve got to enjoy an intimate relationship with God.
“If I was asked now to go back and choose for that accident to happen or not, I would choose it every day. Because you don’t know how to start living until you know how to start dying.”
The travel and beauty writer, from Ewenny, near Bridgend, says life is very different after fighting to survive.
“Once you know how to start dying, you live so much differently, and when you know that everything you had in your life before was nothing to do with you, it was all God-given, when you then give your life back to God, you then get to experience the peace and the joy and true fulfilment that we all crave.
“I think if we’re all honest we all want that fresh start, second chance, and we can all have that. We can all have that because we’ve got God and in God we have that every day.
“But sometimes you just need to need it to see it, and I had my physical vision taken away from me.
“Not all of it, but an awful lot of it, so I don’t get to see the physical world like I used to, but I certainly see more of life now than I ever did before.”
The moving clip ends by showing Kate’s baptism, in August, while Kate thanks those who introduced her to the church.
She adds: “I’m being baptised because I want my faith to be the medium through which all aspects of my life flow.”
Kate married ex-rugby star Scott in South Africa after he proposed on St David’s Day in 2013.