While zooming down a slope at a ski resort outside Beijing, Xu tumbled head over heels. The fall itself broke four ribs, but there was more trouble. When he slid into a steel post by the side of the piste, the impact shattered his fourth thoracic vertebra.

In just a few seconds, Xu had plummeted from heaven into a virtual hell.

His frantic companions rushed him to the onsite clinic, weeping and hanging their heads.

Within an hour, Xu himself was thinking about a biblical story he had talked about repeatedly in the previous week, one in which four people take a paralyzed friend to Jesus to be healed. Crowds prevent them from getting close to the house where Jesus is staying, so they climb onto the roof, pull off some of the thatch, and lower their friend inside. On seeing their faith, Jesus says, “Son, your sins are forgiven,” and the man stands and walks again.

When Xu was later transported to a Beijing hospital, he received both good and bad news. The bad news was that his spinal trauma was a “complete” injury, the most severe kind. The good news was that his heart, aorta, and lungs, all of which were very close to the site of the injury, were in no danger.

Xu was completely immobilized for four or five days prior to his surgery, leaving him with little to do but lie in his bed and look at the ceiling. When he noticed that the light tubes on the ceiling formed a cross with his head and hands, he was reminded of another biblical passage: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

“I could have been angry, but decided that if I were willing to take up my cross it might make a difference on the road ahead.”

n the aftermath of his paralyzing injury, his wife had to lift him out of bed like a child. Since then, he has undergone grueling rehabilitation aimed at expanding his physical capabilities.

Generally speaking, medical personnel aren’t very forthcoming with spinal-injury patients, especially the facts that those who have suffered a complete spinal injury are unlikely to walk again or regain control of their bladder and bowel. Even so, Xu could tell that his body had lost many of its capabilities.

But, unlike most people, he didn’t spend much time grieving over his loss. Instead, he began taking stock of what he still had. What enabled him to turn his thoughts in this more positive direction?

“I knew that there was nothing certain about any of the follow-on treatments and steps,” says Xu, detailing some of the many bits of “good fortune” he experienced in the course of his treatment. For example, during the four hours he spent waiting for the ambulance, the resort clinic was able to provide a transfusion to replace the two liters of blood he had lost into his chest. Later, an ambulance driver uncertain of the route failed to transport him to mainland China’s best orthopedic hospital, and instead took him to Jishuitan Hospital. As a result, his surgery was performed by the mainland’s leading authority on thoracic vertebrae, who happened to be the hospital’s director. Xu later discovered that his surgeon had learned his trade at Taipei Veterans General Hospital.

With no injury to his major organs, he experienced no complications during his surgery and returned safely to Taiwan. But the accident and its fallout have nonetheless been a major trial for the overachieving Xu.

A graduate of Taichung First Senior High School and the National Taiwan University School of Medicine, Xu married and was baptized while at NTU and had an impressive list of achievements to his credit by the age of 31.

He says that while stuck in his hospital bed, he gained a better perspective on his past. “There were many things I couldn’t have obtained through only my own hard work. I’m indebted to so many people: my parents, my teachers, my classmates, my wife.”

n the aftermath of his paralyzing injury, his wife had to lift him out of bed like a child. Since then, he has undergone grueling rehabilitation aimed at expanding his physical capabilities.

Xu received seven or eight months of in-patient care and physical therapy after returning to Taiwan, then had to confront an entirely new set of challenges once he was discharged.

In his first week back at home, he woke up every morning in a puddle of urine. No matter how he wore them, adult diapers just didn’t work. He also struggled with getting to and from the hospital and clinics on a bus for the disabled. Transportation turned treatment into an all-day affair that left him completely exhausted by the time he got home again.

Xu overcame his challenges one by one, in the process transforming his attitude from one of “Why me?” to the much more practical “What do I need to do now?”

“Everything I could learn to do for myself meant one less thing my wife had to do.” Nine months after his accident, his wife felt comfortable enough with his progress to return to work.

Bathing and relieving himself continue to be a problem that takes an hour and a half out of every day. He jokes that he has to visit the toilet every three and a half hours to avoid a “flood.”

Even so, Xu remains upbeat not just about his difficulties using the bathroom, but also about the challenges of his “death sentence.” An experienced proffesor of physical therapy had told Xu he was unlikely to ever stand or walk again, but he’s already taken his first steps.

Three or four weeks after his injury, he began to feel like he was floating when his wife was lifting him into a sitting position. He slowly started regaining the ability to move his pelvis, then later to kneel and stand. Still later, he was able to take a step by using a support and really exerting himself. One day roughly 20 months after his injury, Xu was able to strap a pair of custom-made braces onto his atrophied legs and begin walking. With the help of his braces and a walker he can now move at a slow walk for as much as an hour.

In spite of his rapid recovery, Xu still struggles with intermittent neuropathic pain that can bring him to tears.

Because his brain doesn’t receive signals from the nerves in the lower part of his body, bodily sensations are transmitted only erratically and may be interpreted as cold, heat, or prickling sensations.

“The pain feels like someone is tugging and tugging on my left big toe,” says Xu. At first, his medications offered no relief from these maddening neuropathic pains, and he simply prayed. Fortunately, his doctor eventually found a drug that helped.

“I’m willing to bear this cross and follow you. Show me how to stand on my own two feet.” After his traumatic injury, Dr. Joshua Xu sought strength through prayer.

Rescued from the brink of death, Xu desperately needed a reason to go on living.

Xu’s accident occurred on January 1, 2009. His father was diagnosed with terminal cancer on December 31 of that same year and passed away just three months later.

Though Xu’s father, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, became angry at God over Xu’s paralysis, he nonetheless traveled to Taipei every week for an acupuncture session with his son. When the elder Xu’s illness became terminal, it was the younger who drove down south every week to be with his father. Over the two months preceding his death, the older man came to accept God’s blessings.

“If it hadn’t been for the accident, I probably wouldn’t have had the chance to spend that time with my father,” says Xu.

One year and three months after his accident, Xu returned to work at the hospital. If it weren’t for the fact that he now has to manually move his legs every half hour to prevent sores, his patients might never realize that the doctor behind the desk was sitting in a wheelchair.

Following his injury, Xu began receiving invitations to give lectures to churches, schools, businesses, and charitable organizations. His willingness to share his story led to him coming to know Lin Chin-hsing, the chairman of the Spinal Cord Injury Foundation.

When Lin, a fellow Christian, invited him to become executive director of the foundation, Xu thought long and hard on the offer.

Ultimately, he concluded: “God has saved me and allowed me to understand the pain of the injured, and He made me a doctor. Perhaps He wants to make use of me in this way.”

Xu was determined to stand again after his accident. When he took his first small steps, his physician declared it a miracle.

Xu says that some 1,200 people suffer spinal injuries every year in Taiwan. The victims average just 27 years of age, and about 60% of them are injured in motorcycle accidents. The financial and human costs of such individuals being unable to return to work are enormous: an estimated NT$20 million in lifelong medical expenses as well as a significant amount of the time and attention of at least one family member.

Xu says further that support groups are extremely important to the families of victims. The foundation’s approach is to have two counselors accompany and assist family members. After six months of this kind of aid, family members’ sense of powerlessness drops from 65 to just 15 on a 100-point scale.

Founded on April 5, 2012, the Spinal Cord Injury Foundation is encouraging businesses to work in concert to support social enterprises.

Xu says that enterprises need only slightly modify their production and operational processes to employ injury victims. Cellphone giant HTC is a case in point. The company originally planned to make six positions available to disabled individuals, assigning an employee to help each of the injury victims get familiar with the work environment. But once HTC had modified its space and production line, it realized that it only took two of these “angel” employees to assist eight handicapped employees, and increased the number of disabled job positions to 35.

The foundation’s social enterprise, New Life Information Services, will train injury victims to work in data services or design. Xiaoling, a young woman almost completely paralyzed below the neck as a result of injury to her first and second vertebrae, is one of its successes: she does design and illustration work by using her inhalations and exhalations to control a computer mouse.

Xu has given his all during his nearly a year as executive director of the foundation, but there has been a downside. The foundation has kept him too busy to do the 30 minutes per day of walking and 15 minutes per day of stretching that his physical therapy demands. As a result, he has been losing mobility in his knees.

Xu nonetheless remains optimistic about the future. “No matter what circumstances I find myself in, I know God will provide and keep me on my feet.” Xu has found his way forward.