Milestones

Two years ago today, I arrived for my first visit to Salt Lake City, Utah. It was a most unexpected trip, and one I had no intention of making. The phone call I had received the night before, notifying me that my beloved had been paralyzed in a skiing accident, had prompted an emergency flight out at a most ungodly hour. I was hoping that the surgery they were wanting to perform would keep until I could lay eyes on him, but there was no way to know.

I left my youngest kiddos in the trusted care of family members with next to no groceries in my fridge or pantry (because people, if we ever go into survivalist mode due to some kind of alien takeover or nuclear bomb, my family will be the first to starve to death... I am the reigning champion of the 'Who Can Put Off Grocery Shopping the Longest" contest) and no access to my bank account. I had it stuck in my noggin that this whole thing would resolve itself in a couple of days, and that we would be back home no worse for wear. He kept telling me on the phone that he was starting to move his arms and that the feeling was coming back. Fluke. Had to be a fluke.

My brother-in-law picked me up at the baggage carousel and told me that my husband had been in surgery for a few hours, and that it would be a few more before he would be out. And so we waited in the surgery waiting room. A few hours later, the surgeon finally came and talked us, and I rushed to see this guy...



I expected some bumps and bruises, but the surgeon failed to tell me that laying face down on an operating table for a spinal decompression and fusion of the C3 - C6 vertebrae meant all the blood and fluid rushed to his face and made it swollen. I may or may not have had to sit behind him for a while with my head between my knees, but that's neither here nor there.

I didn't find out till a week or so ago that the paramedics were in a complete panic in the ambulance. I found out at the same time that they had already done the central line and his PIC line and had been in the ER for about 5 hours before they suggested he may "want to call his wife now." His double-digit concussion history made him think that he was going to just shake this off, and this one was just a little bit worse than before. No need to panic me several states away. [insert eye roll here]

Yesterday, as I was contemplating the two year mark of this major road diversion we took, I was flipping through Facebook posts from those first few weeks. Scriptures sent to us from sweet friends, pictures of power-chairs, and surgery incisions, the lear jet that flew us home after three long weeks in Utah... and the memories flooded over me so significantly that it took my breath away. I was overcome.

Overcome with gratitude. Overcome with wonder. Overcome with a little bit of that pesky fear that keeps poking its ugly head at me even though we have NO DOUBT that God has been all over this process from start to finish. Overcome with that ugly cry that starts deep in your soul and pinches off all the air in your lungs so that you have to gulp and swallow, all the while having tears and snot running haphazardly down your face. Overcome.

Tonight, as I'm typing this, my man is upstairs singing to our girl. Mockingbird. He took her up and put her in the tub, washed her hair, got her in her jams and is now singing her a lullaby. My heart is so full. Two years ago, he had to be moved from a bed to a power-chair using a Hoyer lift. God is so very good.


I can lay out all the physical milestones that he has achieved since the accident...recount miracle after miracle that God has performed, because they were and are plentiful. We have new ones all the time. Rather, the milestones I was thinking about today were altogether different.

We now can rely on God in a way we never really had to before, and because of all we've seen Him do over the past two years, we can trust Him in a way we didn't even know we could.

We can trust each other in a way that we've never had to trust another human since childhood. Because, you know, there are some things that can't be unseen. We've seen each other at our most vulnerable, and lived to tell the tale. We have laughed about things that other people would not find funny. You've never really giggled until you've laughed about bowel care or urinal mishaps. Your spouse may have never considered you a tantrum thrower until he saw you literally sitting on the floor kicking your feet and crying over a pair of stupid TED hose. (Those things are straight from Lucifer himself, by the way.) Seeing each other at your weakest creates a whole new level of intimacy. The mere fact that we went from spending a bit of time together each week after travel and work, to spending twenty-four * seven with each other and no one has been maimed or killed speaks volumes, I think.

We have gained friendships, built relationships that we value with people we had only cursory associations with before...people we now have deep affection for.

We have compassion for people that we hadn't experienced before. Empathy for those who have any kind of difference or disability.

Those are the good milestones... the ones that will stick to the walls of my heart, the ones that matter. The rest of it... that's just the gravy. Or the chocolate. Let's call it chocolate... because you know...chocolate.