If God had asked me or Lisa, Dad or Ron or anyone else in our family before May 6 if we felt ready to face our next huge trial we all would have asked Him to wait. Speaking for myself, I felt like I was only just beginning to understand that grief, though it may change shapes and forms, kind of just lingers with you throughout the days and weeks and months. It's there in the difficult moments, it's there in the quiet moments and it's even there in the happiest of moments. In fact, strangely enough, up until May 6th it was those full-of-joy moments when I felt the loss of mom the most.
In seven months, we had faced many of the situations that would be hard to walk through without her here. Special holidays, a new year, season premiers, all of my kids birthdays... those days were hard and sad in their own ways without her here to enjoy them with us. What we had not yet faced without her was a scary, intense, life-changing tragedy within our immediate family. In His goodness and wisdom, He didn't ask us if we were ready. I know that He had been making us ready, even if we didn't know it at the time, and I know that it certainly was no surprise to Him, but that call from Jimmy at 2:45 on that Monday afternoon that started with, "I think she's ok, but..." felt like it came much too soon after a similar call that took my breath away just six months before.
It took some time to gather all of the details and figure out just what had happened that afternoon, but eventually we would come to learn that Lisa had been hit by a car while walking into her office after returning from lunch. She was standing at the entrance, hand on the door handle, when a car (driving much too fast and attempting to park in a space right at the front door) came up onto the curb and slammed her into the glass door. The impact brought the car to a stop and as it began to roll back and off of the curb, the driver, thinking she was putting on the brake, instead hit the gas and drove into Lisa again. She fell to the ground and immediately saw that her legs were severely injured.
The scary places my mind raced to when Jimmy first told me that she had been in a bad accident certainly shaped my perception of what would be good news. In those next hours hearing that she was alive, that there were no head injuries, that not only was it possible, but also likely, that she would keep both of her legs, was good news that I didn't know I would want to hear just a few hours earlier. The doctor spoke of how "lucky" she was to have been standing at the glass door that would give upon impact instead of in front of the concrete building. We thought about how grateful we were that she didn't fall after the first impact, but rather, somehow, remained upright until after the second impact. Those two blows did a number on her legs, but what would that second blow have done to her had it been her head or upper body instead? Yes, it certainly could have been so much worse. We would later find out that the license tag on the front of the car that hit her read, "Always in God's Hands". It was clear to us that God was there and that He was allowing only so much and no more, and we were grateful.
And still.
Surgeries and titanium and plates and screws and muscle grafts and skin grafts and physical therapy and lying down for weeks and months on end.... and pain. Lots and lots of pain. And tears. A lot of those, too. All of those things are her new normal. Life is completely different than it was on the morning of May 6th. In most ways it's much harder and scarier. But I know that Lisa would say that there are more than a few ways in which life is also sweeter to her than it was before her accident. The Lord is showing his love for her in big ways and she is seeing it clearly. He has stripped away her strength but he is showing her how strong he has always been. She had been training for the Disney marathon in January, 2014, and sees now that God was preparing her for a different kind of marathon altogether.
Meanwhile, Ron is finishing day seven of a twenty-one day, 2,745 mile mountain bike race along the Continental Divide of North America. He's riding well over 100 miles a day, and these are not flat miles. The complete race with all of its elevation change is said to be the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest seven times.
It struck me tonight that I'm the middle sibling in a whole new way right now. The baby of the family is racing through the country climbing mountain after mountain for hours and days and weeks. The oldest sibling, just today, put weight on her "good" leg for the first time in more than six weeks. Physically they are pretty much polar opposites at the moment, but what they have in common is way more important. Mentally they are strong. Tough. Willing to work. Spiritually they know now that their strength doesn't come from within themselves even the tiniest little bit, and that makes all the difference.
None of us thought we were prepared to walk through this chapter of the story that God is writing through our family, but we're all being reminded daily that He has gone before us and is carrying us all the way.
In seven months, we had faced many of the situations that would be hard to walk through without her here. Special holidays, a new year, season premiers, all of my kids birthdays... those days were hard and sad in their own ways without her here to enjoy them with us. What we had not yet faced without her was a scary, intense, life-changing tragedy within our immediate family. In His goodness and wisdom, He didn't ask us if we were ready. I know that He had been making us ready, even if we didn't know it at the time, and I know that it certainly was no surprise to Him, but that call from Jimmy at 2:45 on that Monday afternoon that started with, "I think she's ok, but..." felt like it came much too soon after a similar call that took my breath away just six months before.
It took some time to gather all of the details and figure out just what had happened that afternoon, but eventually we would come to learn that Lisa had been hit by a car while walking into her office after returning from lunch. She was standing at the entrance, hand on the door handle, when a car (driving much too fast and attempting to park in a space right at the front door) came up onto the curb and slammed her into the glass door. The impact brought the car to a stop and as it began to roll back and off of the curb, the driver, thinking she was putting on the brake, instead hit the gas and drove into Lisa again. She fell to the ground and immediately saw that her legs were severely injured.
The scary places my mind raced to when Jimmy first told me that she had been in a bad accident certainly shaped my perception of what would be good news. In those next hours hearing that she was alive, that there were no head injuries, that not only was it possible, but also likely, that she would keep both of her legs, was good news that I didn't know I would want to hear just a few hours earlier. The doctor spoke of how "lucky" she was to have been standing at the glass door that would give upon impact instead of in front of the concrete building. We thought about how grateful we were that she didn't fall after the first impact, but rather, somehow, remained upright until after the second impact. Those two blows did a number on her legs, but what would that second blow have done to her had it been her head or upper body instead? Yes, it certainly could have been so much worse. We would later find out that the license tag on the front of the car that hit her read, "Always in God's Hands". It was clear to us that God was there and that He was allowing only so much and no more, and we were grateful.
And still.
Surgeries and titanium and plates and screws and muscle grafts and skin grafts and physical therapy and lying down for weeks and months on end.... and pain. Lots and lots of pain. And tears. A lot of those, too. All of those things are her new normal. Life is completely different than it was on the morning of May 6th. In most ways it's much harder and scarier. But I know that Lisa would say that there are more than a few ways in which life is also sweeter to her than it was before her accident. The Lord is showing his love for her in big ways and she is seeing it clearly. He has stripped away her strength but he is showing her how strong he has always been. She had been training for the Disney marathon in January, 2014, and sees now that God was preparing her for a different kind of marathon altogether.
Meanwhile, Ron is finishing day seven of a twenty-one day, 2,745 mile mountain bike race along the Continental Divide of North America. He's riding well over 100 miles a day, and these are not flat miles. The complete race with all of its elevation change is said to be the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest seven times.
It struck me tonight that I'm the middle sibling in a whole new way right now. The baby of the family is racing through the country climbing mountain after mountain for hours and days and weeks. The oldest sibling, just today, put weight on her "good" leg for the first time in more than six weeks. Physically they are pretty much polar opposites at the moment, but what they have in common is way more important. Mentally they are strong. Tough. Willing to work. Spiritually they know now that their strength doesn't come from within themselves even the tiniest little bit, and that makes all the difference.
None of us thought we were prepared to walk through this chapter of the story that God is writing through our family, but we're all being reminded daily that He has gone before us and is carrying us all the way.