Miracles Still Happen!

Last night something happened that 6 weeks ago I really didn't think would be possible...  I'll spare you repeating the details of Zack's injury (you can scroll down to other posts if you've missed what happened to him), but in those initial weeks, I prayed hoping, but honestly, I was struggling to believe it would really happen...  It wasn't a question of whether or not God could heal him quickly, but I also knew that God doesn't always choose to intervene in the natural course of life and I had to come to a place where that was ok too...

I learned that letting go and opening your hand to whatever God has planned is a process... a moment by moment decision, not a one time act...  I learned that when I trust God and believe He is good, no matter what the circumstances look like, it is a much easier place to walk than struggling against what life holds...  Joy is a choice and it will flood into our hearts when we let go and just let God be God... 

I am so thankful that God has chosen to intervene in the natural course of healing and last night Zack played in his first game of his senior year...  If you could have seen the initial wound, you would understand why this is truly a miracle...  (If you want to see it, let me know and we'll text you a photo...  just be prepared though, you'll get an anatomy lesson on the lower part of the leg!)

Thought you might like to see some photos...

Back in his role as one of the captains...

Waiting to go onto the field...  I can't even describe how fast my heart was beating!  There's something so lonely about this picture to me...  It was a hard thing to do, and yet it was something he had to do by himself...  As a mom, I wanted to hug him...  tell him to 'kick butt'...  encourage him... but it was one of those moments where all I could do was watch and pray...

His best friend (who is our goalie) game him a hug when he came onto the field (so did R's younger brother)...  I love those boys!!  It was special to watch his teammates welcome him back!  They are a great group of guys!!

His first big quick...  The inside of his right ankle is where the injury is so it takes the full impact of almost everything...  It looked great after the game though!!

His first foul... the other team was screaming for a Yellow Card... Zack is back!

I was really dreading his first slide tackle!

Zack had great care...  He used wisdom in caring for his injury...  He had a fantastic doctor...  But my greatest thanks is to everyone who prayed for him because ultimately, all of this was in God's hands...  And while I am so thankful to have the blessing and pleasure of watching him play in his senior season, I am even more thankful for all the terrible things that were avoided...  Infection...skin graft...  I could go on and on...  To God be the glory...

It Wasn't Luck!

So I’ll just say at the start, if you’re reading this post (it’s going to be a long one) and you’re not a Christian, you will probably find it an odd post…  Well, you probably find most of my posts odd, weird, or whatever other term you might have for someone who lives by their faith…  But that’s ok…  Because when I look back on the day of Zack’s accident, and all that has happened since, I think it’s odd to say what happened to him was luck, or simply good fortune… 

Remembering is an important act in the Christian faith…  In remembering, our faith grows.  We look back and we can see how God has intervened in situations, how He has done things that couldn’t possibly be luck or coincidence, and our faith grows…  If you were to go back and read our adoption story with Abby, you would see the hand of God at work…  The story of how Nick got into Southlake…  And on the day of Zack’s accident, God’s handprint was everywhere...  So today, I want to take a minute and remember and just be thankful....

This wasn’t a little accident that happened to Zack…  A 1300 pound piece of equipment ran up the lower part of his leg… He had just tripped and fallen on a pallet about 6 inches high…  So part of his leg was on concrete and part of it was at an angle, unsupported by anything, and not one single bone snapped, broke, or even cracked a little…

From that sitting down position, with his leg at an odd angle, Zack was able to lift up on that 1300 pound piece of machinery, and with upper body strength alone, he was able to push it off of his leg.  It’s important to understand that he lifted it up…  The top part of his wound is much deeper than the part over the ankle bone, if he had not lifted up, it would have taken out his ankle bone…  Psalm 91:11 says, “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways…”  There are some unusual notions in the world today about angels.   I don’t buy into them, because they go far beyond what Scripture teaches us about angels, but when I look back at that day with Zack, I believe Psalm 91:11! 

Adrenaline can only go so far in explaining how a 17 year old boy, from a sitting down position, with a heavy piece of equipment on his leg, could not only push the equipment off of his leg, but lift it up and push it off…  His boss said that he doubted that Scott and himself together could have lifted it… 

If you have a weak stomach, I’m not sure you want to read this next part, but it’s the part that every time I think about it I am filled with gratitude …  The treads of the machine cut down into his leg, chewing up his leg from just below his calf, to over the top of his ankle…(It’s the inside right leg)   When he looked down, he could literally see the blood pulsing through both of his arteries on either side of the wound…  The nurse told me this week that if those two arteries had been cut, he would have bled out pretty quickly…  One artery wouldn’t have been as bad, but my mom (who is also a nurse) said, that even a trained medical person would have had a hard time stopping the bleeding of two…  That tread that did so much damage, cut cleanly between those two arteries, it didn’t even nick one of them!

But then, as we learned later when the ER doctor gave my husband an anatomy lesson on the lower part of Zack’s leg, the bone was exposed, both ligaments over the ankle and the main tendon that runs down the front of the leg…  It missed everything that would have impacted his ability to walk!

That day, he was working on a job at my friend’s house and another friend, who is a trained nurse, stopped by…  She had had no plans to go to my friend’s house that day…  Her husband even asked her why she was going…  But in a text to me the day after it happened, she said she told her husband that “she just felt led” (that inner prompting to do something that I truly believe has a source that is greater than emotion or indigestion!)…  She knew exactly what to do to keep Zack from going into shock!

Zack is a soccer player, it’s his senior year and he had been named a captain, something he had worked hard for these last few years…  Of course that was his first thought and one of the EMT’s in the ambulance was a soccer player…  She encouraged him and she understood his heartbreak…

The nurse assigned to him was the head of the Pediatric Sedation Committee at the hospital…  She was an advocate for Zack and his treatment…  She was our angel in the ER.  The ER doctors were great in the long run, but they actually considered the possibility of cleaning out the wound and just stitching him up in the ER…  Every fiber of my being wanted to scream at them, “You’re crazy!”  But I just prayed about the wisdom to know what to fight for, when to fight and when to be quiet…  It was that wonderful nurse who was outside the room fighting for Zack…  You see, they could sedate him, but not put him to sleep in the ER…  What needed to be done to him was excruciating, he needed to be put to sleep and that’s what she fought for!

While I was desperately praying for wisdom for the doctors, a friend of mine had called her brother-in-law who is a plastic surgeon.  He drove out of his way to come to the hospital and ‘just happened’ to be there when the ER doctors gave us their treatment plan…  He was able to assure us that they were doing the right thing…  Later, he would play an important part in confirming for us that prayers had been answered…  He also said it was the dirtiest wound he had ever seen…  It was full of mud, rocks and mulch, yet there was never even a hint of infection!

We were told that because so much of the tissue had been chewed up, they would most likely put in a wound vac and in a couple of weeks do a skin graft…  In surgery the next day, the surgeon closed it…  The plastic surgeon I was just telling you about said, “The only reason they were able to close that wound is because prayers were answered.”  We went 4 weeks before we knew for certain that he wouldn’t need a graft…  4 weeks of literally watching a serious wound heal (from the inside out) before our eyes…  We have literally had the blessing of watching prayers be answered every day…

There are so many other ‘little’ things I could tell you about…  But what I hope and pray that you see is that Zack was NOT lucky…  He was blessed and he was protected…  I don’t know why God chooses to do things the way He does…  It has nothing to do with us…  And this is where faith comes in…  It has EVERYTHING to do with God’s plan, His mercy, His goodness… 

A very long time ago, in the Garden of Eden, mankind opened a door for sin and suffering and death to enter in and every day we feel the effects of that open door…  Zack got hurt that day because of the world we live in…  God wasn’t snoozing on the job…  He wasn’t punishing anyone for anything…  It’s just what happens because we live in a ‘fallen’ world…  But that day, for whatever reason, God cupped His hands around Zack and said, “This far and no further…” 

Tomorrow it could be a different story, it has been for some friends of mine lately, but even my friend whose husband was tragically killed in an accident last week, found the courage to sing these words at his funeral…  “Blessed be the name of the LORD…  He gives and takes away… My heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be Your Name.”

God is good…  It’s not luck…  And I am grateful that I don’t live my life at the whim of an unfriendly universe… Instead, I can walk in joy and confidence because I live my life in the hand of a great and mighty God, who loves me beyond my wildest imagination and who takes trials and tragedy and turns them into triumph…  Since I can only speak for myself, I will always be grateful for how God has used this trial in our life…  And forever Zack’s leg will be a ‘remembering stone’ to all of us that God is at work in the world and miracles do still happen.

Before The Chaff Can Be Separated...

As I stood in church this past Sunday, it hit me how tired I was…  I often find myself in survival mode, doing whatever has to be done but not really living.  But I’m starting to learn that to really live, to really experience life, we have to acknowledge the good and the bad… Not just live the good and survive the bad…

So as I considered how tired I was, an image came to mind from one of my trips to Africa…  

I love this picture of the gogo (grandmother) chaffing the corn…  I love the cloud of dry, useless chaff as it blows away…  I love that the good part that’s left will nourish the children…  I love that it only takes a gentle wind to blow the chaff away…

But then something hit me…  There is so much more to that picture, something had to happen before the chaff could be separated…  It’s the part that I don’t like to think about, it’s the part where I usually find myself struggling, or at the very least, just surviving…  It’s the part where the corn has to be beaten, or threshed, so the chaff can be loosened.

So as I stood there on Sunday, I realized that that was why I’m so tired…  Physically tired, but even more so emotionally…  If you follow my blog, you know our oldest son was hurt pretty seriously a few weeks ago…  But in addition to that, there has been a multitude of small, but unusual annoyances on top of it, not even worth listing, but draining on our finances, our time and even our sleep…

However, as I reflect back over the last few weeks, I can see that God truly has been taking this threshing from life and He has been gently blowing away the worthless attitudes, beliefs and habits that weigh me down and keep me from being the person He created me to be…(I’ll share more of that over the next couple of weeks…)

As we’ve walked through these last few weeks with Zack, I’ve learned something that I think will forever change my life…  When tough things happen, I have a choice…  I can let them rob me of so much…joy and peace… my faith and trust... OR I can take back from them…  I can learn from them…  I can grow in my relationship with my Abba Father and those around me…  I can let God use them to shape me into the person He created me to be…

The bottom line is that when we submit to the ‘threshings’ of life, instead of resisting them, trying to escape from them or fighting against them, we WIN…  what is intended for evil becomes an instrument to bring about good in our lives and the lives of others and ultimately it is used for the glory of God!

THE END of the DMV Story...

Before I tell you what happened today at the DMV, I just have to tell you what Nick told me that happened in the testing area while he was waiting for me (to fail my road test last week)...

A very, VERY senior lady came in to renew her license...  She couldn't read the first three lines of the vision test...  So she said, "Wait, let me try these other glasses."  At which point she pulled out a pair of glasses that were so big Nick thought they were sunglasses.  The DMV officer said, "Mam, you do wear those glasses when you drive don't you?"  "Oh, no...  they told me I didn't have to."  "But mam, your license clearly says that you HAVE to wear those glasses."

Conclusion, she's been driving around for 4-8 years, however long she's had her current license, NOT wearing the glasses that help her see.  And then from there, she proceeded to miss most of the signs on her sign test...  And yep, you probably already guessed it...  they renewed her license!!

So today, I needed my license, Zack needed his over 18 license and Nick still needed to get his permit, so Scott decided to take us all (he was concerned if I failed again, they might not let me drive home!)...

We arrived at the same office as last week to find a note on the door that they were closed today for employee training (won't help I bet!)...  So we went to another office that was close by...  Same situation!   So we took off to an office out in the country, about 35 minutes away...  FRUSTRATION doesn't even begin to describe how we felt...

We waited our turn and finally, I got my second try at the road test...  The lady was so kind...  We got into the car and I said, "Mam, if it's ok, I'd like to leave my GPS in the window.  The man failed me last week because he said I was speeding.  But the way my speedometer sits, it casts a shadow and looks like I'm driving 5 miles faster than I really am."

Get this... She said, "Oh honey, you don't have to worry about a thing...  You had that mean old man down at the other office... I'm not like that...  You wouldn't believe how many people come up here because of him!"

When I finished the test (even though I couldn't back in a straight line), she patted my arm and said, "You did just fine...just fine."  Of course, I'm thinking... "Yea, and I thought the guy last week was nice, what if she's just messing with me?"

I walked back into the DMV office and Nick looked at me and his eyes said, "Well?"  I just shrugged my shoulders because I was so afraid it was going to be like last week and she was going to walk through the door, pull off her nice lady personality to reveal the DMV shark lurking beneath...  But thankfully, she was TRULY a very nice lady...

So I am once again a licensed driver...  WAHOO...  I will be grafitti painting the expiration date of my new license on some wall of the house!  (Just kidding!)  Seriously though, if you haven't already, go check the expiration date on your license!!

I Failed A Road Test... FOR REAL!!

So first, an update on Zack...  Thank you so much for your prayers...  We're still on track to avoid a skin graft.  And, if we're still on track next week, his stitches will come out Wednesday morning...

So now for the funny story...  Imagine being a 46 year old adult and having to re-take your road test for your driver's license...  Could you pass?  Are you sure?  Guess what...

Here's what happened...  My driver's license expired... kind of embarrassing, but it's over a year expired...  No real excuse except that I don't look at my driver's license...don't really need too...  and it wasn't until the bank caught it that I even realized it had expired.  But then life hit and I let the summer slide by without renewing it, and now I'm over a year...

I had set aside today to take Nick to get his learner's permit and I was going to renew my license... Time consuming, but straight forward right?  WRONG...

I had done my homework and our DMV website says this for a license expired over a year...

"Driving Skills ( Road Test ) (at the discretion of the Examiner)"

I thought, "46...  road test at the discretion of the examiner...  no problem...  I have a perfect driving record...  why on earth would they make me take a road test?"  WRONG again...  Because they can if they want to (make an example of you)!!

So Nick had to wait on me because he can't get his permit without a licensed driver...  So 90 minutes later I take the written test and miss only one question...  Cool... I'm sailing...  Driving test...  No problem...

WRONG again...  3 strikes and I'm out!!

The guy seemed so nice...  kind of grandfatherly...  teasing me... we even laughed about the extremes that a girl would go to feel younger in a mid life crisis!

Well, don't let those sweet grandfatherly types fool you...  he was good...  really good...

I was SO nervous...  I buckled my seat belt...  checked all my mirrors...  Looked over my right to back up.... Did all of my turn signals...  no sudden stops...  complete stop at all the stop signs... made sure I didn't stop over the white line...  25 mph in a little residential neighborhood...  3 point turn, left shoulder, right shoulder again...  even had the pleasure of driving a safe distance behind a tractor...

When we got back to the DMV office, I'm thinking, "Piece of cake...boy, I did that perfect!... and I asked, in my most southern sweet way...  "So did I do ok?"  I didn't want him to think I was too confident...

And he looked at me, kind of smiled and said, "We'll talk about it when we get inside."  I laughed and said "Uh oh..."  certain that he was messing with me...  He couldn't have had a better driver in weeks with all of the teenagers they get!  NOT!!

We sat down at the desk and he says,  "Mom, I have some bad news." (He'd been calling me mom the whole time...  I told you, he was good at playing the role of sweet grandfatherly type!)  I thought, "Oh, this guy is good....  he is really going to drag this out before he tells me what a good driver I am."

"You didn't look over your right shoulder for the 3 point turn."

What...  Now he's taking it a little far...  "Pardon me?"  "You didn't look over your right should on the 3 point turn."

"But sir...  I clearly remember looking over both shoulders in the backing part of the turn."  "No mam (no more sweet grandfather...) you didn't."  "But I did..."  I was even silly enough to verbally walk him back through the turn...  Well, give this one up, surely they won't fail me for one thing...

But he wasn't done with me yet...  Oh no... "And mam, you can't speed during a driving test!"  SPEED...  I have a perfect driving record...  my husband and best friend tease me for driving slow...  SPEED...

But in my oh so sweet southern way,  I asked, "Where did I speed?"  "In the 35mph hour zone."  "No sir, I was watching my speedometer...  I did 25 through the entire residential area and then when it went up to 35, I watched my speedometer like a hawk...  I was definitely not speeding."  "Mam...  you were doing 40."  "NO SIR (now sweet southern girl is disappearing in a cloud of steam...  angry bull is lurking just below the surface)...  I am CERTAIN I did NOT speed...  the needle bounced between 35 and 36 the entire time."  "NO MAM...  you were doing 40!"

And with that...  he sent me home!  And poor Nick who waited all summer to do this and sat for 2 grueling hours waiting on me...  had to leave the DMV without his permit...  Not because of anything he did, but because his ditzy, procrastinating mom let her license expire!

Oh well...  after the angry bull (who never really made an appearance) went back into the corner and I got over the humiliation of failing a road test in front of my son...  we laughed and laughed...  How many kids can say they were with their mom when she failed her road test?!  In the end...  it's all about the story!  (I gave him permission to have fun at my expense when he got back to school!  Like he really needed my permission!  LOL!!)

And just FYI...  On the way home I said, "Nick, look and see how fast I'm driving."  His response...  "40!"  But the speedometer was sitting right in between 35 and 36...  The officer had the wrong perspective and in the end, made the wrong decision...  it really is all about perspective!

Stay tuned...  Next week "Sunday driver" Sharla will be at the DMV... I guess I should go ahead and make an appointment with the chiropractor to put my neck back in alignment from twisting so far around to be sure he doesn't miss the look over my right shoulder... 

A Great Perspective...

This morning I was driving Nick to school and I said, "Nick, do you realize that since we decided to go to Africa as a family next summer, the refrigerator died... Zack had a terrible accident...  my car died and now the stomach flu is making it's way through our house!"

Nick didn't miss a beat...  He looked at me and said, "I guess that means we're supposed to go!"

Now that's a perspective that makes me smile!  One thing I've learned... when you're heading down the right path, obstacles will abound!!  You can let them knock you off the path, or you can let them be some assurance that you're on the right path...

Now I realize that one could argue, "well maybe they're meant to direct you to another path..."  And I would totally agree that sometimes God does use circumstances to re-direct us...  But what I've learned over the years is that God clearly closes doors, He doesn't play guessing games with us...  Or He takes away our peace... I've never experienced Him using discouragement to lead me to another path...

Just this morning, I was reading 2 Chronicles 20...  A vast army has come against Israel and this is what God says to them in verse 17...  "You will not have to fight this battle.  Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will give you...  Do not be afraid or discouraged.  Go out and face them and the LORD will be with you."

And Israel went out to face the enemy's army with thanksgiving and praise! 

So I think I'll take a page from Israel's playbook!  I'm going to praise in light of all these annoyances (and a few heartaches with Zack's situation)...  And I'm going to stand firm and guard my heart against discouragement...  This is not my battle to fight and I have TOTAL confidence in the One who is fighting the battle for us!!

(Off to the doctor in a short while for the next check up for Zack's ankle... Will post an update later...  Thank you for all who have been praying!)

And My World Swayed... Literally!

Today was our first follow up visit to see the surgeon since the accident and surgery, last week.  I admit that I had some really…  no REALLY… unreasonable expectations…  I’m not sure what I thought would happen, but it didn’t quite turn out like I wanted…  you know, completely healed, stitches out, Zack playing soccer tomorrow night in the season opener…  (Well…  He is the God of the Impossible!)

But what I saw when they took bandages off pretty much rocked me to the core…  Now I really hate to tell this, but until today, I had not seen Zack’s wound…  Yes, I was in the ER with him, but I either had my eyes closed or my back turned when the doctors were examining him and trying to decide what to do.  You see, I have this sometimes very uncontrollable response to blood… gore… especially when it’s our children…  Not wanting to become the center of attention by fainting in the ER and since I couldn’t offer them any of my non-existent medical expertise, I thought the best plan of action was to keep myself where I could comfort my child (passed out on the floor would not have accomplished that!)…

But today, Scott couldn’t be there, so I knew I had to ‘man-up’ and pay attention to what the doctor had to say…  That meant I had to see what he was talking about…  And oh my goodness…  It was awful…  Part of the cut that runs up his leg is healing well, but down around the ankle…  ugh… I’ll spare you the details…  But my heart broke…

And yet, God had prepared me…  From about 4 a.m. on, I couldn’t really sleep…  I would doze and pray…  I was literally pleading for a good outcome today…  and sometime, in those early hours, that soft, gentle whisper (in my heart) came again…  “Are you just trusting Me for a good outcome in the circumstances, or are you trusting ME?” 

Ouch…  And then it all started to make sense…  God loves us so much He gave His Son for us…  THAT is a love I can trust…  Circumstances may be painful…  they may break my heart…  or my children’s heart…  BUT, if I say I trust God….  If I say He is good…  If I proclaim His love for us…  Then it can’t be dependent on the circumstances, it HAS to be dependent on who He is…

So once again, He made sure I had a place to stand…  And then He let my world rock, well, literally sway a little (talk about whoozy!)…  

I don’t know why today was so hard…  Maybe I’m tired and it’s all catching up to me…  Maybe the fog of last week is finally wearing off…  but it has been the hardest day yet… 

In perspective, it’s silly maybe…  I have my child…  I can laugh with him…  talk to him…  see him…  And he has an injury that will heal…  he’s not going to lose his foot…  or even any mobility… he’ll walk away with a dreadful scar (and as a guy, he’ll be proud of it)…  Even if it requires more treatment, it will still be ok…  But all of that rationale doesn’t change my heartache for right now…  My heart is just not getting the same message as my head…  And for a little while, that’s ok…  But I don’t want to wallow here…

Because the truth is…  the place I chose to stand on is this…  I have an Abba Father who loves me and my family more than I can imagine…  I have years of ‘remembering stones’ where He has shown Himself faithful over and over…  I have story after story of where He took brokenness… heartache… sadness… and literally brought beauty from the ashes…

Great is His faithfulness… His mercies are new every morning…  Tomorrow is a new day!

A Sure Place To Stand... Lessons From Zack's Injury

I’m not sure why I feel led to write this post…  Honestly, I’ve been resisting it for the last couple of days.  I’ve started it and stopped several times, but since I can’t get it out of my heart, I’ll just give in…

Over the summer, I led a small book discussion group using One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp.  It is a wonderful book and God used it in such a sweet way through the early moments of Zack’s injury.  He literally used it to give us a place to stand in the storm…

When I first arrived at the ER, I had no idea what state I would find Zack in…  I knew by then that there had been very little blood loss, so I really felt like his life was not in danger, but I had no idea what state his leg was in…  And I admit, one my greatest heartaches was thinking he had lost his senior soccer season. 

I guess to some that might seem petty or small compared to the damage that could have been done to his foot.  But I knew how Zack had been looking forward to this since his junior season ended.  And not just Zack, but me too…  Soccer has always been one of our special places of connection…  Scott has given me the blessing of taking him to most of his weekend tournaments…  I take tons of photographs…  It’s just been something special we’ve shared.  I was looking forward to savoring every second of every game and now it looked like it was being ripped away…

Not long after I arrived at the hospital, Scott went out to the waiting room to make a few phone calls… So it was just Zack and I…  Zack looked at me and said, “Well, I guess any hope of making all conference is gone…”  I could feel the tears coming so I turned my back and pretended to do something at my purse to regain my composure…  And at that point, it wasn't just soccer I was worried about...  At that point, we only knew what had happened and what the wound looked like...  In our logical minds, we couldn't see how there could be anything but broken bones and shredded ligaments and tendons...  My heart was breaking over soccer...  but even more, my heart was breaking over what this might mean to a 17 year old foot that has a lot of years to go... 

And that’s when I heard a soft whisper in my heart…  Just a few days before, our book group had finished One Thousand Gifts and one of the parts that made such an impression on me was when she wrote, “What if I opened the clenched hands wide to receive all that is?  A life that receives all of God in this moment?”

The quiet voice asked, “Will you receive this with open hands?”  Every fiber of my being wanted to scream “NOOOOOOOO!”  But in the depths of my soul, I could imagine my hands opening and then peace flooded into the heartache…

I turned back to Zack and I said, “You know the book I just finished with the book club?...”  But then the tears came again and I thought twice about what I was about to say…  Would it sound trite?  Would he feel like I was minimizing his heart ache?  And then he said, “Mom, it’s ok…  what were you going to say?”

I don’t know where the words came from…  they weren’t mine… I didn’t even fully understand them when I spoke them…  The Bible says that God will give us our words when we don’t know what to say…  That is my only explanation…

So I told him about opening our hands to receive this…  I told him about the author’s reminder of Romans 8:32…  “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all – how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?”  She goes on…  “He gave us Jesus!  Gave Him up for us all.  If we have only one memory, isn’t this one enough?  If God didn’t withhold from us His very own Son, will God withhold anything we need?”

“Zack, I don’t understand why this happened…  It doesn’t take away the grief…  the disappointment…  the sadness…  but that gives us a place to stand in the midst of it all…  We can look at what He did for us when He let Jesus die on the cross and we can trust Him…”

Somehow it doesn’t seem right to share his thoughts at this point, but I was blown away by his ability to look beyond his heartache and see a bigger picture…  He understands that in every situation, eternity is what hangs in the balance…

But it’s only been in the days that have followed that I’ve really begun to understand what I said to him…

The grief over his season has hit me hard…  I know that it’s not lost…  That there’s a good possibility that he’ll get more than half of it in…  But I’m a selfish woman and I wanted it all (how’s that for honest)…  I wanted to suck the life out of every moment…  And I can tell you for certain that Zack did too…

I took some laundry out of the dryer yesterday that was a leftover from before the accident and as I folded it, I realized that it had his soccer jerseys in it…  I’ve never had such a hard time folding 2 shirts in all my life…

But in the midst of the storm…  I have a place to stand…   No matter how much it hurts…  No matter how the emotions batter my soul…  I can experience them all because God did not withhold His very own Son from me…from us…  There is no bigger picture of His love… And there is no greater assurance that I can put all of our hopes and dreams safely into His Son’s nail scarred hands…

Years ago, Scott and I were in a store and saw the amazing photograph by Jean Guichard that I put at the beginning of the post…  I have never forgotten it…  The storm that is raging around the man is CRAZY...  yet he stands with such peace and confidence because he is certain of where he is standing...  That photo left an imprint on my heart because it is such a picture of how I long to live when storms hit...  And it is a picture of who Christ can be for us when we find refuge in Him…  Are you certain of where you're standing?

(Zack is doing so much better...  no real pain...  sleeping and eating better...  Now we're all just waiting and praying for Monday when we see the surgeon and find out if the wound is healing...  if you've been praying, thank you...  Would you keep praying for him that God will supernaturally heal the wound and that a skin graft will not be necessary?  Thank you, thank you!!)

Catapulted...

So how do I begin to tell a story that I feel like I got dropped… really catapulted… into the middle of? It wouldn’t have been story that I would have chosen, had I been given a choice… And yet, I wouldn’t ask to come out of it now (Zack might want to smack me for that one… you’ll understand why in a minute)…

On the surface, it seems like it began yesterday around 1 p.m…. But as I look back on provision after provision, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, it started well before it seemed…

Sometime after 1 yesterday, my cell phone rang… it was the call that every mother dreads, “Sharla, Zack has been in accident.” I know my friend tried to reassure me, but I could tell by the sound of her voice that this wasn’t the usual, ‘go to the hospital and get an x-ray’ kind of accident… Perhaps her words, “the ambulance is on the way” was the obvious give away!

From there she handed the phone to Zack so he could reassure me… “Mom, the bobcat (a 1300 pound piece of landscaping equipment) ran over my foot. I don’t think it’s broken, but I can see bone.”

It’s amazing the number of thoughts that can run through your head in a matter of nanoseconds… Utter confusion… (How does my friend D know? Oh yeah… Zack is on a landscaping job at her house...) Frustration at the utter confusion (Ambulance…why is there an ambulance coming?) Relief… (It’s not broken… how bad can it be?) More confusion… (Bone…. How can you see bone? Ambulance? I’m still not getting the ambulance…) Understanding… (It’s cut really bad…) Sheer terror (How do I get to my child?) Despair (So much of what he’s…truthfully, what we’ve… looked forward to his senior year of high school soccer… co-captain with one of his closest friends… a swirl going down the drain)…

Calls to Scott… where to take him… calls to church… please pray… calls to friends to pray… to work out the logistics of caring for 3 other children… Fear… a band around my insides until one of our pastors prays with me and then peace… sweet peace that passes all understanding… calm in the middle of a storm that I have no idea how big it will be…

I finally make it to the hospital… to Zack… and then I stand back and watch the hand of God… It really started at my friend’s house where the accident happened…

The accident… Zack was at his landscaping job… He realized the bobcat he was operating was in the way of the man he works for (incredible guy… we’ve been so blessed to have Zack and Nick work for him this summer)… He started to back up with it and forgot that a pallet was behind him… he tripped and fell… the bobcat ran up his right leg… a 1300 pound piece of equipment on his leg… somehow he pushed it off… the body is an amazing thing… he didn’t even know he was hurt… he stood up, turned off the bobcat… looked down and realized that he was in trouble… I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that he could see everything on the inside of his right leg from his ankle to about 5 inches up…

Another friend of ours was visiting at the house… I learned today that she went simply because she felt led to go… Even her husband asked her why she was going… She’s a trained nurse… she knew exactly what to do to prevent shock… she took care of him until the ambulance arrived…

Having no clue how serious this was, we asked to have him taken to our local hospital… The EMTs in their great wisdom overrode us and took him to a trauma center downtown…

And ever since that moment, we have spent the last 32+ hours in awe of our great God… 1300 pounds on a leg and not even a cracked bone… a horrible wound that gouged out flesh yet went between 2 ligaments that attach to the ankle… tendons… and cleanly between 2 blood vessels… I don’t even want to think what that could have meant…

The next hours were filled with an amazing nurse who clearly had been given a heart for Zack… She advocated for him… she reassured us… she didn’t just do her job, she served us in such sweet ways… I will never forget what she did for us… There were desperate prayers for wisdom for the doctors, especially when every fiber of my being said that one of their options for treatment was not the right one…

And then a gift… another friend called her brother-in-law who is a plastic surgeon… he agreed to stop by when he finished rounds… he looked at Zack’s wound and just as he started to talk to us, the ER doctor came in to tell us the plan… Dr. B stayed and listened to it all… After the ER doctor left, he confirmed that they had come up with the right plan, the plan he would want if it was his leg… Peace… sweet peace… No… I absolutely DON’T believe in coincidence!!

In the midst of the storm… friends… our church body being the body in the most amazing way… prayers… phone calls… visits… texts… e-mails… I can’t even begin to tell you how all of them have touched us and been the tangible comfort and strength of God through it all…

They did a preliminary cleaning of his wound in the ER and then surgery was planned for today… A sleepless night… but then I have to say that anything that drives you to God’s throne of grace isn’t all bad…

I admit, while I prayed for the impossible, closing the wound with no skin graft… I didn’t really think it was realistic to hope for… But I still prayed… A very wise ministry leader told my dear friend, not too long ago… “Something won’t NOT happen, because I didn’t ask for it…” So I asked (and so did a WHOLE lot of others! Thank you!!)…

And at 9:00 a.m…. just 40 minutes after surgery began… his surgeon came out and said, “we’re done…I was able to close it completely.” The God of the impossible, did the impossible!

Zack will miss some of his soccer season, but not all… In another post, I’ll tell you about a really sweet conversation with him, in the midst of this crazy storm… I’ve never been more proud… I’ve never forgotten what a friend of mine quoted from her husband, “People are like toothpaste, you don’t really know what’s inside until they get squeezed.” Zack got squeezed… We saw his heart and his character… We love the Christ in him that we see growing…

More in the next day or so…  I'll leave you with one of my favorite Max Lucado quotes, from the Great House of God...

"When somone speaks, Jesus hears...  When Jesus hears, thunder falls...  When thunder falls, the world is changed...  All because someone prayed."

I don't understand how prayer works...  or why God chooses to use our prayers...  But I know He does...  I've seen it and experienced it with my own heart and my own eyes!  And I've never been so thankful!

Getting The Facts Straight!

So I think today is the day I’m going to get on my soapbox…  I’m sure I’ll step on a few toes on the way up, but oh well, I’m tired of being silent while people make some statements that are just NOT grounded in facts...

Statements (or should I say criticisms) like “You know, we have poor in America that you could serve?”  I  actually had a man, a TSA agent, criticize me in the airport a couple of years ago for going to Africa while there are people in need right here at home…

Or the way too common (definitely not informed) lament over how much aid is given to foreign countries, when we have our own starving, homeless, etc., right here in America…  I see it all the time on FB.  Just the other day, a friend of mine expressed a desire to go to Somalia because she was broken hearted over the circumstances there…  Another ‘friend’ of hers actually berated her for her compassion and went off on all the ‘aid’ we give to foreign countries while we have people in need right here at home…

So let’s talk about that and try and get some facts straight…

First, the average income in America is $27,041/year (2009 Census Bureau Numbers) and in Swaziland, it’s $2,280 (Numbers from World Vision)...  That's 92% lower!!

So how does the cost of living compare between Swaziland and the US?  Well, of course it's lower and while I couldn't find a lot of numbers, I learned that rent prices in Swaziland are 46% lower than the US and groceries are 44% lower... But with an income that's 92% lower than ours, it gives a whole new meaning to poverty!

I’ve met teenagers who prostitute themselves to feed the siblings that they’re raising because their parents have died…  I’ve seen a mother feed her 3 year old daughter a rotten banana off a garbage dump…  I’ve met a grandmother who comes to the dump to get food for her grandchildren that she’s raising…  I’ve met young men who search the dump for meat bones, pull off whatever’s left and cook it at the dump…  Dinner anyone?  But heaven forbid we help them out since we have hungry people right here at home…

In America, 14.3% of the population live below the poverty line…  In Swaziland, 69% live below the poverty line…

I know that there are some pretty terrible situations in America, but frankly, America is unbelievably wealthy, even in a down economy… there is just no excuse for anyone to be hungry here… how is it that we can’t support 14.3% of our population… 

The people of Swaziland, and many other countries like them, don’t even have a population of ‘middle classers’…  For crying out loud, 69% of their population is below the poverty line… how on earth are they supposed to find the resources to help each other?

Ok, so let’s talk about giving…  People seem to think that so much of the National Budget goes to foreign aid…  In one poll, the average American ASSUMED that our government gives 25% of the National Budget to foreign aid...  Talk about MIS-informed!  Guess what?  It’s only 1.1%...  We’re definitely NOT giving away the store…  To our own population, it’s between 5.4% and 6%...  It seems that we spend as much, if not more on debt service than we do caring for our poor…  

And individual giving?  Lest anyone think that tons is being given by the individual giver to global issues…  It’s ONLY 3%...  The majority of our charitable giving stays right here at home…

So, it’s time to stop picking on those who have a heart for others in our international community (and wrongly assuming that we don't do anything at home)…  Find your passion, whether in the USA, or globally (this world would never work if we all had the same passion)…  And then when you find it, serve there with your whole heart… 

Love Without Reserve...

I’ve been home for over a week now, but somehow I can’t get this trip out of my mind and heart…  Even more, I can’t get the people out of my mind and heart…  I miss them…  I’ve thought of a thousand questions I wished I’d asked them…  Questions about their life…  Their struggles…  Their joys…  And I’m utterly frustrated because I have no immediate way to communicate with them. 

But there’s something I struggle with...

I love these people…  It’s not logical…  I’ve known them for 6 ½ days of my life…  It’s not really rational…  But I do…  I want to be back with them…  I want to work in their garden with them (and I hate gardening!)…  I just want to sit and really talk to them…  And of course, worship with them! And the cool thing is that it’s a love with no real expectations…  They can’t give me anything…  Or really do anything for me…   

But I admit, I want them to feel the same way about me, and I don't always trust that they do… I want them to love me and accept me… Not for what I bring…  Or who I might know in the US…  Or for what I might help them build…  Because the reality is, I don’t really have any influence to get people to give money…  I’m not well connected… I don’t have a storehouse of money myself… I’m just an ordinary suburban mom who has fallen in love with a small country on the opposite side of the world.   No explainable reason…  it’s just what’s so!

But then it hit me... Isn’t that the kind of love God wants from us?  A love without strings…  A love that has no ‘in order to’ attached to…  ‘In order to’ get blessings…  ‘In order to’ have an illness healed…  ‘In order to’ be successful…  or have great children… or whatever…

Last year, on the last day we were in the community, I had a really hard time because the Pastor pulled out the blueprints for the church/meeting center he longs to build…  The man is truly a visionary…  But unlike most Americans, who can run to the bank for a loan, he has no resources.  So who can really blame him for making the most of an opportunity, isn’t that what a true visionary in the US would do?

And yet, I struggled with that for months, I even considered not going back to the same community…  Because I didn’t want him to play a game with me, telling me what he thought I wanted to hear, only to get what he wanted…  Thankfully, in the end, a greater love and grace than anything I’m capable of, overrode my need to protect myself…  And God taught me something in the process...

I'm really no different in my relationship with God…  I often tell Him what I think He wants to hear... Worry that if I don't have the 'right quiet' time, I might not get His blessings... or I might make Him unhappy, which would cause Him to withhold His blessings...  I wrestle with, "Am I doing enough...  Praying enough...  Reading my Bible enough..."  And yet, that is not who God is...  And that is certainly NOT the gospel... the good news...  Jesus gave His life for...

  

God just wants our love, whether He chooses to give….or to take away…  He just wants us to want Him…  Not His stuff…  Not His miracles… Not His ability to right every wrong…

And yet, the really cool thing is that He loves unconditionally…  He loves us faithfully…  He still shows up… Even when we love Him for the wrong reasons…   

As I understand more and more how risky (and even a little scary) it is to love with no reserve….to love unconditionally… my gratitude for God’s love just goes deeper and deeper…