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!