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.
