An instant message alert lit up my laptop screen from someone unknown. My curiosity got the best of me late that night as I decided to respond to this stranger. He introduced himself with only his first name. I was left trying to guess how I might have known him. I went through all the people in my memory that shared his same first name, but came up wrong every time. He then mentioned he received my screen name from one of his friends from his high school. It all became clear. He barely knew me, I barely knew him, and we were both in contact only because of a girl I had become acquainted with as I played Super Smash Brothers Melee on Game Cube with the first year engineer boys in the dormitory.
I was a freshman in college, back to school from spring break as the March blizzard of 2003 started to collect. He lived in Kansas at the time. We were separated by 500 miles. We continued our instant message chats over the next year and a half.
We met for the first time on a bright day in June 2004 at the Colorado State Test Gardens while all the flowers were at their most vivid full bloom. We spent the long summer day together, talking as long as the day let us. We kept up with our communication the rest of that summer 500 miles apart. He moved out to Colorado in October 2004, seeking a job opportunity to be near his family in Colorado. It was all quite a transition, and there was a separation. In March of 2005 after a five month separation, we rekindled the relationship. The timing couldn't have been better having set aside our differences, had a few months of time for each of us to grow up, become more independent, and realize that we both felt the same way about each other. There was a plan for his purpose in my life.
Two months later, I woke up bed bound in the hospital after major brain surgery, and had little to no use of my uncoordinated left side of my body. I was alive, a gift from God, a second chance at life, God sent the one person, my companion of nearly two years, who witnessed what I went through and still loved me unconditionally. He faithfully visited my bedside for a month as I recovered from a brain tumor removed out of my cerebellum. His schedule was wide open; he had been laid off by a temporary job agency. To find a job was on his mind, but for now, his focus was to be a companion to me and my family as I struggled to learn to walk again. Every nurse that oversaw my care had one consensus: this guy was a keeper. I knew that not everyone would have this type of patience to wait for me, and this was the beginning of the rest of our lives.
That fall, after I graduated the grueling doctor ordered three month long 40 hour a week outpatient rehabilitation curriculum, I was determined to enter the fall semester of my junior year in college in August 2005. I walked around campus with a cane until November. I had something to prove to everyone who had doubts. My junior year was my best academically, including a personal goal of having walked without an assistive device, and played my French horn with my concert band again. French horn was a particular challenge; the keys to the notes are made with dexterity of the left hand, since I had to learn to reuse my left hand less than three months prior. Determination drives patience.
He patiently waited for me in March 2007 at the Colorado State Test Gardens, on a bench occupying the very place where we first met nearly three years before, took a knee, and purposed marriage as the empty winter flower beds stood in witness. I gladly accepted. We decided to wait to plan the wedding until after I finished my degree in college.
I finished my Bachelor of Science degree in December of 2007. I moved back home to Denver with my parents and found a job with a nearby town horticulture department. He worked as an electrical apprentice in Northern Colorado. We married in September 2008 and moved to Northern Colorado.
We still had our struggles. The economy tanked in 2008 and put construction on hold. Being an electrician was not a reliable job to make a living with the lack of construction in the region. I had my seasonal horticultural jobs that did not help matters in the winter. I soon realized the only way I could make my degree lucrative was to start my own business of landscape maintenance or manage a greenhouse. I was not cut out to be a manager, let alone a small business owner. I had to rethink my purpose. The economy struggled to improve, and my husband decided to go to school double time. He stacked college credits so thick, even his advisers were weary of his intentions. He had a drive, a very strong interest in computer programming; he chased it unceasingly and nailed being a graduate at the top of his class.
I found that my calling was helping people. I decided to start from the ground up, went to a community college to get a nursing assistant certification and begin helping in a long term care nursing home dementia unit. It was one of the most challenging times in my life. No occupation is a physical, mental, emotionally, spiritually, and ethically demanding. I have written plenty about this. [See My Hands, Embracing Chaos, All in a Year's Work] I would not back down from this work because it helped me define my purpose in life.
I longed to help people in the same way I was helped through my surgery and physical rehabilitation of my body. I trained for a Basic Life Support certification and chased my dream of being the person to inspire others to get better from their injuries, and get back to their lives. I understood and could empathize what it was like to be helpless and how frustrating that could be. I used my experience to convey having the right attitude about healing is actually equally beneficial as the physical mechanism as healing. You can’t stay angry in a wheelchair forever, it will get you nowhere- trust me, I know from experience. I embraced my chance working at a rehabilitation hospital as a patient care technician. I had the chance to be my patients’ biggest fan. To empathize, inspire, encourage, laugh with people, and even put a few bad attitudes in perspective, was my day in and day out thing that never got old. [You can read more about that here: Healing with Empathy]
I finally fulfilled my dream of working at a rehabilitation hospital, another chapter of life about to be written. After six years of marriage, we found out that we were going to be parents. We were joyful about all the new blessings, but a little overwhelmed for them to all come at once. I pressed on and worked at the hospital to the best of my ability. I found out quickly that I couldn't work the way that I had always worked. After having been to the Emergency Room twice as a patient within two and a half months during my pregnancy, I had think about my priorities for the well-being of our baby and the future. I decided to keep on working to the best of my ability within perspective of being pregnant, until my body said enough. I managed to work into month six of my pregnancy but had very bad bouts of high blood pressure, dizziness, and pure exhaustion. It was time to focus on taking care of our baby’s health and remove myself from the temptation to work with a heavy work load environment that I was accustomed of doing. I was now responsible for two human lives.
I can’t help but think back about the day I woke up after my brain tumor surgery nearly a decade ago. I remember praying to God not to “go Home”, but to be able to go back to life, get married, and have a family. I would do anything in my power to serve God how he wished, if I could just get a second chance. Through all of my trials of rehabilitation, learning to use my body again, and finding the right attitude that helped me heal was part of His plan: He saved my life through the hands of my surgeon, He encouraged me to heal through the therapists that taught me how to recover, He gave me the desire to want to give myself in service to others that needed healing just as I had been healed, He gave me my husband who was with me through all my pain, and He is giving us a family.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. ~James 1:17
Miracles take patience ~LMc
No comments:
Post a Comment