One Year Ago

I'm not even sure how to start this except by saying God is good! One year ago yesterday my life changed forever for that mater my whole family's life changed forever. My Dad oh my crazy Dad his moto is if your not living on the edge your taking up to much space. So he lives on the edge loving life, living life, enjoying life. A few years back he started paragliding/powered paragliding and ended up being very good at it and running his own school teaching others. Until one year ago yesterday he likes to say he was flying along and the earth jumped up in front of him. It was probably the scariest day of my life my Mom called and said "your Dad has crashed" and that's all I remember hearing some how later that day I ended up at Grady Memorial Hospital trying to find out what had happened and how bad of shape my Dad was in. After about 5 or 6 or 10 hours of emergency surgery it seemed like. The doctors came out and pretty much said he was in very bad shape and the next 24 hours would tell the story. He had broken both his legs one exposed compound fracture, both his arms one of them also exposed compound fracture, his hip and lost more blood than a human even has in their body and on top of that he had fractured bones in his face and had a very significant brain injury. So...... we were all this time praying and crying and pleading with God for miracles of any kind. We all moved up to the ICU floor and that's where the real bad news stared coming a little guy in scrubs, I'll never forget his face as long as I live, comes out and wants to talk to my sister and I about what is going on and what will happen next. He looks me in the eye and says your Dad has no brain function except for what keeps his heart beating and I think my heart stopped for a minute or 2, that or it was beating so fast that it just felt like one continuous beat. The doctor said that he would wait an hour and re evaluate him and let us know something then. Then I realize I've got to go tell my family what the doctor just told me so after a few minutes of crying and praying harder than I probably ever had I finally got it out. I don't even remember the reaction of everybody else I was so lost. I remember thinking I have to get everybody I can think of praying I started calling people I'm not even sure who I called and I'm pretty sure all I could get out was please pray for my Dad. That was a long hour but when the doctor came back out he said that my Dads brain activity was coming back Praise Jesus!! but he needed to drill a whole in his head and put in a monitor so they could try to control the pressure on his brain. During this time we also got to go back and see him for the first time he (my Dad) was so swollen all over he was almost unrecognizable there was tubes and hoses and needles and monitors everywhere it was quit possibly the worst real life situation I have ever been in. I was signing papers left and right it was a blurry few weeks of watching waiting, surgeries and ups and downs, left and right and round and round. Confusion and anger and love and sadness and you name it every emotion in the human vocabulary but all that time I knew that God was there I didn't know what his plan was but he was there. I prayed and cried and prayed and cried and before we knew it he was stable, still unconscious but stable and needed to move to another hospital. The doctors were telling us they didn't know how his recovery would progress that he was just lucky to be alive. We get to the second of seven hospitals yes I said seven and my dad starts to wake up very slowly but surly wake up no communication no real movement but his eyes would open he was still on a ventilator some what breathing on his own some of the time. It seems now like one day he just snapped out of it and started communicating little by little the lord was bringing him back to us. He remembered everybody and started trying to talk more and more it was miraculous to say the least. He had some memory/confusion problems and he still could not eat on his own but he was healing and getting stronger day by day. Every hospital was another step closer to home. The doctors kept telling us there were still no promises that he would ever be close to his normal self again that it might be 2 or 3 years before my Dad was even able to understand what had happened and be able to go home without round the clock medical care. Undoubtedly they had no clue who my Dad was or that a great and powerful God was at work. After a few set backs here and there and months of not being able to eat or even move his self around at all. We were finally released to go home what a day what a day it was awesome to be told he may not live, he may never be the person you knew before he may never be able to do anything without assistance again or just a plain we don't know what is going to happen, to miraculously healthy and on the way home. He can do most things on his own and is getting stronger everyday he can walk some with a walker for short periods of time and has a positive attitude that he is going to get back to a normal life again soon. All that said the real blessing that came from this thing that most people would say is a tragedy is that my family my Dad everybody that knows my Dad every person that has heard his story has a renewed appreciation for life and family and for Gods blessing on our lives. My family is closer now than we have been ever I think we appreciate the time we have with each other we actually communicate an a regular basis. So I think hidden in this was a God telling us look at the beautiful family you have. look at all the things that you believe are more important that will never be. look at all the things that I have blessed your life with that you are taking for granted. I would also like to say that God blessed us with just the right doctors at just the right times just the right therapist, just the right hospitals just the right everything to go through this and only come out stronger and feeling his blessing more than ever before. I love and appreciate every person that the good Lord put in our paths on the journey of the last year. I pray all the time that God blesses each person that has prayed for or work with or even indirectly had any effect on my Dads recovery in a very special way that they may have the appreciation and love for his glory and blessings on their lives that I now have. God never puts you in a situation that you can't handle or that wont make you stronger in the end. I thank God for my family for my Friends for my Dad, all whom I love very much and for this trial that has only made us stronger.