Hello! The following is old news to those following our blog. Prayers and good wishes to everyone for a wonderful holiday season and a new year full of blessings.
We started 2007 with dh full of confidence in a new role, partner in his own firm. I had gone back to work for the first time since our first child's birth, eleven years ago then, and was proud to lead an environmental nonprofit.
In early February, though, dh nearly died in a car accident. He was virtually untouched, except for a devastatingly severe brain injury that left him in a coma for weeks and partially paralyzed for months. It still affects his memory, emotions, and thinking as well as his ability to balance and use his left side. Medically, he's expected to improve for years. So we are hopeful he will be better able to connect with his family and become more independent with time, healing, and therapy. And God has answered so many prayers. We continue to pray and ask for prayer.
Dh's holding on to the long-term goals of returning to work and to being a more active parent. In the near term, he's learning how to compensate for the areas where his brain doesn't function as well as it used too.
As I look back over this year, I'm grateful for so many things: dh always has known who we were, can now speak without difficulty, can get around without a wheelchair, and even helps at home with household chores. I've experienced tremendous support from family, friends, our church, and neighbors. Our children's resilience reassures me. I don't know what I would have done had we not had the support and some financial means to enable me to stay at home and assist in dh's recovery. Most of all, I know God has plans for good for us.
And I thank God for all those who have stood by us and held us up. I've made some wonderful new friends, too. I've found a depth and sense of purpose in all of us that we didn't know we could have.
With age and maturity most of us come to understand and experience personally that life entails loss, too. We just experienced it faster and harder than many. As dh improves, it makes it easier for me to be buoyed by hope. I rely on Jesus's reassurance, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:29-30, NIV)
This year stunned our household. But we wake up in the light of a new day every day.
We started 2007 with dh full of confidence in a new role, partner in his own firm. I had gone back to work for the first time since our first child's birth, eleven years ago then, and was proud to lead an environmental nonprofit.
In early February, though, dh nearly died in a car accident. He was virtually untouched, except for a devastatingly severe brain injury that left him in a coma for weeks and partially paralyzed for months. It still affects his memory, emotions, and thinking as well as his ability to balance and use his left side. Medically, he's expected to improve for years. So we are hopeful he will be better able to connect with his family and become more independent with time, healing, and therapy. And God has answered so many prayers. We continue to pray and ask for prayer.
Dh's holding on to the long-term goals of returning to work and to being a more active parent. In the near term, he's learning how to compensate for the areas where his brain doesn't function as well as it used too.
As I look back over this year, I'm grateful for so many things: dh always has known who we were, can now speak without difficulty, can get around without a wheelchair, and even helps at home with household chores. I've experienced tremendous support from family, friends, our church, and neighbors. Our children's resilience reassures me. I don't know what I would have done had we not had the support and some financial means to enable me to stay at home and assist in dh's recovery. Most of all, I know God has plans for good for us.
And I thank God for all those who have stood by us and held us up. I've made some wonderful new friends, too. I've found a depth and sense of purpose in all of us that we didn't know we could have.
With age and maturity most of us come to understand and experience personally that life entails loss, too. We just experienced it faster and harder than many. As dh improves, it makes it easier for me to be buoyed by hope. I rely on Jesus's reassurance, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:29-30, NIV)
This year stunned our household. But we wake up in the light of a new day every day.
