Yesterday, on my personal Facebook page, I shared a video of my husband walking up a small grassy hill for the first time since undergoing surgery on his spine two weeks ago.
In the caption, I wrote, “I feel like today is Good Friday for more than one reason!” ❤️
I literally couldn’t have been happier if he had climbed Mount Everest. 🙏⛰️❤️⛰️🙏
In case you hadn’t heard, the whole thing started two Fridays ago when he was involved in a freak mountain biking accident. He sustained what the doctor called a “catastrophic injury” to his spine, resulting in instant numbness, tingling, pain, and weakness in all of his extremities. 😱
It was one of the scariest phone calls I’ve received in my entire life.
After being air-lifted to our local hospital, results of the MRI and CT scans confirmed what we were afraid of…he had a complete subluxation of the cervical spine…or in layman’s terms, the vertebrae in his neck were not only broken, but severely dislocated…and he would require emergency surgery.
Thankfully, his spinal cord had not been completely severed by the accident. However, the neurosurgeon informed us that it was in a very fragile state and there was a significant chance that the manipulation required during surgery could make matters worse, resulting in a permanent state of quadriplegia. 😱
This was NOT easy news to swallow, and in my desperation I remember asking if there was any other alternative…
The doctor assured me there were no better options — so, I signed the surgical consent and kissed my husband goodbye, not knowing what the future would hold.
That Friday felt far from being good.
In fact, it felt so bad that I remember thinking, “Whoever said Friday the 13th was unlucky, has apparently never met Friday the 24th.”
It was a helpless feeling watching him be wheeled away toward the OR.
The last words the neurosurgeon said to us were, “This is going to be a very long surgery and I will NOT be giving ANY updates during the procedure unless something were to go terribly wrong. If you don’t hear from me, things are going well. No news is good news.”
And off they went.
The operation began around 12:30pm on Friday afternoon and the next 12 hours were brutal.
We sat, we waited, we cried, we prayed.
Friends and family came to surround us.
And with every hour that silently passed, the surgeon’s words kept echoing as a small reassurance in my mind: “No news is good news.”
Finally, around 12:30am in the morning, the surgeon came in to update us.
The surgery had gone as well as it could have…however, there was no way yet of knowing if any permanent damage had been done to the spinal cord during the procedure.
We were not out of the woods yet.
He explained that post-op swelling could potentially cause additional compression to the spinal cord, resulting in permanent paralysis.
All there was left to do was watch and wait.
We spent the entire day Saturday in the ICU. I sat next to him all day and all night as he lie lethargic in the hospital bed, grimacing in pain from time to time. He was intubated and sedated —but I was as wide awake as I could possibly be.
Running on nothing but pure adrenaline, I sat anxiously for hours upon hours waiting to see how things would unfold.
Over the course of the day, we began seeing positive signs…first his legs moved…🙏🙏❤️❤️🙏🙏…then a few hours later, he began to move his arms a little too…and then a little more…🙏
As the nurses slowly weaned his level of sedation, he began to show signs of breathing on his own.
All of this information caused us to be cautiously optimistic, and we spent the rest of Saturday watching, waiting, and praying some more.
When the neurosurgeon came to do rounds, he was so pleasantly surprised by my husband’s progress that we finally allowed ourselves to fully embrace the hopeful signs we were seeing.
When I thanked the surgeon for all that he did, he simply said, “Don’t thank me. I just did my job…but I didn’t do this,” implying that a recovery of this magnitude was divinely disproportionate to the injury that he had sustained.
I was floored. I told him thousands of people were praying…and he didn’t hesitate to join us in giving the glory to God for such a positive outcome. 🙏❤️🙏
By 6am Sunday morning, my husband had been extubated and with some help from the nurses was standing up at the side of the bed for the first time!
I felt like I was witnessing a miracle…and I couldn’t wait to share the news!
I texted a picture of it to my husband’s side of the family.
That’s when my sister-in-law Christa texted back something that in my sleep-deprived stupor, I would have never realized on my own.
This is what she wrote:
“Call me crazy but it being Sunday, I just can’t help but think about the parallels here. No, he is not God’s immediate Son, but he is His child. Friday he wasn’t killed (thank God), but he was certainly knocked down on his back and it was hard to have hope! He stayed down all day Saturday and through God’s power Sunday he walked. God is certainly writing his story.
Friday is good because Sunday’s coming!”
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Her words were what inspired me to write this post.
She was right — the parallels of God’s love and mercy were overwhelmingly obvious.
Just like Jesus, my husband had been knocked down Friday. Stayed down Saturday. And rose up for the first time Sunday…all by the grace and the power of God.
The Great Physician had healed him.
Sometimes God needs to take you down into the depths…just so He can demonstrate the awesome power He has to raise you back up.
He demonstrated that power with Jesus’ resurrection, and with my husband’s physical healing.
But most of all, He wants to use that kind power in us spiritually — ultimately, He wants to save not just our lives, but our souls. (II Peter 3:9)
When you let God take you down His way, He will bring you back up more victorious than you could have ever have been before! This all starts by being buried with Christ in baptism and then raised up to walk in newness of life! (Romans 6:4)
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Seeing my husband walk up that hill yesterday meant so much to me…but the walk that Jesus made up to a hill called Mount Calvary will forever mean so much more.
Jesus didn’t walk up that hill for exercise, He did it willingly to die a cruel death on a cross for you and me!
He didn’t have a physical therapist walking along side him — but rather an army of Roman soldiers and an angry mob.
He wasn’t fully clothed with a gait belt for protection in case he fell — he was stripped of his clothing and given a crown of thorns to wear.
And though what happened on top of that hill that Friday looked like defeat…it was merely the beginning of the most victorious comeback in the history of the world.
The silence of Saturday was not a white flag of defeat…but simply one of those times when, like the surgeon said, “No news is good news” — literally! Pals…I can’t make this stuff up…the word “Gospel” literally means “Good News.” 😱❤️🙏❤️🙏❤️
And news just doesn’t get any better than that.
So, if you are living and breathing today and you’ve never dedicated your life to Christ through belief and baptism, what are you waiting for?
Then and only then can you have the peace of knowing that as unpredictable as this life is, whenever your last day might be, you will be ready to enter in those gates of Heaven.
Many have asked me how my faith remained strong in the face of trial…well, it helps to know that God is on your side and that no matter what happens to me or my husband in this life, as children of God, we have the kind of eternal hope that no one can take away, no matter what the outcome is here on earth.
I hope and pray you find that, too. If I can help in any way, please reach out and let me know. 🙏❤️
Until next time…
-PWAP