Abundant Gratitude

The holiday season started with a typical focus on gratitude.  We always write on our chalkboard things we are grateful for in the month of November.  By the end of the month, it is fun to see the same repeated blessings and some new ones each year.  We were grateful for safety as Grant got in his first little fender bender...

Those high school parking lots are always treacherous.  He and another driver just backed into each other.  We popped the piece back in and had a little repair done, but it was a pretty mild car bump.

Of course we mentioned food in our 'grateful fors.'  Grant had the special job to dress up as a fruit at each of his swimming meets.  It was so fun to look across the pool and never have to wonder where our swimmer was, he was always donning a giant banana costume.  

As Thanksgiving drew near, we had a food/gratitude YW activity as well.  We shook cans of whipping cream and made butter to go on yummy rolls.  It was fun to shake shake shake with the ladies.  

All the regulars made their appearance at our family Thanksgiving feast.  We had a great time at our Petrick family dinner and went to Encanto.  Cute movie, great songs, but we don't talk about Bruno... Ha!  

It seemed like a fairly typical holiday season.  Interestingly enough, we had a youth activity for our church with a guest speaker who has a religious podcast.  She felt inspired to give a talk she has never given before.  She felt she needed to find a yoke.  She woke up day of the talk on a mission to find a yoke and miracle of miracles, she did.  She was led to a historical society, where they opened a door and there was a yoke sitting at the table.  They even let her borrow it for free.  

Tami spoke about how the Lord will carry our burdens as we yoke ourselves to him.  I loved it and hoped someone there needed that.  Reflecting back, I see I was one of the people for sure!  After continuing through the holiday season, we got one great snow storm.  It was big enough to call a snow day for the schools.  Of course, my kids were thrilled.  I took Brenna and Harrison sledding, watching people fly of tubes certain that someone was going to break some part of their body...I should have had an inkling then.

Meanwhile, back at home, Grant was accepting a challenge from the swim team to put on his speedo and jump into the snow.  Without his contacts in, throwing on goggles and wearing nothing but his swimsuit he dove into our back yard snow pile that he was sure was deep, all while Katelee videoed the episode.  He jumped head first and then laid there unable to move.  No one else was home, so after a good minute, Katelee told him that's not how swimming works and had to help him into the house.  As i was wrapping up the sledding fun, I got a text from Grant telling me he "kinked his neck" and it was really hurt.  When I asked if he could move it, he said he could and he was sitting in the bath trying to relax.

As the night went on, he wasn't getting better and started telling us his fingers were hurting.  I talked to some friends and they suggested I get a doctor's appointment or see someone the next day.  We called a chiropractor neighbor to take a quick look and he manipulated it a bit, we all told Grant to roll it out, etc, thinking he had a pinched nerve.  But, when we got to the chiropractor's office the next day and Grant had to take an x-ray, he could hardly stand, the pain was too great.  He was getting queasy and had to throw up whenever he was told to move his neck.  He started saying his arms were on fire.  The chiropractor took an x-ray and practically threw us out of his office saying to get Grant to his neurosurgeon friend immediately and that Grant had a severe broken neck.  

He got us an appointment with a surgeon, and I called Dave so he could meet us as the hospital.  The surgeon's office had us take him to radiology for an x-ray, where Grant completely passed out as he stood against the wall.  Dave and the x-ray tech ran to catch him, luckily before he hit the floor.  

His C-5 burst and was pushing into his spinal chord.  The ER staff was shocked at how he was still walking and moving around and truthfully, everything we did post-accident to the hospital visit could have paralyzed him.  He was made to lay still, put in a collar and unfortunately, we had to take him home for the weekend until we could get him in to surgery.  Paige was floored that we took him home.  She said no way would Primary Children's hospital release him.  Looking back, we should have insisted we have the surgery that day.  The ER doctors told us in no way were we to move him, he was going to be taken by ambulance to a hospital that could hold him for surgery that day and then a few min later the surgeon told us he was good to schedule it for the following Monday.  Needless to say, it was a scary weekend making sure he wasn't moving and still had feeling in his arms.  The pieces of bone did break more over the waiting days and put more and more pressure on his nerves so he was in excruciating pain.  

Surgery time got pushed to the end of the day so we waited and waited and finally got him prepped.  

He was in good spirits-it was so impressive to see how he handled the entire situation.  The night before surgery, our stake president came over to visit and give him a blessing and it was sweet and personal and comforting.  Grant never complained about what he was going through.  

The corpectomy was a success.  The doctor wasn't sure if he would need a follow up procedure through the back of his neck, but the cage held well and he pulled through with no nerve damage and a gnarly scar. 

He and I spent the night at the hospital and were able to return home a few days before Christmas.  It was a legit Christmas miracle.  Having him alive and walking was all we needed for Christmas.  Cute Harrison was a good cheerleader.  The day after we got home from the hospital he said, "Tomorrow is the 23rd which means it's time to have more Christmas spirit and be even more jolly."  He could tell we needed some picking up.

 We had so many who reached out to share our burden and help carry the yoke.  We had family immediately at my house the day we found out his neck was broken, we had someone text me out of the blue while I was in the chiropractor's office getting the scary news.  She was able to get word out and we had dinners on our table for 2 weeks.  We had Christmas Elves come get all our gifts and wrap them for me because Christmas still happened.  We didn't need presents because all of this support and his miracle of walking is the only gift we needed.  Time after time doctors and nurses were blown away with the minimal damage he was experiencing.  

Grant even came to our family party on Christmas Eve (which proved to be too much for him as he recovered, but he wanted to give it a go).  At least he got to be there when Taco Bell welcomed us with "welcome to Taco Bell, we are out of meat," when we tried to do our annual pay it forward for Christmas.  Grant got to be there and we kept looking at him overwhelmed with gratitude.  

So he has 3 months in a neck brace.  Totally do-able because he can walk.  

Every hug, every smile, every moment together 

just filled us with abundant gratitude.   Harrison had told us at the beginning of December that it was going to be the best Christmas because now everyone in our hosue had been baptized.  It definitely will be one of the most memorable.

 Harrison got up to bear his testimony the first Sunday in January.  He said how it's been hard and how Grant shouldn't be able to walk and how Harrison knew miracles were real because Jesus had one of his big brother Grant.  

He is right and we will never forget that.  We will also never forget this gem of a Christmas gift Harrison wrapped up...

what you can't see are his hands in a prancing position like his ready to pounce across a field as a deer.  It was one of Dave's favorite gifts, along with this pillow of my face.  I thought he could take it traveling with him on his work trips and keep it in his hotel bed.  hahaha!  

So, even though our world could have drastically changed and we were going through a really hard month, we had lots of help and could feel from people we could see and those we couldn't- in other states and across the veil.  We had a fast our families joined in on to give Grant strength in recovery and it sustained us all.  We were able to keep going as regularly as possible, we even had a little piano recital while the boys stayed home to tend to the patient.  

The month surprised us with something we never ever expected we would go through, 

scared us and left us emotional for weeks,

but turned out to be something we could raise our glasses to in gratitude and amazement.  

I can't even put into words the feelings that we experienced but all I can say is now, our cups runneth over.