Healing Love

A Blog Carnival celebrates the ideas and thoughts of a group of people who Post on one theme.  My Post today is part of a Blog Carnival organized and hosted by Bridget Chumbley http://www.bridgetchumbley.com/.  The theme word for this week is healing.  This is my contribution.

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Three days before Christmas in 2007, my husband – a high school principal on his first day of Christmas break – decided we needed some heat tape installed on the roof of our back porch.  I was in the kitchen, which opens out to the back porch, when I heard him fall.  He evidently landed on the edges of the porch steps and then bounced off onto our paver-brick patio, which was snow covered.  I found him curled in fetal position, semi-conscious. I ran for a telephone and blankets.  I called 9-1-1 and then swaddled my husband in blankets without moving him. 

I can still hear his screams as EMTs moved him to a backboard.   My husband’s injuries included 11 broken ribs (4 crushed ), a partially collapsed lung, a broken vertebra, concussion, shoulder and hip injuries….

The pain was horrendous, the ride to the hospital torture.  A bump in the road put him beyond tolerance range into unconsciousness again and again and again.  Five days in intensive care, the fear of further lung collapse, a subsequent bone infection…  

And yet . . . more than those very difficult times, we remember and still feel the love of so many friends and family members who were there for us.  Friends who rushed to the hospital thirty miles away to “be there” for us.  My sister who held me as I cried, my mother who even with dementia managed to call the church prayer chain for me, my father-in-law who at age 88 took care of our dog and managed most of his meals on his own while I stayed at the hospital, two very young granddaughters who did not complain about spending part of Christmas Day in ICU so they could see their beloved grandpa, a missionary daughter who flew home from Greece to be with her dad, a son who helped his bed-fast father surprise me with a lovely Christmas gift, a daughter-in-law who handled hospital logistics for me, my husband’s students who came in to visit him during their Christmas vacation, bringing smiles and balloons and cards and tears.  A friend who made “Christmas” dinner for us – on New Year’s Eve Day – when my husband was able to be home and enjoy it with the family.  Prayers, phone calls, gifts, cards, visits.  God lifted us up and held us tight in His arms. 

My husband’s physical healing has been a miracle – he was back at school the first day after Christmas break, only for an hour, but he was back.  

And we learned more than I can ever say in the space of a blog post.  Most importantly that physical healing always becomes a miracle when love is involved.

Blessings upon blessings, Sue