Broken bones

I'm sitting here in my living room, wrapped in an afghan, cup of coffee beside me, listening. I'm listening to the noises going on around me: my children singing songs and talking to each other, my brain swollen and sore from a recent injury, my arm: broken and wounded...

I'm alive.

I was riding my bike with my Newfoundland, as I do almost every day. A number of situations came in to play that were unusual, on this particular day. We hadn't ridden in several days because of a medication I'm on that needs me to not be out in the sun. My bike was shaking and handling funny, so I slowed down to get off of it, when a neighbor's unleashed dog came out around a vehicle to approach me. My dog (who can pull up to a 1,000 lb cart), yanked hard (part pent up energy from no walk, and part wanting to play with a dog, and part puppy nonsense that has trouble with impulse control) and launched me about 10 feet over my handle bars and on to the ground. I heard my head hit the ground. I felt the impact.

I was dazed, stunned, and a plethora of medical crises education washed over. Assess, assess, assess. I sat up, and my neighbors crowded around.

Are you all right?
Just give me a minute. I just need a minute. What happened? Where am I? Can I move? Oh my gosh! I'm on the ground. I can sit. I can move my feet, and my legs and my arms. Oh my arm! My arm hurts.

You're bleeding. Your bleeding really bad.

I looked over and saw blood dripping down my arm from my shoulder. The skin was gone and gravel was embedded. It's going to suck scrubbing that out...

Boe was freaking out with confusion. He was so excited to be outside, but now I'm being surrounded by people. I remember watching him trying to figure out what to do. He wasn't sure if he should be playing or protecting, or enjoying some attention. I told him to chillax and he laid down.

I asked a neighbor to make sure my eyes were not shaking, and that my pupils were even. I was slightly dizzy, but nothing overly intense. I knew that my head was the first priority, the rest could be dealt with. Brain's bleeding and whatnot are no good, no matter the situation.

A neighbor helped me home, along with my children. I wanted to get in the shower as soon as possible. I needed to scrub the gravel out of the left side of my body (shoulder, hip, leg, arm), and there was so much surface area to deal with that I knew a shower would be easiest. Adrenaline stops pumping relatively quickly and it's more helpful to navigate extreme pain when it's still flooding the system.

I took off my helmet, and glanced down. The foam was shattered. It was still intact because the plastic pieces are glued to the foam, but the foam was completely broken. My neighbor said I heard your head hit the ground from inside my house. That's why I came out. Wow.

In the shower, as soon as the water hit, the adrenaline wore off. I screamed, I mean actually screamed. The pain was undefinable. I soaped up and scrubbed. I knew it was going to hurt. I also knew it had to be done. Infection is nothing to mess with. My kids ran for the first aid kit, so I could treat and dress the wounds after I got out.

When I got out of the shower, the pain in my arm surged. Trying to dry off and get dressed was practically impossible. I screamed through the entire ordeal. This was not the horrible skin pain of shredding off flesh, this was deeper... it was bone pain. I will deal with this after I address the bleeding...

I gauzed, wrapped, and bacitracin'd my cuts. Then I went to the arm. Can I move it? Can I touch it? Is this muscular or bone? It was here I discovered that my arm would not lift about a ninety degree angle. Crap... I might have to go to the ER...

The kids grabbed ice packs, while I elevated my arm. My head was starting to really hurt. I started sobbing. Not out of self pity. The pain was very intense. I called Chief, who told me to go to the ER. I argued, because that's my nature, but he was right so I went.

The triage nurse was concerned by how calm I was. In fact, she was quite concerned, especially given my head injury. The took me off to X ray very quickly. I screamed and cried through the entire experience. It was agonizingly painful. But I knew that when it was over, it'd be over.

I broke my arm on the tip of the radius. It's tiny, but it's leaking bone marrow tissue out into the surrounding tissue. No cast, because of the location of the break. Just a sling and ice. I can't take any pain medications because of the brain injury. Pain meds increase bleeding risks, so my body is navigating this injury all on its own.

Pain is powerful. My body is telling me it's hurt. It's telling me to slow down, rest, stop.

I'm alive.

No, I won't be riding with Boe anymore. I am not mad at him in any capacity. He's a dog and he was doing what dog's do. I just know it's not worth the risk. I'll have to come up with a new way to give him the joy of hard physical work, without risking my life. Anyone have a cart they'd care to share? ;)

I am in a decent amount of pain. But to be honest, this accident has filled my heart with joy. Why, you might be wondering? Because I didn't die. Seriously. If you saw my helmet, you would maybe understand. In that singular moment, if I had not had a helmet on, it could have been my brain on the pavement. The story could have ended with my children watching me die in the street. It could have been with a funeral, instead of a broken, painful arm. I'll take the arm. I'll take the extra days, minutes, hours, to tell my children how much I love them. I want the extra moments to share with them the things that I've learned, and the joy I feel in being their Mom. I want the extra days to kiss my husband and wake up in this beautiful life I am so fortunate to live.

I'm alive!

I celebrate life. I celebrate one more chance to pour out my life, my love, my heart into the world around me.

Our time is running out. It's the craziest thought, but it's immensely powerful. We have a limited number of unknown days on this planet, and our time is running out. There isn't enough time to share it all. There isn't enough time to love enough. There isn't enough time to say all I want to say...

I'm sitting here in my living room listening. I can hear my children building and creating lego cities. I can hear my body healing itself and demanding rest. I can feel the love of my husband pouring out from miles away. I feel joy. I feel gratitude. I'm alive.

Ehyeh

Ehyeh,

There are moments where You appear to be a thousand miles away. I get caught up in vanity and appearances and you seem distant and disconnected. It's hard to believe in a Father who rescues when I grew up in an environment of unending self sufficiency. No one would rescue me, I would have to do it myself.

We live in an atmosphere with salvation is an impossible concept. We live in a society that no longer rescues. So how do we transplant the idea of salvation and rescuing from this completely imaginary idea, to a real-life-true-story scenario.

I talked to You about the desire of my heart for the emotional experiences that I so often encountered in the Protestant church. I talked about how much I missed the mood lighting and the music that was purposefully chosen to create a romantic thought in my mind. I actually missed being manipulated. When I brought those feelings to You, You told me that you weren't make-up, you were razzle-dazzle, that you weren't a whore... dressed up and dolled up and shoved down my throat for my own amusement or distraction. You scolded me for desiring that. You then reminded me of your simplicity.

So I asked You to help me meet You. Not the falsified ideas that I believed to be You, but the real-carpenter-simple You. I asked You to help me fall in love with You.

It has been a gradual process. Erasing the dramatic experiences from my mind has been difficult. Finding elation in the quiet moments of sipping coffee together on the back porch has been new. Hearing You in the hymns, prayers, and sunlit church has been different.

After weeks of this new relationship, today You punched me in the face with You. Today you rocked me to my core with your Magnificent Glory, minus all of the falsified TV drama... Today it was all about us and it felt amazing. Everywhere my eyes looked, I saw Your Salvation. I saw Your Rescues. Today You rescued me. It was too magnificent to attempt to pacify it with "good luck" ideas. Today it brought me to tears. You brought me to tears. You did it with birds, and sunshine, and clouds, and golden mountains. Today You showed me a side of You I've never seen before. Today it was a love song, played out with music I've never heard, and with images I've never seen.

I'm sitting here trying to write it all down, because I don't want to ever forget it. I'm trying to figure out how to tell You what it meant to me, and I'm fresh out of ability. I don't have words, or a love song, or anything that I can offer. But I can whisper, from the depths of my soul, that I am desperate for you, my simple Beloved One. You are quite genuinely the most beautiful Beautiful I have ever seen. Being alone with You and lost with You is indefinable. I am in awe.

I just want to scream... You rescue! You rescue me when I call.

Army Weak

There is a strange mixture of emotions and circumstances that can come to light when you are a military spouse. I am in one right now. My husband is a superstar. He is ethical, moral, loyal, faithful. He works himself to the bone because of integrity and duty to his superiors and his juniors. I adore this about him, and hate it at the same time.

He had been long overdue for a promotion. There were many factors that were a part of this that I won't go into. They don't really matter in the grand scheme, but it certainly affected him psychologically. When the promotion came, his spirit was renewed and his adoration, love, and insane work drive returned.

I love seeing my husband come alive in this lifestyle we live. I love seeing him feel about his job how he felt in the beginning of our relationship. I love hearing about his excitement as he teaches some young dude about tanks. I love how his face lights up at the notion of turning his tank engine on and fiddling around with it. I. love. it.

I hate how much he works. I hate that he works more than anyone else in this company. I don't say that in some pity party way (though I am certainly having many of those moments in my own emotional way), it is just a fact. His position requires it. I am working on processing through these things. It is hard for me.

This is not to say that I don't recognize things could be harder. He has deployed five times, so I think I can pretty fairly say I know what it's like to be apart in that regard. Yes, I realize he could be in Afghanistan or the Sudan or Korea... All of those things suck. The point of this post is not to complain about his time away. And if that's what you think I'm doing, I'm sorry that you don't know me well enough to see past that.

My point here is this is the process of adjusting for the spouse left at home (AKA: me). It. is. hard. And no one really prepares you for this! I miss my mentors who have gone away! I miss having those gals to say: "Oh my dear... he's a platoon sergeant now. You'll never see him! It sucks. But you're not alone. We're all in this together!" I miss them telling me these feelings are normal and you will come through it stronger. I miss that...

I love Chief. I love him something fierce and his walking into my door at 7pm, only to have to go back again at 9 and come back home at 11 SUCKS. It is hard to adjust my brain to being okay/at peace/comfortable with that. And this aspect has REALLY surprised me, America. I didn't expect it. I thought I would breeze into this change with no problems. I haven't. It has brought me to tears many times.

It's a strange place to be. Immensely proud, insanely in love with his dedication. To admire this part of his personality is beautiful. But to be the person who feels like a basket case sucks! And I hate that I am having such a hard time! All of these feelings are completely mine. They are my own challenges to accept and get on board with. I will never discourage him from what he's doing. I will never tell him to stop it. But I won't hide that it hurts either. Because here's the awesome thing about Chief: he's man enough to handle my tears and honorable enough to do his job anyway. He's awesome enough to be able to prioritize his duty to this calling, and his duty to me, and he has this expert ability to balance it. I am amazed by how he does it, but he does.

So, America, I've been having a pity party. I've been feeling kind of sad. I miss my husband. But I am so proud of him. And I wanted to share with my readers who are a bit lower than me (and maybe some who are higher than me but feeling alone), that this too might come across your path. I really hope that when/if it does, I'll still be around to say to you: "This is normal. It sucks. You will grieve. But then you'll adjust and you'll be stronger for it."

Final thought: Feeling Army weak, is the beginning of becoming Army Strong.