Part 1 of a 3 part blog
For the last two years I have been told to let go of my expectations and you would think I would have learned it by now…but I haven’t.
On December 21st I traveled with one of my friends back to Coldwater Michigan. It was a long drive but I was excited for what these couple of weeks at home could hold for me. I expected to have time with my family, attend my home church at least twice, thank my supporters and work on some more support raising.
But most of all I expected to spend Christmas at my sister’s house with my family.
I expected to go home and have a “normal” Christmas. I would wake up Christmas morning and spend time with my family as we all opened gifts and then played games and shared a meal together.
However none of those things happened. In a blink of a moment everything changed.
My step-dad Steve who is the most God fearing, prayer warrior, spirit filled, man I know was called to Lansing Michigan to help put power back on for the many families who were without. He left on the 23rd right before church. His words were “I have to go help it’s almost Christmas and these families are without heat” This man saw the need and the heart of the need. He thought of others before himself or his family.
My expectation of spending time with my step-dad were gone, he was working 2 hours away and working 16ish hours a day. When he called my mom on Monday night he told her that him and his team would be coming home on Christmas eve.
Christmas eve I woke up to a normal day, went into town with my mom to pick up some last minute gifts and then my mom and I were getting ready to head over to my sisters for dinner and to play some games.
That’s when it happened everything changed with one simple phone call.
My mom’s phone rang but we didn’t know the number it just said it was from Lansing, she was busy and let it go to voice mail. I came out of the room telling her something didn’t feel right she needed to listen to the message now.
Sure enough it was from one of the guys at Lansing who was in charge of all the crews. His message told my mom to call the hospital because Steve had an accident and they needed his medical history.
Everything stopped for a quick moment as I thought to myself this can’t be happening, and what does this mean.
My mom called sparrow hospital to find out that her husband had been on a ladder restoring power. He had fallen when a tree limb heavy with ice had hit the wire he was attaching to the house and flung him and the ladder to the ground 15 feet.
He was unconscious when he fell for a few minutes, but was now stable in the ER.
*pictures are from the storm but not necessarily the ones near the accident*
Just like that we were not going to my sisters to have Christmas eve dinner, we were not playing games and laughing tonight. No are expectations of was going to happen that day changed with one simple phone call and an incident that took a split second.
I made arrangements for my mom and I to get to the Lansing hospital as quickly as possible. In the mean time I was calling and texting one of the guys who had went up to help restore power on Steve’s team, He had went up with 2 guys Dave and Dan. They were with him when it happened and hadn’t left his side.
Dan told me he had 6 broken ribs and was in lots of pain. However he was giving the guys thumbs up and they would be with him until we could arrive.
This was by far the longest drive of my life. 2 hours to arrive at the hospital to see for myself how the man I love like a dad was doing.
As we walked together into the ER room to see Steve on the hospital bed with an oxygen mask on and not responding because of the amount of pain meds he was on, was by far one of the hardest things to see.
However I knew he would be okay, I knew the Lord was with us and with him through all this, and isn’t that all I needed.
I didn’t need a Christmas eve dinner and games with my family. That would have been nice but not what I needed.
No what I needed was to know this man of God who loves me unconditionally would be okay and return to his normal self.
It doesn’t matter what expectations you have, or how you think your Christmas should have gone. All that matters is the Lord was with you and you were surrounded by family. Count your blessings and know that anything can change in a moment, so tell the ones you love how much they matter to you.
No one is guaranteed another day let alone another minute.
