blogger mom

October 24, 2001--
Three years ago today my life came to a sudden stop. At 3:00am I received a phone call from my dad telling Eric and I that my brother had been involved in a serious car accident and that they didn't know if he was going to survive. The next hours that followed were the most horrible hours of my life. We woke Riley up, who was a little over two months old at the time, and drove the two hours from Bowling Green to Columbus. I just kept praying that God would allow him to live until I got there, I wanted to see him one more time and tell him good bye. By the time we reached the ICU at Grant Hospital they were pretty sure that Mikey would survive, but we were unsure what his life would be like. He had serious head injuries and brain surgery would follow. Riley and I spent the next two weeks in Columbus, spending our days at the hospital as Mike moved from ICU, to step up ICU, and eventually to rehab. The days were long and tiring. Nursing Riley at the hospital, trying to come up with meals to eat when no one really had an appetite, dealing with the roller coaster of emotions as Mikey's progress seemed to stall...His head injury damaged the part of his brain that handles impulse control. Due to the location of the injury Mike became angry, rude, violent, perverse...at first we laughed, to keep from crying. But eventually we really began to wonder if the Mike we all knew would ever return. Unfortuately, he never fully recovered. He still struggles with impulse control, although you would never know it unless you knew him well. A lot of painful things were revealed to my family through this process. We discovered that Mike was not who we thought he was, a lot had been hidden in secret. We discovered that my parents church "family" was not the community we had always believed them to be when our lives fell apart.
The good news is that Mike is alive. The last three years have not been easy for him or my family. He has continued to struggle, he healed for the most part physically, but he is still quite broken emotionally and spiritually. But, he is growing. I believe he is on a journey. He's really put my parents through hell, but that have shown me an example of unconditional love that blows me away. I've been angry with Mike often over the last three years. Angry that his choices remain the focus of our family life. Angry because I've seen my parents weep so often for him. But I think I'm over that now. Now I just want Mike to be whole, healed, at peace with who God created him to be.