I sat in my dining room, the big table piled with paperwork: hospital forms, insurance claims, coverage statements.<\/p>\n
All a medical and legal paper trail for my 20-year-old son Danny, leading back to that day when everything about his life and mine changed forever.<\/p>\n
One minute he was joyriding with some friends out on a twisty country road. The next, a quadriplegic and brain-damaged, almost every trace of the strong-willed, energetic, even exasperating boy I loved gone. Or almost.<\/p>\n
Danny had been out of the hospital a while now. He used a special wheelchair sized for his six-foot-two frame. Our house bustled with caregivers; a nurse\u2019s aide, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, all seemingly trying to resurrect as much of the old Danny as still might exist inside his broken brain and body.<\/p>\n
In fact, it was those caregivers who had me going through all that paperwork that afternoon. They had started saying ominous things. Danny, six weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday the day of the accident, was an adult now, off our insurance and covered by Medicaid.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have to discontinue our visits if your son doesn\u2019t show more signs of improvement,\u201d the therapists told me. \u201cInsurance just won\u2019t cover it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
I told them that I would figure something out, like I\u2019d been doing all my life. Lead, follow or get out of the way<\/em>\u2014that\u2019s what my husband, Denny, said my motto could be.<\/p>\n I\u2019d had a chaotic childhood\u2014alcoholic parents\u2014and I\u2019d basically raised my\u00adself. Who else could I count on to keep everything under control? Denny complained that he couldn\u2019t do a single chore without me following behind him to do it all over again. Well, I liked the beds made a certain way. Given Danny\u2019s condition, wasn\u2019t it obvious that we needed more order and structure around this house?<\/p>\n Now I needed a solution. I\u2019d kept things going so far by quitting my job to coordinate Danny\u2019s team of caregivers. What would we do without them? More than that, what did they mean, \u201cIf your son doesn\u2019t show more signs of improvement\u201d? Were they saying that Danny would never improve? I didn\u2019t want to believe that. All of our efforts couldn\u2019t be for nothing. Surely we could bring him back a little. Surely life wouldn\u2019t go on like this forever.<\/p>\n I concentrated harder on the papers. So little money! So many expenses! Denny pastored a small church and worked full-time for the telephone company. No way could we afford to pay caregivers out of our own pocket. I tried to beat back the despair that began to envelop me, beat it back like I had since I was a kid.<\/p>\n The phone rang.<\/p>\n \u201cRicki?\u201d<\/p>\n It was Missy, the occupational therapist. Actually, she was more than a therapist. She was my friend, my rock in all the fear and uncertainty of caring for Danny. She\u2019d even started attending our church. I felt that she was destined to be a part of our lives. When she spoke, though, her voice sounded apprehensive.<\/p>\n \u201cRicki, I have some bad news. The home-health people talked to us today. They told us that they\u2019re not going to pay for any more visits with Danny. They can\u2019t justify it. They say that Danny has reached a plateau.\u201d<\/p>\n Silence on the line. \u201cRicki?\u201d<\/p>\n I said something, kept her on the phone long enough to get a few more details and thank her. Then I hung up.<\/p>\n Somewhere, from the living room, a television hummed. Danny was in there with his grandmother, Denny\u2019s mom. I thought back over the long, tiring day. Up at seven. Raise the electric bed. Feed Danny through a tube in his stomach. Transfer him to a shower chair and bathe him. Shave and dress him. Wheel him to the porch for speech therapy. More feeding. Recline his wheelchair for rest. Transfer him to the physical therapy equipment. Back to the wheelchair to watch TV.<\/p>\n In an hour or so he would sit with us at dinner. Then we\u2019d transfer him to bed, get him positioned and say goodnight, until we awoke in shifts to give him medication through the night.<\/p>\n Plateau<\/em>. Such a pretty word for such an unhappy thing, one identical day after another stretching as far as the eye could see.<\/p>\n I stared at the paperwork, trying to focus, trying to keep down something black and suffocating inside me. A solution, a solution. I needed a solution. The panic rose higher.<\/p>\n Pray, Ricki.<\/em> The day of the accident, a trauma doctor had told us that Danny\u2019s head injury was so severe that he wouldn\u2019t live 24 hours. Denny and I had prayed in the intensive care unit, reaching through a tangle of tubes and wires to place our hands directly over our son\u2019s motionless body. Just save his life<\/em>, we\u2019d pleaded. That\u2019s all we ask.<\/em> The vital signs on the monitors had changed almost instantly.<\/p>\n Why wasn\u2019t God answering my prayers now?<\/p>\n Denny came in, home from work. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d he asked instantly.<\/p>\n Was it that obvious? \u201cMissy called\u2014\u201d I didn\u2019t finish the sentence. Couldn\u2019t. I sobbed on our great big dining room table, a converted pool table actually, from back in the days when the kids always seemed to have their friends over, before the accident.<\/p>\n I felt Denny\u2019s arm around my shoulders. I sobbed, sobs that seemed to come from my toes. Finally I lifted my head, wondering what kind of mess my face looked. I told Denny what Missy had said. \u201cOh, Lord, what are we going to do?\u201d I cried.<\/p>\n Denny held me. Like a good pastor, he knew when to let silence do its work. When he finally spoke I was calmer and able to hear. \u201cRicki,\u201d he said, \u201cI know it doesn\u2019t sound good. But maybe it\u2019s not as bad as it seems. Missy\u2019s not giving up on Danny. No one\u2019s giving up on him. It\u2019s just how the system works. At least they\u2019ve been here long enough to teach us how to do everything. Let\u2019s try not to panic. God\u2019s gotten us this far. I know he\u2019ll get us to whatever we need to do next.\u201d<\/p>\n I sat up, wiping my eyes and trying to let Denny\u2019s words sink in. God\u2019s gotten us this far. How far?<\/em> I couldn\u2019t help wondering. Not far enough!<\/em> Not as far as we needed. Not as far as I <\/em>needed. I was the one who\u2019d be home with Danny all day. I was the one who\u2019d need to keep it all together, keep everything under control.<\/p>\n I stopped and looked into Denny\u2019s eyes. He regarded me calmly, like he always did, almost like he knew the storms my heart generated and knew just as well how to outlast them. Control. What exactly did that mean? What had I spent this past hour\u2014no, my whole life\u2014obsessing over?<\/p>\n I thought back to all of the years I\u2019d tried to shape and direct Danny. From wailing infant to mischievous youngster to rebellious teen, he had made his own way anyway.<\/p>\n What about his recovery? Had all my management of the paperwork and the caregivers changed any of the medical facts? Goodness, I hadn\u2019t even been able to make a dent in the way my husband tucked in the sheets. Instead, all I had succeeded in doing was hurting his feelings.<\/p>\n Who was next on my list to take charge of? God? Dear God, from now on you\u2019ll be taking your orders from me. Love, Ricki<\/em>. It sounded so ridiculous that I almost laughed out loud.<\/p>\n And yet how true. What I really dreaded was God taking control of me<\/em>. It was one thing to believe in God\u2014and I had, with my whole heart. It was another thing to surrender to him, to give up everything\u2014my will, even my own son\u2014to his total care.<\/p>\n What might he do? Anything! He might tell me to stop staring at medical forms because Danny\u2019s healing had gone as far as it ever would. He might remind me that I had prayed\u2014that in fact I had already<\/em> surrendered at Danny\u2019s hospital bedside when I begged for my son\u2019s life, no matter what.<\/p>\n Danny, broken, helpless Danny, was an answer to prayer. A miracle I didn\u2019t understand yet. And just maybe God would show me reserves of strength and courage I never knew I had.<\/p>\n I felt something inside me release, change, like the end of struggle and the beginning of acceptance. A picture came to mind of someone drowning, thrashing so hard that the lifeguard couldn\u2019t get a hold to pull them from the water. I stopped thrashing. I threw my arms around Denny\u2019s neck and held him tight.<\/p>\n A few minutes later we went into the living room. There was Danny, his face so sweet and soft, staring at the television. We sat with him for a while, letting the afternoon change itself to evening. Finally, I got up to fix dinner. Soon it would be time to get Danny ready for bed. We would transfer him and prop him up with pillows. We\u2019d read some Scripture, pray, put on a little music and wish him goodnight. One evening, like so many others.<\/p>\n Today, 21 years later, I marvel at how many such evenings we\u2019ve had. Not long ago someone asked, \u201cDo you ever laugh?\u201d I wanted to say, \u201cCome to my house!\u201d There, anyone can see those blessings God so improbably promised.<\/p>\n Like Missy, who remains a dear friend and a faithful member of our church. Or Connie, another friend we were able to hire as a part-time nurse\u2019s aide, with the help of a government program.<\/p>\n Or our Friday movie nights, when Danny\u2019s older siblings, Christy and Chip, now both married with kids themselves, come over and everyone piles on the living room floor, snuggling up with Danny in the middle to watch a video. I think they\u2019ve stayed nearby in part because of Danny.<\/p>\n He\u2019s kept us close. Taught us how to love. And taught me that sometimes the most transforming change of all is surrender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I sat in my dining room, the big table piled with paperwork: hospital forms, insurance claims, coverage statements. All a medical and legal paper trail for my 20-year-old son Danny, leading back to that day when everything about his life and mine changed forever. One minute he was joyriding with some friends out on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[150],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[2175],"class_list":["post-15030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gods-grace"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n