This time of year four years ago, my life was pretty swell. My husband had accepted a new job that paid him a ridiculous amount of money. The youngest of my 4 children was finally headed to first grade and I decided to go back to school to get my degree. We had a lovely home, we had friends, we were busy and normal.
On a Wednesday evening as I was getting ready to leave for school, the doorbell rang and I opened it to find a Sheriff on my front porch. He informed me that our 20-year old son had been in an automobile accident and had been taken to the hospital. When I asked if he was ok, the Sheriff looked me in the eye and said, “M’am, you should go to the hospital now.” Eli had been on his way to work about 4:00 in the afternoon, and we later learned he tried to pass a car, clipped the bumper, lost control, crossed the center median and was hit by 5 different vehicles. He was not wearing a seatbelt and was texting while driving. He was unresponsive at the scene and life-flighted to the Atlanta Medical Center.
But he wasn’t waking up. A scan of his head showed his jaw was broken in 2 places, his cheekbone was crushed and the bones around his eye socket were broken in several places. He had sustained a severe brain injury, his brain was swelling at a rapid rate and they wanted to drill a hole in his skull to relieve and monitor the pressure. When we asked what all that meant, the one response I remember was a Dr. who said, “Well, with a brain injury, the longer they’re unconscious, the more severe the injury and the longer the recovery.
Eli “slept” in a coma for almost six months.
His hospital bill totaled over half a million dollars in the first 30 days. About a week before Eli was discharged from the hospital, a drunk driver hit me and almost totaled my car. The company my husband had gone to work for folded, and my husband, a man who had never been without a job for 30 years was unemployed. He stayed unemployed for a year. We ran through every penny of our savings and retirement funds in that long, long year. We lost our home and all the equity built up in it and had to declare bankruptcy.
When Eli finally came home from the hospital, he was about a 3 on the Rancho Coma Scale, which meant his eyes were sometimes open, he could sometimes turn toward sound or movement and could sometimes follow simple commands, such as “Look at me” or “squeeze my hand.” For all intents and purposes, he was still in a comatose state. He had to be turned every 3-4 hours to prevent bed sores; he was fed through a feeding tube in his stomach and given sponge baths in his bed. He could not speak, or move any part of his body, except for his head and right arm. I went from being a parent who was thrilled that all my children were finally old enough to be independent, to having a 20-year old invalid who now required as much care, if not more, than a newborn infant.
Every person I know has had trials, many worse than my own. Some trials we just grit our teeth and get through them, but some trials won’t be over in a month, or a year, or maybe even in this life. One of the most frightening things about Eli’s situation was understanding that it wasn’t ever going to be “over.” And if that was the case, then I had to stop waiting for that day in order to be happy again. I was going to have to figure out a way to be happy right now.
Joseph B. Wirthlin said, “… in spite of discouragement and adversity, those who are happiest seem to have a way of learning from difficult times, becoming stronger, wiser, and happier as a result.” Here are a few things I’ve learned about finding joy in the midst of trials.
LAUGH. I have a whole memory bank of horrible, terrible, days and nights spent in the hospital, but its way more fun to remember the times that we laughed. Today Eli is confined to a wheelchair and cannot walk. He has the use of his right arm, but very little functionality in his left. Taking care of a person in this condition takes a lot of equipment, but that doesn’t make us good at using it. Once, while I was transferring Eli from his chair to his bed, the lift got tangled in his bed cord, collapsed the base of the lift and I ended up dropping him on the floor. You know how when your kids are little and they get hurt, you try to keep your face impassive so they won’t know how freaked out you are, because if they see that you’re scared, they’ll be scared too? Well, it still works when they’re 23, because I casually looked down at him crumpled in the floor and said, “Uh-oh, buddy, what are you doing down there?” We laughed, and then I went screaming down the driveway to find my husband to help me pick him up.
We laughed when we forgot to unclamp his feeding tube and it backed up and exploded all over his freshly painted room. We laughed when he got his new electric wheelchair and drove it into every wall in our house and over everyone’s toes. We laughed when he put his chair on full speed down the ramp in the back yard, hit a bump and threw himself face first in the mud 10 minutes before church on Sunday. I won’t kid you – some things took a while before we could laugh at them, but laughing was so much better than the crying we had already done.
In trying to ascertain the extent of Eli’s brain damage, we compiled an activity box that had puzzles and games in it, and I explained to Eli that for every task he accomplished, he could punch a hole in his “incentive” card. After so many punches, he could get a treat or a toy from the “Reward” box. He said, “Sweet.” When his girlfriend came over, I said, “Tell Lindsey what you get when your card is all punched.” He looked at her and said “Thirty dollars.”
Another day I was trying to encourage him to speak louder and told him, “For every word you say out loud, I will give you a peanut-butter M&M.” He proceeded to say about seven words. I said, “That’s awesome! How many words did you say?” and he said “Seven.” “So how many M&M’s do you get?” I asked. “Sixty-five” he answered.
They were small moments in long, dreary, painful days, but they went so far toward lightening our spirits. In times of trial, there’s really only a couple of responses – laughing or crying. I’ve done plenty of both, but I much prefer the laughing.
LEARN AND GROW. WHETHER YOU WANT TO OR NOT. Joseph Wirthlin also said: “… the dial on the wheel of sorrow eventually points to each of us. At one time or another, everyone must experience sorrow. These experiences, while often difficult to bear at the time, are precisely the kinds of experiences that stretch our understanding, build our character, and increase our compassion for others.”
As Eli began to recover, we had no idea whether he had any memory of his life before the accident, we didn’t know if he would ever speak again, and we didn’t realize he could still read until we stumbled on it using flashcards. We tried giving him a pen and paper to communicate, but he lost a lot of his fine motor skills and writing was difficult. One day I thought of wheeling him up to the computer desk and putting his hand on the keyboard. We asked him how he was feeling, and he painstakingly typed: I FEEL BROKEN.
I cannot imagine what it must feel like to be trapped in a body that can’t say what you think or feel, to look down at perfectly healthy legs that won’t work because your brain can’t tell them to - to feel like your body is broken. But I believe that Jesus Christ knows and understands Eli’s pain. When I knelt at the side of my bed, night after night, crying out to my Heavenly Father, there was no one who could take away that pain but Jesus Christ. There were so many days that we sat in the hospital, sponging Eli’s body as he soaked the sheets with sweat because his brain couldn’t regulate his temperature. Days I sat beside his bed holding his legs to keep his leg spasms from rattling the bed so loudly that people in the hallway could hear. I couldn’t take away Eli’s pain – all I could do was petition my Heavenly Father that Eli and our family would get through it. And slowly and surely we did, and along the way we definitely gained increased compassion and understanding for others.
BE GRATEFUL. So many things were taken away from Eli and our family, but so many things have been given. Prior to Eli’s accident, he was drifting aimlessly down an unproductive path. As parents, we thought he slept too long, worked too little and we often only saw him when he needed gas money or food. When he began to speak after the accident, the first words he said, over and over, were “I love you.” From August, 2008, I wrote in my journal:
Eli is speaking more and more and it’s so unbelievable considering there was a time I sat at his side and prayed for him to please just open his eyes. It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae of caring for him and forget that every word he speaks and every bite he eats is a miracle wrought by the prayers of everyone and the loving kindness of our Heavenly Father.
And what does he say? All day long he says, “Mom…I love you.” or “Dad, I love you.” Every bite he takes, he stops and says, “Thank you.” Sometimes I have to tell him that it’s ok to eat all of his food before he says thank you, or he’ll tell me thank you after every bite.
A few months later around Christmas time, I wrote on Eli’s blog:
Eli has been doing something funny for a while and I thought I’d share it with you. Whenever I’m tending to him or even just walking by, he will look up at me earnestly and say, “Mom…I love you.” I always respond “I love you too” and then he will grip my hand and with even more sincerity, say, “I love you more than Dad.” The first couple of times he did it, I thought a) Well, of course you do – I’m your mom!” and then I thought, “Boy, I hope Pete doesn’t hear him say that.” At least that’s what I thought until the day I walked by his room and heard him say to Pete, “Dad, I love you.” I waited and here it came. “Dad, I love you more than Mom.” Inevitably, one day Pete and I were both in his room and Eli said, “Mom, I love you more than Dad.” Then he glanced over and saw his father had obviously overheard. Eli looked back at me, put his fingers to his lips and said, “Shhhh…don’t tell Dad!”
We laugh, but sometimes when he tells me he loves me, there is such an earnest look on his face that it breaks my heart. I wonder if he really wants to say more, but can’t articulate it. Is this the only way he has to express the depth of his love? By saying that it’s more than someone else he also loves? Our Father in Heaven sent and sacrificed his Son, someone he loved more than anyone. And he did it for us, whom he also loved more than anyone. “
Our Heavenly Father compensates us because He is merciful. Any sacrifices we have made, any sorrow we have experienced, has been compensated ten-fold and I know there is more to come. One of my favorite scriptures is John 14:18 “I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.” We will be comforted and we will be compensated.
JUST DO IT. What if you feel like you can’t find that joy? Maybe you think you’re just a glass half-empty kind of person? Is finding joy something you can learn to do? I think it is.
My brother Jimmy was four years older than I, but we grew up so close people sometimes thought we were twins. He was funny, charming, and charismatic and could make everyone laugh. He looked out for me and protected me. He was shockingly intelligent and athletically gifted. He excelled at virtually everything, but sometimes people so “gifted” are bored at the ease with which they are able to master everything and everyone, and Jimmy was no exception. He began to find a challenge in breaking the law and ended up going to prison for 25 years.
While incarcerated, he escaped several times, taught himself to play the piano, overturned many of his convictions through his own legal research, wrote two books and became a rather accomplished “jail-house” lawyer. He has an irrepressible soul. Every time he called me on the phone, he made me laugh so hard my sides ached. Jimmy could always find the joy.
Several years into his sentence, even though he was convicted for a non-violent crime, circumstances conspired to have him sent to a Supermax facility. Basically, Supermax was solitary confinement and sensory deprivation, where inmates were locked up 23 hours a day, with one hour out for a shower, phone and recreation. The majority of the inmates sent there either slowly went insane or tried to kill themselves. Jimmy lasted five years before the facility was ultimately shut down and he has since been released from prison.
I recently asked him what things brought him the most joy when he was finally released, and he said, “EVERYTHING. It’s all about perspective. Every day that I can smell fresh cut grass, eat food when I want to, get in a car and drive wherever I please, is a perfect day. I never take any of it for granted. Every single thing brings me joy.” If Jimmy can find joy, you can too.
One of the lasting effects of Eli’s accident is a poor short term memory. One day I was trying to write a paper for class and I told Eli I needed to study and to please not bother me. I had barely gotten started when he began to call me about every five minutes. “Mom, I need a cough drop.” “Mom, I need a pillow under my arm.” “Mom, I dropped the remote.” This can go on all day, but I really just didn’t have the time or the patience for it this day. He called again and said, “Mom, I need a drink of water.” And I very firmly told him, “Honey, I have to get this paper done. You are not going to die if you don’t get a drink of water in the next 30 minutes. Can you please wait until I’m done? And don’t call me again.” There’s a good chance I might have raised my voice. I went back to frantically typing away at my paper until after a while it occurred to me that he really hadn’t called me back. Somewhat ashamed, I went upstairs to check on him and noticed that he had a full cup of water.
“Hey, who filled your cup for you?” I asked.
“I did” he said with a big grin.
“Get out of town! How did you do that?”
He began to explain how he got his chair up next to the sink, used a wooden spoon to push the faucet on, and then one-handed, he filled his cup, turned off the water and returned to the living room.
“Wow” I said, “That’s awesome that you did it for yourself. Was it hard?” and he looked up at me and said, “Mom…..it was a little tricky.”
Like you, every day I have is filled with some good, and bad, and sometimes, some downright awful, but if you look really hard, you can find a little speck of joy too.
You might have to look really hard…and it might be tricky. But I know you can do it.
