June 28

June 28

Welcome to Christianity Oasis. This is June 28 from our Sojourn With Luz Leigh Collection. We hope you enjoy this enlightening reading and it helps you on your own be-YOU-tiful Christian walk.

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Sojourn With Luz Leigh

June 28

June 28, 1985

Written by Luz Leigh

For some reason I looked at the calendar and realized this weekend marks the twenty-third anniversary of the accident that changed our family's lives so drastically. Around 1:00 a.m. the phone rang that Saturday morning. It was the local hospital calling to tell me my sixteen-year-old daughter, Heather, had been involved in a one-car crash on a nearby road.

It is with a thankful heart that the Lord has blotted out some of those terrible memories, but one memory will never go away. The sight of the medical helicopter, known to us as Life Flight, lifting from the heli-pad of the local hospital. "There goes my baby" was the only thought in my head at the moment. I knew it was necessary for me to let go and let the medical staff care for her.

Soon it would be determined she had numerous hairline fractures in several vertebrae; two were out of place, necessitating traction tongs to be attached to her head with large screws. Those screws protruded about three inches from each side of her head. Weights would be attached in an attempt to bring the vertebrae back to their correct alignment.

I can see her later with the body brace and halo brace because the tongs and weights didn't work; later the doctor would inform us the halo brace was not working either, so surgery would be required.

I watch as she attempts to feed herself without success because of the paralysis in the right arm and hand. The memory of her standing by the door to her room on the twenty-first floor of St. Luke's Hospital in preparation for her home going ... 18 days after her arrival there is one of the most pleasant memories.

But I suppose the most vivid memory that always crops up, is of the night she and I came to the realization that God had something in mind for her and for me as a mother. I turned to the Word of the Lord as my source of strength during those long days and nights. It was during that time of our lives that my daughter and I became friends. We had always loved each other, but we came out of that traumatic time knowing we were more than daughter/mother. And to this day, we are best friends.

It is with regret that she lost some of the young people whom she thought were her friends in July 1985. But she realized who her true friends were. She saw her two older brothers in a completely different light; no longer were they "sibling rivals." And she saw her daddy, the man with the rough hands from years of working in the fields or on the ranch, stand by her bedside and weep openly when he saw her the first time lying in the hospital bed completely helpless. As he sat by her bed for hours, rubbing her legs when they ached, she felt not the roughness, but gentleness.

But what she saw not was her mom who would closet herself in the bathroom, run the water, pretending to be "doing laundry," so her weeping and sobbing could not be heard. Mom was to be the strength for the family and she would not let a crack in her shield of strength show through.

Many hours I read the book of Job as we waited for improvement in Heather's health during what seemed like an eternity. As with the prophet Job, I can say "My ears have heard of you but now my eyes have seen you." Job 42:5

So this weekend, I shall again, as I have every year since the accident, read the Word and lift prayers to the throne of Grace, for His goodness. To the grave of her daddy I will go and say a prayer of thanksgiving for the man who stood by me in so many of the hard times.

God was so good to us in the summer of 1985 and HE is still good.

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