I don’t know where to start, because my thoughts are all so fresh on this one, and each one feels so delicate and raw.

On Saturday, we were sledding with good friends, and had been for hours, when it all came to a halt. I’m typing this late on Tuesday, our fourth night in the hospital.

I’ll start here. You know your child has had a serious injury when:

  • She’s found limp, unconscious, lying in the snow face down.
  • No one will look you in the eye as you rush to your child’s side.
  • Her eyes are rolling back in her head, and your husband is trying to keep her from biting her own tongue.
  • The (for lack of a better term) mountain man who you’ve seen skin a just-shot raccoon, and who can problem-solve his way through virtually any challenge, says to call 911.
  • Every step/question along the way is answered with “yep, we’d better” (i.e., “should we call 911? should we call a helicopter? should we go to the better hospital? should we do the CT scan? should we call the neurologist in on a snowy Saturday morning? etc. etc. etc.)
  • Though you’re the gal who normally keeps her cool in high-stress situations, you look back to the moments in/around the time of the injury and you can’t quite remember half of what you said/did.
  • You are incomparably alert for 36+ hours, even through sleep, though you normally sleep like a rock.
  • You are inexpressibly grateful that she’s… simply… still alive. 

And she IS– she’s alive. And not just alive, but she’s HERSELF. And here’s the thing, y’all. I honestly did not know how it was going to go. 

She has a depressed skull fracture in her occipital bone (it’s the one immediately behind the center of your ear; that thing is HUGE and it is nutso crazy to me that she cracked it).

Looking at her that day, I’ll spare you all the details, but it was plain to me that the rushed, panicked words we were exchanging (in my effort to keep her from going unconscious again) could be some of our last conversations on earth. I deeply felt that I was not guaranteed even another 30 seconds with my sweet daughter.

And then… I was up in the helicopter, strapped in. Couldn’t see her. Couldn’t squeeze her hand. Couldn’t help her. Couldn’t talk to her. Couldn’t control a single dad gum thing.

And there was such beauty in it.

It is such a gift from God for me to have moments where I’m aware of my complete powerlessness… to have Him nudge me toward God-confidence rather than self-confidence, muscle-through-it-confidence, figure-it-out-confidence, or just-do-it-wisely-confidence. Nope. None of that will do when the rubber meets the road.

Only God-confidence gets us through.

For me, Saturday was all about entrusting Him with my precious daughter’s LIFE, fully and without a single strand of control in my grasp.

I looked ahead of us, just past my boots and the glass, and there was Mt. St. Helens… rising up to our left was Mt. Rainier… beneath us were houses and subdivisions and cars going places and then the airstrips and travelers and people going places… and our God is just breathtakingly good, y’all.

He sovereignly wills and works all things for His glory and our good. I mean… in that very moment that the paramedics were working on my daughter in a helicopter over the Columbia River… He was working in the lives of husbands on airplanes about to take off, and little children playing in backyards beneath us, and in conversations in the cars going every which way. Do you hear me?

His goodness and bigness and grace is astounding…. even in the moments when we are (understandably) laser-beam focused on what is happening in our own corner of the world.

And I want to be clear because this was clear-as-a-bell to me on Saturday even as I was living these things: His utter grace toward us would have been true, no matter which way things had gone. I had to counsel myself about that… reminding myself of the truth… up in the helicopter.

  • No matter what, He’s good.
  • No matter what, He’s dependable.
  • No matter what, He LOVES. 
  • AND… no matter what, He is GOOD and dependable and LOVES MeiMei more than any of us do.

He made her. He knows what she’s made for. He knows exactly the number of days He’s planned out for her. He’s got the birds’ eye view on life, and He knows His plans for her… they are bigger plans than I can know or even see when I’m down here living in the hills of life.

This time, His grace, goodness, dependability, and love showed up in granting us more time with our precious Maranatha, and I am so very very grateful. But His grace is always there, unchanging, no matter which way the path turns for us, or for our children.

I am not saying He is good because He gave her back to us.

I am saying He is good.

  • “He is good” was true when we planned the day of sledding, and He already knew.
  • “He is good” was true the very moment her head hit the rock.
  • “He is good” was true in every second of my fear when we didn’t know how it was gonna go.

He is good. And I am so grateful to Him that He gently leads me through this wild ride of life… rocks and all.

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