Modern day miracles: A story of faith, hope, and unconditional, persistent love.

Before you read this, don’t read it lightly as if it’s some beautiful story of miracles. It is a story of miracles, but working towards those miracles was one of the most traumatic experiences I’ve ever endured. This post took me a total of four hours to type, because it was that difficult.

Most of you know my brother was in a motorcycle accident. A few of you have assumed that since he is walking away with a few broken bones, that it wasn’t that terrible or serious of an accident. You assumed wrong. My brother was going somewhere between 60 and 70 MPH on a motorcycle when his highway peg clipped a four wheeler, sending my brother into a swivel, when he regained control, he was riding in a ditch. With a mailbox coming up, my brother decides to lay the bike on its side. After hitting the mailbox, he hits a culver and goes airborne with his bike. He lands. He does all this with no helmet on. Let me repeat, no helmet on. His friend runs over, my brother had swallowed his own tongue and wasn’t breathing.

Let’s pause and talk about the miracles in this scene, as if it’s some glorified scene out of an action movie.

There was a fence just a few feet away from where my brother landed. That could have very easily been bad.

His friend that was with him was trained as an EMT, so he knew what to do when my brother wasn’t breathing.

Neither of them had cell phones on them because they were out riding, and at the time of the accident, someone pulled up and had a cell phone.

My brother is transported by ambulance to Mercy Hospital in Fort Scott, KS, where they immediately life flight him to Freeman hospital in Joplin, MO.

My parents and I had just finished a good, but long day of fishing. It was my first day home from college, so I wanted to spend it with my parents, brother, and my sister-in-law, but my brother said they were busy, so they didn’t come. I hadn’t seen everyone for about five or six weeks, and I was trying to transition back into being home and being away from my college in which I loved, so I thought a nice relaxing fishing day would be perfect. It was a very nice day full of fishing, laughter, swimming, sandwiches, and hammocking. My dog kept going out into the lake, and she wasn’t a super strong swimmer, so I had to keep going out to get her. We laughed about it later. At the time, it wasn’t funny. ANYWAYS, my parents and I get done fishing in Redfield, KS, which is about 15 minutes west of Fort Scott, and we’re country cruising (For the city folk, that means we were driving around out in the country.) We had been outside for about 7 hours that day, so we were all pretty exhausted. My mom tells me to call Alex to see what he’s doing. I, being incredibly tired not only from fishing all day but also from finishing up finals week, say I’ll call him the next day and go out to his place. Approximately five minutes later, someone calls my dads phone. (I still don’t know who it was.) My dad says “Hold on. Just a minute. Let me pull over to the side of the road.” I knew this wouldn’t be good. So, he does. I couldn’t hear what was being said. All I could see/hear was my dad’s shoulders going up and down, because he had begun crying. After he hangs up, my mom says “Was Alex in an accident?” and my dad nods yes. We rush in to town to drop off my dog and swap vehicles. We then rush to Joplin, MO, which is normally about an hour and 10 ish minutes away. I don’t know how long it took us to make it there. What I do know, is that the only other words said were (The only other words I can remember, other than when we were pulled over for speeding) “Ashton, could you pray for Alex?” (Not a common request in my family.) So, I do. I sob. I bury my head into the seat. I place my hand on my mom’s shoulder that is sitting in front of me. I pray without ceasing, because at that moment, there was so much unknown, and we had absolutely no control over the situation. We arrive at Joplin, and by this point, I had an army of people praying for my brother. We go back into this little consultation room, and a chaplain comes out to talk to us. (I still reeked from fishing) Oh dear God, no. I’ve seen the movies. I know what this means. Thankfully, he just wanted to talk with us. He wasn’t there to tell us that my brother was dead. As the seconds drug on, we were finally notified of my brother’s condition. Broken wrist, broken collar bone, fractured skull, broken ribs, bruising/bleeding on the brain, and a bruised lung. Alright, we can handle that. It’ll be a long process, but it’s no big deal. After they have my brother stabilized or whatever, I go back with Dad to see him.

During my brothers four years with the Marines, I had a reoccurring nightmare that I would walk into a hospital room with my brother lying there bloody, broken, hooked up to tubes, and unresponsive. I thought that after my brother completed his four years of active duty, that nightmare would never come true. I thought wrong.

Sure enough, he was bloody, broken, hooked up to tubes, and unresponsive. After a while, my dad leaves to go do paperwork or something, so I’m sitting there. Alone. With my brother. I hold his bloody, puffy hand. I ask him to squeeze it, just to show me he was still with me. Nothing. He was under heavy sedation because, due to his training with the Marines, every time he would wake up, he would freak out, so they had to continue to sedate him. Also they sedated him due to the pain. I look over and see the mini-stretcher thing they had used to stabilize his back I think? It was covered in blood. I then look at his face; I mean really look at it for the first time. One half was really puffy due to his fractured skull beginning right below his eye. He had a breathing tube in. There was a huge gash that would later be stitched up. His eye was swollen shut. He had a collar on to stabilize his neck/spine. That was my brother. I sat there and held his hand and cried. Then I prayed. Then I cried some more. Then, I started talking to him. I would do “remember when” stories of the times he talked me into doing stupid things, or the times when he and I would team up to make mom as mad as we could, or the times when he would sit with me, and talk about boys, life, depression, whatever. He was my main squeeze growing up. There’s a six-year gap between us, therefore I looked up to everything he did, and he was annoyed by everything I did, but he was my brother. He was my everything growing up. And now he’s laying there, not responsive, nothing.

Later on, we are told that Freeman isn’t comfortable working on him, so my brother is transferred to KU Med in Kansas City, which we were fine with, because KU Med is known for being one of the best hospitals in the country. So, he’s flown to KU Med as we drive, and as we’re driving, I think about my in-laws. Which, are actually my brothers in-laws, but I consider them to be family, so I call them my in-laws. They’ve been with us through every recent rough patch. They were around during all four years of my brothers service. Now this. I don’t know why, but I just really appreciated that. That night on the hard hospital floor, a scripture a friend had sent me earlier that week popped into my head. Micah 5:5a “And He will be our peace..” I studied Micah 5 thoroughly that night, and I was provided with an overwhelming, full embracive sense of peace. I then get one hour of sleep. You’d be amazed on how long you can function on one hour of sleep in situations such as these. That next day, Sunday morning, Alex responds to basic commands, which says there is most likely no permanent brain damage. The doctors exclaimed that that is very rare that at those speeds on a motorcycle with no helmet, that he would live, nonetheless have no permanent damage. Another miracle. He also had surgery on his wrist/forearm, which was extremely broken. Sunday night was the first time I actually stopped to process this situation. I lay my head on my moms shoulder, and just start crying. My brother should be dead. He should have permanent brain damage. There should be no chance that I’ll ever be an Aunt. All these “Shoulds”, and none of them were true. Praise God they weren’t. In that moment, I realized that I was completely and totally shattered. I don’t know why I realized it then, after we knew that my brother would live and have no permanent damage. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it when I was still unsure of my brother’s state. I don’t know. God was seeping through every crevice of my brokenness, and His hands were holding every single piece of my shattered heart and being. Now listen, I’ve endured some stuff in my life. Quite a bit of stuff, actually….but this was the worst. The pure, raw emotion with no substance to drown out what I was feeling was something I was not used to. I didn’t know how to handle it. Through constant texts, visits, and phone calls from some AMAZING people, they helped me to process things and continued to remind me of God’s amazing love. I didn’t understand what MNU meant by “family” until this week.

Family was shown when Kristi Rose and Sharon Rose Jackson were in CONSTANT contact with me, checking on me, even though they were super busy.

Family was shown when a chaplain at school that I’ve only ever had two conversations with came to visit me and bought me lunch with his wife that I’ve never actually met before.

Family was shown when Sharon Rose walked up with a big hug and a bag of snacks.

Family was when my freshman RA showed up with candy and a hug, and she sat and talked with me and prayed with me.

Family was when my best friend KT drove me to Fort Scott when I had to take care of some stuff, because she knew I didn’t want to be alone.
Family was when Carly Doane, whom of which I've only been friends with for about a month or so, would send me scripture, talk to me about the "medical things" that I didn't understand, and also sent me a quote that honestly kept me moving and taught me more about faith in this circumstance than I could have imagined. It said "Life has a way of testing our anchors and tempting us to drift. Nevertheless, if our anchors are correctly placed in the rock of our Redeemer, they will hold no matter the force of the wind, the strength of the tide, or the height of the waves."-Dieter F. Uchtdorf.

Then, my Fort Scott Nazarene church family appeared. Pastor Scott came up to visit, talk with my parents and I, and prayed over my brother. Jeremy came up the next day to talk with my parents and I, and then he took me out to coffee.

My mom couldn’t believe that they had come all the way up just to see us. That’s what family does.

Over the next few days, so much began happening. The breathing tube was removed, he began grunting and nodding and squeezing our hands. Eventually, he was talking. (At which point he asked me to help him get up and get out of there. I knew he was still my brother when that happened.) More and more machines were being unhooked. He stood up one day. The next day, he walked. Woah woah woah, wait a minute. We went from not knowing his state on Saturday night to him walking on Wednesday?? Believe what you want…miracle. He was even smiling a little. Wednesday afternoon/evening, he has a surgery on his collarbone that was in multiple pieces. Then, Thursday morning, it happens. He is being discharged!

He’s in a lot of pain right now at home. He’s alive.

To everyone that was constantly there to text me and call me to talk with me, thank you so, so much. To everyone that visited or offered to visit, thank you. To everyone that was/is praying for him, thank you. To the awesome nurses at KU Med that would go out of their way to make sure we had blankets to sleep with at night on the floor, and would constantly ask us if we needed anything to drink, thank you.

Special thanks to Sharon and Kristi Rose Jackson. You two walking with me every step of this roller coaster honestly meant the world to me.

My brother is a walking miracle. My brother is alive right now, and that’s more than I thought he was going to be.

Our whole family is absolutely exhausted, and needs a few days to rest.

With much love,

The exhausted blogger that is worn physically and emotionally, but whose faith is completely new. The exhausted blogger that honestly didn’t believe all that much in modern day miracles, until I watched it happen before my eyes. The exhausted blogger that recently fully realized how risky, dangerous, and precious life truly is. The exhausted blogger that has a whole new perspective on what it means to “pray without ceasing.”

The exhausted blogger that is completely in love with her Savior.