365 days. One year. In the blink of an eye the year has passed and it left us changed for a lifetime.

Exactly one year ago today the phone call came in that my husband, Lewis, had been in an accident and was being airlifted to the hospital. Lewis works for a power company and had fallen approximately 30 feet from a power pole.

Shock and disbelief were the first reactions I had. I actually hung up on the first phone call because I thought it was a bad joke or prank. It was when they called back and I could hear the commotion in the background that it hit hard that this was reality.

Lewis’s shirt that was cut from him by emergency workers.

If you’ve had the opportunity to talk with Lewis to hear his story and testimony, you know that God had His hand on him. His story will bring tears to your eyes, but that is his story to write and tell. Hopefully, I can talk him in to writing it one day.

He miraculously suffered only skeletal injuries with a broken pelvis and multiple broken vertebrae’s. No organ damage, paralysis or internal bleeding. But this would not be a speedy recovery.

We worked with physical therapists for a few days before we were able to get a hospital bed in our living room and come home.

Our daily lives became something we never imagined. Lewis had to be in back brace, which was like a full turtle shell, anytime he raised up more than 45° in the hospital bed. He was using a walker to get around. I had never given an injection in my life, but was now giving them to him daily.

Through it all we experienced every emotion possible: uncertainty, anger, joy, relief. You name it and we felt it at some point. I only heard Lewis ask “why did this happen to me?” one time. That was his first night in the hospital and to be honest I was asking the same question.

But God has a way of bringing things to you and in the devotion I read the next morning, the verse Romans 12:12 was being discussed: “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”

In our day to day lives we tend to skip over the patient in affliction part. I mean, who WANTS to experience affliction. And I think that is why hope is listed first.

If we didn’t have hope, the rest didn’t matter.

In Elisabeth Elliott’s book Suffering is Never for Nothing, she says that even though we don’t understand our own or our friends/family’s suffering, we DO know the One who does understand. That’s where our hope lies.

We did a lot of riding and sight seeing during his time of healing. :)

The accident brought on some hard decisions. I decided to close my photography studio. It was no longer worth it to have a successful business if it meant evenings and weekends away from family and being in front of a computer when I was home. When we as a society place so much value on careers, this was a hard thing to adjust to but that’s a discussion for another time.

So here we are a year later. We are closer as a family than ever and stronger in our faith with a true understanding of what hope means. We will always talk about the miracles we experienced through out the healing process. I still cry like a baby at random things that bring back feelings or memories. And even though bones are healed, our perspective on life has been forever changed for the good.