A New Year and Blessing Flashbacks

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers and Happy New Year! We hope and pray that you and yours had a safe and special holiday season. We are expectantly looking forward to the year ahead and to discovering in what new directions our journey will take us. We were very blessed this past year through large and small events/happenings and are so thankful for your interest and for the opportunity to share those blessings with you.

2025 started with Joy setting a goal of reading the Bible through during the year (at the time she had only progressed to reading children's books), we made the decision to move, prepped our house, put it on the market, sold it, down-sized big time, moved to our new home on the other side of the city, Joy ended her time with the Knitting Grandma’s in Maple Grove, but discovered Bundles of Love in Burnsville, Joy rapidly expanded her creative skills moving from knitting and crocheting to include a variety of sewing projects, and that was just in the first three months!

The past year also saw us return to travel, first by car and then by train and plane. We started at a new church and expanded our connections both there and in our new community, as well as Joy’s new friendships at Bundles. And, despite the increased distances after the move, we also made sure to stay connected with those closest to us.

While there are many wonderful things I could share, something that has stood out to me most is what I would call, for lack of a better term, "blessing flashbacks." As I am sure is the case for all trauma survivors, I still have my share of traumatic flashbacks, scenes from immediately after the accident, images of Joy’s broken body in the ICU, the moment the doctor told us of Joy’s permanent brain damage, seeing the effects of her initial paralysis, the doctor informing me of her potentially life threatening bacteremia and pneumonia, the list goes on... My reactions can range from mild discomfort to a gut punch sensation that takes my breath away.

While that may be a life long reality, what I am so thankful for are the many blessings experienced this past year on our journey of Joy’s ongoing hard fought recovery. These blessing flashbacks are of the simplest things, walking, talking, reading, baking, sewing, and knitting/crocheting among other things. While each may be, "just ordinary things of life," for most, they are very real miracles to us. Miracles that swell our hearts with joyful praise and thanksgiving. My hope in sharing just of few of my blessing flashbacks is to not only praise God for his grace and mercy shown us, but to also encourage you to see and take joy in those simplest of things we can all so easily take for granted.

Joy has always had a beautiful smile but now when she smiles, there are times when I am transported back to a couple of scenes, the memory of her asymmetrical smile during her paralysis, which drooped on the right side and/or the image of a beautiful symmetrical smile she had just after waking from her cranioplasty surgery. Both experiences fill me with such joy, no pun intended, that it can take my breath away, in a good way, to have the wonderful gift of experiencing that smile many times each and every day.

Another flashback occurred recently as we were starting one of our now routine early morning 3 mile walks at the Mall of America. This flashback was a cascade of several scenes, Joy’s first step in the hospital while being held up on both sides by physical therapists, but it was still a miracle first step. Then there were the first independent steps with a walker and how just shortly after she had worked up to crossing her hospital room with the walker, the therapist asked if she’d like to go out into the hall. Well, she not only went out into the hall but proceeded to walk about 100 feet all the way around the nursing station! Then there were her first steps with the walker or walking behind her wheelchair just after we left the hospital and got home. And then, the day I asked the physical therpist if we could, "ditch the walker," and she said, "yes, ablsolutely, ditch the walker!" So Joy started going to the mailbox across the street, then working up to a tenth of a mile, two tenths, half a mile, eventually a mile and more! My heart again swells with thankfulness and gratitude for God’s amazing grace and Joy’s determination and indomitable spirit.

Yet another flashback came as, Joy, on her own, baked several items for us to take to her mother on a recent visit. I flashed back to Joy’s first request to try preparing baked oatmeal, shortly after we got home from the hospital. This was a simple recipe she could do by heart before the accident. She had to hold herself up at the counter and I needed to get out all the necessary ingredients, but while she had the recipe available to read, and all the items needed, she soon dissolved into a puddle of tears realizing she could not read any of the words on the recipe or understand what any of the ingredients were, including the oatmeal. Now she carefully and slowly reads the recipes she is making, but which she now understands as well as recognizing each ingredient. I can’t begin to tell you what a wonder it is to have these simple things mean all the world to us - so much so that we can burst into praise over a gluten free pumpkin muffin. 😊

And of course I can’t leave out the flashbacks I see when she is busy with her knitting/crocheting and sewing for Bundles of Love and/or for famiily and friends. When I see her knitting and sewing I’m brought back to the surprising moment when Joy started to knit again shortly after we returned home. Alyx had come over at Joy’s request to help her get started. I believe the term in starting a knitting project is “casting on” which Alyx was going to do for Joy and then see if Joy could remember from there. Well, Alyx had barely started when Joy said, let me try and she proceeded to “cast on” the remaining stitches and launched straight away into a scarf she completed in just a couple of days! Crocheting followed shortly after.

Joy was very happy to be knitting and crocheting again, but when she looked at her extensive sewing collection as we were preparing to move, she felt that a return to sewing was beyond her ability to understand. What had been so very familiar to her, was now so foreign, she could not even begin to think about it. She gave away most of her equipment including her serger sewing machine, sewing table, supplies, and we boxed up her regular machine and just a couple of items that moved with us. But after she began knitting and crocheting projects for Bundles of Love, I asked her if she was sure she didn’t think she could sew again. I have to admit I pestered her until she let me get out her machine and put it on a card table for her to try. While there was a brief period of utter frustration on her part, she soon recaptured her understanding of and love for sewing as you can see from the pictures I’ll post below. Truly a blessing to us and to those Joy creates for.

While these are only a few examples of my, “blessing flashbacks,” I hope they give you a picture of the wonder of God’s miraculous provision for us and Joy’s dogged determination and courage in reclaiming some of the most special things we feared were lost.

And yet, I certainly can’t end this post without doing a shout-out for Joy’s completion of reading the Bible all the way through last year and for the fact that she is already on day 2, of planning to do it again this year. A year ago as she was just getting through children’s books and yet now she’s completed the entire Bible. Way to go Joy!!

So as we’ve done recently, I will leave you with the words of the concluding Psalm, Psalm 150, which so beautifully captures our thankfulness for the year gone by:

Praise the LORD!

Praise God in His sanctuary;

Praise Him in His mighty expanse.

Praise Him for His mighty deeds;

Praise Him according to His excellent greatness.

Praise Him with trumpet sound;

Praise Him with harp and lyre.

Praise Him with tambourine and dancing;

Praise Him with stringed instruments and flute.

Praise Him with loud cymbals;

Praise Him with resounding cymbals.

Let everything that has breath sing praises to the LORD.

Praise the LORD!

 Thank you again for visiting us here and we wish you and yours a blessed and joy filled new year ahead!