Saturday November 26, 2005

Saturday November 25, 2005 Zack slept in until 9:00 and was in the kitchen eating cereal when I walked into the room. He looked up and reminded me that his party was tonight. I told him I knew that and he needed to help me get ready. We were down the basement putting up the last minute Christmas decorations when I heard a strange sound from the storage room. As I opened the door I saw a soaking wet floor and water pouring from the overflow pipe at the bottom of the water heater. I yelled for everyone to come help me while I tried to figure out what to turn off. Dylan got the phone to call his Dad and Kyle ran to get some buckets. Zack looked at me, grinned and said, " I suppose to do?” Once we had the buckets Zack would get one filled up while I emptied the other down the sump pump. Scott was still 30 minutes away and the water was conspicuously hot so Dylan ran across the street and got our neighbor Chuck. Fortunately they figured a way to turn the water off until Scott could take a look or call a plumber. What a time for a plumbing problem. Of course the hot water heater has to be in the basement, where Zack’s party would be, and it would choose today to break down. Scott arrived shortly with a $7.00 part from Sears and got the heater fixed and water mopped up. In the meantime I had to wash my hair in cold water in the kitchen sink (Zack had already taken his shower). I decided to skip baking cookies and went to Kroger’s and bought them from the bakery. Scott got the outside lights up while I was gone and I took Kyle and Dylan to friend’s houses to spend the night. We were ready by the time the first guest arrived and before long the house was filled with kids. They played pool, listened to music and caught up with Zack. At one point it was so crowded down the basement we had to turn the air conditioner on. Zack’s friends that were home from college for Thanksgiving break were all amazed at how different he was since the last time they saw him. Most of them hadn’t seen him since August and at that point he was hardly walking, much less talking. If you would have walked down the basement during that party you could not have picked out the kid with the traumatic brain injury even though he was not wearing a hat. His hair is covering most of the incision and his head wound only shows at certain angles. By 11:00 PM only 6 or 7 kids were left chatting with him on the couch. He had a great time and when the last one left he came up to tell me about it. He said it was much better than he thought it was going to be and now he was tired and going to bed. It didn’t take long for me to get everything cleaned up and I sat down on the couch to talk with Scott. He finally had time to read the Southeast Outlook article about Zack and was in tears before he was through. It is still hard for him to read about the first months after Zack’s accident and even harder to look at the pictures. I look at Zack’s photo album almost every day, many times with Zack, and feel blessed and amazed. Each turn of the page is like witnessing the hand of God at work. The first few pages show him in a coma with tubes coming out of his swollen head. Then his eyes are open, soon he is smiling, then walking, then dancing…always surrounded by friends. It is a chronological order of events orchestrated perfectly by a merciful God. His plan played out in photographs for all the world to see. I am so grateful that I have those pictures to remind us how great is our God. How real is the power of prayer? Scripture reminds us in Mathew 21:22 “All things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive”. We have always believed that God would heal Zack, we just never knew how completely it would be. We still can not imagine where we will be a year from now but we trust that God’s plan will be perfect. Continue praying for complete recovery…He hears you all! Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”