Time Well Spent

For Mother's Day this year my sister-in-law Janet purchased tickets for me, her mother and herself to attend the Author Series up at Sundance when Stephanie Nielson was going to be speaking about her book and her experiences surviving a plane crash and being burned over 80% of her body. Stephanie also has a popular blog called the NieNie Dialogues. She is a wife and at the time of the accident, a mother of 4 small children. The tickets included a buffet style lunch in the Tree Room, the opportunity to listen to Stephanie talk about her book and her life, a Q&A session, a copy of her book and the opportunity to meet her and have her sign the book. It was a perfect day to be up the canyon at Sundance!!!

 It was so interesting and emotional to listen to Stephanie talk about the reasons behind writing the book and then add additional insights and stories to the survival, healing and recovery process. When she first woke up from her comma, 4 months after the accident she did not have a desire to live. She wanted the doctors to stop taking care of her and just let her die because she could not face the pain both physically and emotionally of going through the rest of her life healing from this disfiguring injury. She felt like a monster and it was too much for her to bear. She literally would pray to be able to get through the next 5 minutes. As the days and months went on and she began to heal both physically and emotionally she told of a prayer she offered one night where she "made a deal" with God. She told him that if she could get through all of this and get her old life back, she would do anything He wanted her to do. As she lay in her hospital bed that night she had the very clear impression that she WOULD be able to do the things she used to do and she WOULD get her life back. All He asked in return was for her to tell her story. She very clearly understood that her story is a story of faith and of God and His goodness. When the publishers started calling her a couple of years ago to see if she was interested in writing a book, she knew this was her opportunity to tell her story.

Since the book came out she has had the opportunity to do many TV and radio shows and share her story. She told us how frustrated she was after the piece on her family aired on 20/20 because they removed any mention of God in their editing process and to her, that IS the story. Since then she has made this qualification with anyone that has contacted her for interviews, etc. that her story is about God and if that isn't what they're looking for then she wasn't interested.

During the Question and Answer period someone asked her how much pain she is still in and she said that she is still in pain everyday but that moving and exercising help. She said she's always stretching her hands and her face (by opening her mouth wide) because it just doesn't feel like there's enough skin to cover those areas. She said that early on in the recovery process she felt like two different people...one "person" was her spirit and the other was her body. Slowly but surely her body is catching up with her spirit but she said it's still not quite there yet. Of course, the most incredible moment of her body catching up with her spirit is when she was able to become pregnant and have her 5th child.

One of the most emotional stories she told was about her oldest daughter Claire. She actually didn't even know this story until quite a while after the accident (I think close to two years). Claire came up to her one day as she was sitting at the dining room table in front of her computer and she put a barrette down on the table by the computer. Stephanie looked at it and recognized it as one she used to wear in her hair before the accident. Claire, who I think was around 7 at the time of the plane crash told her that as she was watching many of her aunts and uncles pack their house to move the kids to Utah (they lived in Arizona at the time and since her and Christian's recoveries were going to be extensive...and at that point they weren't even sure that Stephanie would survive...the families decided to bring the kids back to Utah to live with one of her sisters) she was wandering from room to room looking at their lives being packed up. She went and sat on her mom and dads bed for a minute and looked over at the bathroom counter and her mom's bowl of barrettes caught her eye. She quickly went in to get one and put it in her pocket. She told Stephanie that she has carried that barrette in her pocket every day since and whenever she was feeling scared or missing her mom she would rub it or hold it. But as she looked at it sitting on the table she told her mom she didn't need it anymore because she had her mom back now. That is a moment when Stephanie felt like she had her life back, just as God promised her she would.

It's now about 4 years after the accident and as she looks back on her life and as "bummed" as she is that this happened to her, she feels "honored" that Heavenly Father trusted her family to go through this horrible ordeal.. When she and Christian were both still in the hospital, the burn unit staff brought both their families together and told them that statistics showed that divorce was a very high likelihood in cases like this. They rarely, if ever see couples stay together after going through these kinds of serious injuries. How sad of a statistic is that?! She and Christian have not only proved them wrong but have had the opportunity to show the world what it means to be devoted and committed to your spouse and having an eternal perspective of marriage. (Those are my words, not hers.) But it was so emotional to hear her speak about her relationship with Christian and the support and admiration they have for each other. As we all moved into the next room where she would be signing our books, Christian slid past us and said, "As the president of her fan club I'm going to sneak up to the front." He stayed right with her the whole time rubbing her back and talking with everyone as she signed.

It was an incredibly inspiring afternoon and in the midst of a very busy weekend, it was definitely time well spent!