Taking one day at a time.

Do you ever have those days when you think to yourself, "This was such a fantastic day! Could it get any better than this?"
That's what I felt about Thursday July 5, 2012.
I had a great day with my therapy kids, awesome fellowship with my dad's church team, and I will never forget the memories I made walking home after eating lots of food at Hot Pot.
As I was about to get ready for bed, I glanced at my IPOD and noticed a text message from my mom.

It read: Attention-Stephen Shaffer (my cousin) is not breathing. Start praying. Paramedics are working on it.

When my mom said that the paramedics were working on starting up his heart, I had utter peace that everything was going to be fine until my mom wanted me to log on to Skype.

I had never seen my mom wail as loud as she did that night. She begged me to wake up my dad even though he was sound asleep. (Back story for this: See my dad's team had been quite busy that day and so he went to bed right away) I don't know how but by the grace of God, my dad woke up to me saying " Mom's on Skype crying and Stephen stopped breathing. Come up please!"

Then started the longest, most difficult Skype time I have ever experienced. My mom was trying to get a hold of my cousin's family to see if there was any new news. There was even a time in the beginning of our Skype time when my mom read a text saying: Stephen may not be with us anymore. When you experience a tragic accident in your family, everything flashes before your eyes. I remember at one point of the time, I was just lying on the ground as my dad was trying to comfort my mom through Skype and Mari was on the couch praying. I lay on our dirty apartment floor thinking, This is not happening to me. Are you kidding Lord? This is so not happening right now. At the end of that Skype date, they told us Stephen had experienced a cardiac arrest and was in a coma. I then went to bed wondering what was happening to my cousin just across the sea.

The next morning, I was completely numb. We all handle grief in our own different ways don't we? While I was lying around in my apartment, skipping my therapy time, and gluing myself onto Facebook to see any updates about my cousin, my dad needed to be in action so he ended up playing with the kids around SFCV. I couldn't possibly handle the idea of playing with the kids while across the ocean my cousin was fighting to stay alive!

As I was sitting on the couch trying to figure out if the night before had really happened, my friend came walking in to tell me this:
" Do you want to hear more bad news today?
"What?"
"Melanie passed away this morning."


This was a tribute I made to her the day of her passing. During my time here at SFCV, I saw her every afternoon and I couldn't believe I would never see her in the blue little wheelchair again:

Wish I had taken a picture with you this year and the fun times we had together in therapy. I will never forget the last day we had where you would scoot around in your little blue wheelchair and I would make you eat smarties by placing the

smarties on your elbow and having you eat them. Even though you were here on this earth for only 2 1/2 years, you were such an inspiration to me to never give up and keep on trying. Love you Melanie. See you in Heaven.

I could tell you a big fat lie that I was OK and moved on through the day with a big smile on my face. But I didn't, I had my friends distract me the whole day with watching TV shows as a way of getting me out of the reality that my cousin was fighting for his life and one of my therapy kids just passed away. But to be honest, it didn't really help as much.

Later into the night, Mari, our other friend, and I decided to have a prayer time for what had been going on through the day. And I realized how much I had been bottling up all these emotions....
I realized that I wasn't giving all of this over to God. Yes, I would be praying throughout the day saying: " Jesus, heal my cousin." But was I earnestly praying for him or just being anxious about the situation?

Luckily, a couple weeks later, God performed an amazing miracle and healed my cousin. He is now currently back to work after a month from having his cardiac arrest! Can't you believe it?

God used this situation in my life to help me understand how much I needed to trust in him even when I was thousand miles away. I am suppose to grab hold of God because He is the rock in which I stand.

I want to leave you with these verses: Romans 8:28-29. God showed me this to remind myself that He is in Control! Thank goodness I can rely on him!!

Posted by Mel