hi guys how’s it going lol

does anyone remember me!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi hi hello. This is the first post on itsfineimfine.com in over a year. LOL. lolololol! You may be wondering, why is that.

The short story is I was paralyzed on my way to the empire state building. The short story is I died, was resurrected three days later, and erased the sins of mankind. Hehe ok I’ll be serious now.

So here we go.

On a Friday night last June, Lane and I were Ubering home from a bar. We were just about to take our exit, when we had to suddenly stop for a wreck that had just happened ahead of us.

While we were completely stopped on 635, a semi truck behind us ran into (or over, more accurately) the back-right side of the Uber, where I was sitting. The hit caused a domino effect, involving the 2 cars in front of us. Thankfully, Lane and the Uber driver were on the left side of the Uber and didn’t receive much of the blow.

I don’t remember being hit, or anything that happened afterwards, even though I was up, walking around, and talking/yelling after it happened.

Lane remembers it all though — he thought I died for a few horrible seconds or minutes. He describes the wreck as being very fast and loud. He said he looked at me folded over in my seat, and saw the blood begin to pour out of my head very suddenly. He shook me and yelled at me, impossibly tried to bend the roof of the car that was crushing me, and said I was not moving long enough for him to get out of the car, pace around, and possibly imagine a world where I might be dead. I finally came to, somehow unbuckled myself, and Lane helped me get out of the car.

The next day I woke up in a hospital room. I suffered multiple fractures in both my back and pelvis, a nose fracture, a thigh laceration + 6 staples, a forehead laceration + 50 stitches, a concussion/mild TBI, and permanent nerve damage in my forehead from the laceration. I was in a walker for about 12 weeks and spent basically all my time sitting or laying on the bed or couch.

Something I can laugh about now (hehe I think) is the fact that I was so beyond out of my mind the days afterwards, from drugs and just being ran over in general, that I was texting people I had shattered my pelvis (???). I either misheard doctors or just assumed I shattered my pelvis because I was in so much pain. I don’t even remember texting people this, I found that out later. LOL.

Something else I can laugh about now is when I woke up the next day and talked to doctors, the very first thing they talked about, very seriously, was a scar on my face. They said, “You have a scar on your face, but don’t worry, we have plastic surgeons and laser treatment that will help.” Mind you, I’m laying down in a neck brace, barely able to see out of my puffy eyes, my body writhing in pain, and they tell me I have a face scar. I literally was like, “SIR, AM I PARALYZED?? WILL I WALK AGAIN???????” I don’t know if that is a “~*~DaLLaS~*~ doctor thing” or if they just figured that’s what matters most to girls in their twenties thing. But I kid you not, I literally said, can i walk tho. 

But I digress.

After spending the first half of 2018 getting married, buying a house, moving in together, getting a pug puppy (Cookies!), staying busy with friends, work, and traveling — the start of the second half of 2018 could not have had a starker contrast. It was more physical pain than I have ever experienced, and going from being a very active person to very sedentary for three months definitely took an impact on my general well being and mental health as well.

Having a job that allowed me to take short term disability leave, and having a husband who works from home were all HUGE blessings, and I’m so thankful I was able to be home and be taken care of by Lane. But it goes without saying (or it should!) that being home with a broken back, pelvis, and recovering from a brain injury is a much different lifestyle than time off work as a normal, healthy person. I saw myself as not being “productive” or “helpful” in any way.

Suffice it to say, trust I would have rather been healthy and working and doing normal things!!!!

My parents were in Ruidoso when they found out about the accident, and they immediately drove to Dallas for what I can imagine was a very very long, dreadful drive. My sister and Robert were at our house all the time last summer helping to clean and do anything and everything. Lane did more than a newlywed husband should ever have to do the first year of marriage. I needed assistance doing everything the first few weeks, and thank God he works from home and was able to be there for me. He did everything around the house — dishes, laundry, cleaning, taking care of a puppy, in addition to things like getting me more water from the kitchen, all while dealing with the after-affects of his own emotional and physical trauma.

In so many ways, Lane is the actual survivor of this story. If our roles had been reversed, I truly don’t know how I would have handled what all he did. Not only because all the medical, legal, life logistics, but just emotionally.

God knew what he was doing allowing me to break my bones instead of thinking my husband died!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For real.

The following weeks after the accident, so many people reached out to us, brought us meals, sent flowers, gifts, UberEats giftcards, texts, and I can’t even find the words to accurately convey how much it all meant to us. People I had never met would come up to me at baby showers, months later, and ask me how I was doing. It was overwhelming in the most touching way. Truly, not a single week goes by, even a year later, that I don’t think about at least one way someone showed their love and support to us during that season of life. Our community of friends, friends of friends, family, and coworkers is a HUGE BLESSING.

I get really emo when I think abt it!!!!!!!

That fall, after a summer on a walker (which I spray painted pink!) and 6 weeks of physical therapy, I was back to walking, working, soul-cycling, and planning Lane’s birthday. Any obvious damage from the wreck was largely invisible to the eye (well, except for a forehead scar) so unless someone noticed my absence, no one would think to ask. It was a bizarrely normal life again. The summer felt really slow in the moment and yet it all went by so fast by the time I was back to work; entering into the fall after was like waking up and returning to “a normal day” after a really, really bad dream.

Now for the rest of the story you wouldn’t see from the outside.

I journaled every day that week leading up to Friday, the night of the wreck (yes, I journal a lot because I’m a 5th grader). I was kind of a hot mess that week. The day before the accident I wrote, “I’ve felt weak, fragile, and overwhelmed. Earthly, meaningless things have consumed my energy and crushed my spirit which has made it impossible to spread your kingdom’s message. Remind me of what matters. Pour into me so I may pour into everything in my life.”

You know, the usual lol! 💁💁💁💁💁💁

I was largely concerned with myself — my to do list, my social life, my blog, my job, my time, my friends, my trips, my meals, my work out schedule, my clothes, my weekend plans, my house, my life. All my time, stress, and concerns, were centered around me.

Then the next day, all the “earthly meaningless things” I had prayed about were suddenly gone. 

Okay, not “gone” but they were immediately made irrelevant. I wasn’t able to stress out about how to spend my time, fitting in everything plus a work out, or stress about work, because all that stuff was wiped out, and it was just going to be me and the couch for a solid season.

Being just totally frank here: I do feel a teeny bit embarrassed talking about how ~*~stressed~*~ I was lol. . Like was it because I have children, oh wait nope, was it because i’m becoming partner at my law firm, oh wait nope, was it because i’m a doctor saving lives all day, oh wait. nope.

Looking back now, I can’t even remember specifically why I was so desperately stressed. I do know that I  was so shatteringly overwhelmed because I was wholeheartedly putting my trust, identity, worth, and validation in those “earthly meaningless things.”

So, maybe it is total coincidence that the NEXT DAY a SEMI TRUCK would hit our Uber at the EXACT ANGLE AND SPEED to keep Lane and the Uber driver completely safe, and only hit my side. A semi+3-car accident that was so out of anyone’s control, and yet so precise to only send 1 out of the ~6 people involved to the Emergency Room. Not only that, but for me to fall into the extremely small percentage of people who suffer a rotating back-pelvis injury without internal organ damage. What’s more, my doctors said they were shocked at how deep my forehead laceration was without causing worse damage.

It’s all so random, so rare, so wildly reckless, and yet somehow all weirdly connected in a strange way??????????

Again–maybe it is a total coincidence. But God scares the @$%# out of me!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After spending time thinking about the what ifs:

What if I hadn’t gone out to the bars. (I really almost stayed home that night!) What if we had gone home earlier. Or later. What if we went to a different bar. What if we lived in a different house, we wouldn’t have gone on that route, wouldn’t have been on a major highway at night.

And after going through the what ifs, you think of the whys: 

Why did God let this happen to me? Why us? Did I do or not do something to deserve this? Is God trying to send a message?

And on the other side:

Why did God enable me to survive something that easily could have killed me? Why did God allow me to live and not this other person who died, who was much more deserving of life? Why am I alive and not this child? Why was I spared from having worse injuries? Why was I given a “second chance”?

See: lots of questions about me. Valid questions, sure! But still, very me-focused.

It’s been over a year, and I don’t claim to know why everything happened the way it did or what it all means, but I do know this: it had nothing to do with me. 

Again: the accident had nothing to do with me. Or Lane. It happened, we lived, but if things had turned out differently, IE if I had died, it still would not be about me, or us. I am trying to process this by believing that everything that happens in my life is meant to point to God, not to me.

Events in life, good or bad, happen as an opportunity to dive deeper into a relationship with Him: to read, think about, and understand more about Him and how very meticulous, personal, emotional, and detail-oriented He is; to help us understand how involved God actually is in our daily lives and how He knows what we need better than we do and answers prayers in ways we would never think possible; to remind us to seek wisdom, comfort, and strength in His character, heart, and thoughts, instead of validation from flawed humans, or identity in our own success and achievements.

Events in life, good or bad, happen so we can deepen our relationships with people in our lives, and actually learn about them, how to deeply care for them, pray for them, remind them about our God, encourage their faith, share in their burdens, and celebrate them.

Choosing to point to God in light of the accident is so easy to say and type, and so much harder to live out.

Every day is a fight with myself to think about things not happening right in front of my face. Learning to be intentional doesn’t happen as fast as a healing sacrum bone #ha #pelvisjokes. Remembering how GRATEFUL I am to be alive, like actually not taking life for granted, mixing in eternal thoughts with daily to do’s, turning sporadic “crisis bible time” into consistent “quiet bible time” is all a process. I’m 28 and I don’t have all the answer guys, itsfineimfine.com.

I also want to acknowledge that this is just one of many crazy, rare, freak-accident, near-death stories. (Even the “smaller” stories, with much less hospital bills and drama, can be just as impactful to faith and life too!). There are so many surreal, bizarre stories and testimonies that emphatically point to God, and I don’t think mine is more special or powerful than anyone else’s.

Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. John 21:25.

And lastly — I know it’s so easy for me to say, “Point to God!” when I have so, so much to be grateful for. I have so much respect and heartache for those who are living life “on the other side” of the story; those whose loved ones didn’t wake up the next morning, or those who have so many more burdens to bear. My hope is that (although I know it’s so much easier said than done) you can remove yourself from the “what ifs” and “whys” and can point to God in your situation.

Because in my very weak, human moments when I start to feel angry, upset, or anxious about something in my life, whether related to the accident or something else entirely, I feel very humbled and at peace knowing it’s not about me at all.

Phew. 

Are we all still here? Anyone reading? I promise to never write anything this long or sentimental ever again. I’m cringing too. Okay moving on.

Chic Celebs with Chic Face Scars

SCAR GIRLS instead of mean girls get it

I’m not sure that this even counts but wow please refer to me as Kate Middleton from now on, we are literally twins.

Remember that movie when Sandra sang Get Low? That was an amazing scene. You scarred, you scarred.

Almost forgot about Mary J. Bligue!! What’s she up to these days!

Thank you for reading! I truly can’t wait to get back to blogging about my hair and celebrities.

pics via: baklol and giphy