My parents promised me little surprises and special things to help me look forward to getting released. “We’ll go get pizza. You can spend the night with Granny and Papa when you get out, we’ll have a big fish fry and all the relatives will come over, you can have a slumber party…”—things like that. My mom also promised that I’d get a cute new outfit to wear home. This sparked a search back through the JCPenney catalog. I finally settled on this green-and-white striped velour shorts outfit that looked like something Chrissy Snow would wear on the TV show Three’s Company. I loved it! I would be styling in that wheelchair with casts on my legs!
Granny and Papa also told me I could pick out a gift from the catalog, so I chose a baby doll. It arrived about two weeks into my stay in the hospital. She was so cute. I kept her beside me in my bed at all times. When it came time for my last surgery to get the pins out of my left leg before sending me home—my right leg was still in a full cast—the doctor put casts on my baby’s legs, too. I woke from the surgery to see her beside me, and I was so excited. My doll and I both went home with casts on our legs. Such a sweet thing for that doctor to do.
Pain changes people. It can shape a life for the good, or twist and turn it in a bad way. For me, pain came with the side effect of awakening. Somewhere in the pain, the glaring boredom of an active child confined not just to a room but her own body, and the culmination of trauma of those weeks in that hospital—this awakening developed my eight-year-old mind.
My parents had always taken us to church and Sunday school. I knew the Bible stories and believed that God was real. But I didn’t think about God outside of church. We were a good, honest, hardworking family who went to church on Sundays, but that was about it when it came to God. Yet nearly every day I had visitors at the hospital, and someone invariably brought Him up. Family, friends, and church members would come in to visit me, and their words touched that something growing inside my heart.
“The Lord was really looking after you, Sara.”
“Oh, honey, you are so lucky to be alive. God must have a very important purpose for you.”
“God did a miracle in you. Don’t you forget that, not ever.”
And suddenly, I believed it.
I developed an understanding that God did have a purpose for me. It settled in as something I just knew to be true. I had this sense that I’d never be down for long or alone, no matter what I faced, because God was with me. He saved my life for a reason.
This felt like a special light in my heart or a fire for the Lord and for other people. I had a purpose in life, and I knew that God allowed me to survive that horrible accident, and I wanted to make him proud of me. So I needed to find out what that purpose was and never take it for granted.
My body healed slowly, but my spirit was soaring.
Since then, I’ve had a compelling desire to be a good person, to be the best I can be for everyone I encounter, to improve my situation, to improve the lives of others with kindness and generosity, and to be the living example of Christ so that others will want to seek a relationship with Him.
When I was released from the hospital after six weeks, in some ways, the work was just beginning. I spent the next two years in casts, having surgeries, going to doctor’s appointments, having physical therapy. I started third grade in a wheelchair. I can’t imagine the strain that put on my family, especially with my two sisters being just two and four years old.
I struggled a ton with anxiety from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). I developed unreasonable fears about dying in my sleep. I was afraid I would go blind. I was in physical pain most of the time. And I wasn’t the only one in pain. My parents were struggling, too. They were extremely worried about me and trying to balance hospital visits, work, the farm, and my older and younger siblings. Then the hospital bills started coming in the mail. It was almost too much to ask of anybody. I think that’s when my parents started to grow apart from stress.
But even with the pain and fears and struggles, I knew without a doubt that God was real and He’d never leave me. For you reading this, I hope you’ll experience something like this as well. Not a near life-ending accident, of course, but a complete understanding of the fact that God wants to be in your life and that He has a calling for you. He’s always providing and protecting. And HE LOVES US.
As my body began to heal, my heart and soul were calling me back to music. Before long, we put the band back together and started doing shows. I even performed in a wheelchair, and believe me, that tip jar was full at the end of the night.
And at the age of eight years old, I knew that music was my calling. The accident taught me so much about patience and perseverance. When you endure hard things, you get stronger. There were many more challenges ahead, but my purpose on this earth has been clear ever since. I knew that I had a purpose, and that I would not ever let anything stop me from fulfilling it.
Chapter 3 THE BEST MEDICINE
I grew up in a home that was full of laughter. As hard as we worked, we laughed even harder. My siblings and I have family stories that we tell and retell whenever we get together, and we laugh no matter how many times we tell them.
One of many stories is how on some Friday nights after Dad came home from work, Mom or Dad would call out to us five kids, saying, “We’re going to Dairy Queen, let’s go!”
We’d cheer and run around grabbing shoes and brushing our hair real fast, then we’d climb into the back of our big silver van and head to town. Boonville, Missouri, to be specific. The silver van… it was awesome. On long trips we even pulled out the seats so we could make a pallet and sleep. We had all these cassettes and eight-track tapes to pick from. We’d recline against a few pillows and listen to music when we drove anywhere. One of my favorites was Ronnie Milsap’s Greatest Hits. I’d pass it up for Mom to put into the tape deck, and then we’d sing together, songs like “Let’s Take the Long Way Around the World” and “Smoky Mountain Rain.”
A trip to Dairy Queen was special. And for me, it had become more special because I had discovered the very best malt known to man, but it wasn’t “technically” on the menu. It was a peanut butter malt. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s a regular chocolate malt with the perfect amount of peanut butter. I think I heard about it from a friend who said she had gotten one recently and it was to die for. Jay was the oldest in our big family. He got a lot of special treatment, but he also had more responsibilities sometimes, like being the one who had to go into DQ and order for everyone. So after our arrival, Jay would get out of the van and stand at the open door waiting for our orders. And in typical teenager fashion, he was slightly grumpy at all times. Hormones.
One night, I asked for a peanut butter malt, and when he went in to order it, the cute teenage girl working there looked at him and probably in her best Valley Girl voice said, “Excuse me? Um, like, we don’t like have, like, peanut butter malts. I’ll, like, have to, like, ask my manager…” I’m picturing her pulling her gum out in a long strand and curling it around her forefinger. Well, that humiliated Jay, and he vowed that he would NEVER order me a peanut butter malt ever again.
But the next time we went to DQ, I was still dreaming of the PB malt. I couldn’t stop thinking about it! And you can imagine Jay was thinking about that cute girl behind the counter. As usual, Jay was commissioned to go in and get everything. Everyone went around telling their orders, but he wouldn’t look at me until the very end, when I said, as fast as I could, “Peanutbuttermalt.” All one word. I was so scared, but not scared enough not to try. He threw his head back and said, “Mom! Why do I have to get that for her? It’s not even on the freaking regular menu!” But we all knew why it really made him mad, so my mom joined the fun. “Jay, just order it, it’s not a big deal,” she said, trying to hide her grin.