Football miracle

This is a difficult blog to write. You may remember me blogging about football and the passion my son has for the sport. I have also written about those frightening hits in football that everyone hears.

My son was involved in one of those frightening hits during football camp. It was the kind of hit that causes the coaches on both sides of the line to feel their stomachs lurch and send them all running onto the field even before the players have climbed back to their feet.

But my son didn’t get back on his feet.

He lay on the field, his limbs convulsing spontaneously—the sign of severe spinal trauma. Though he remained conscious, he was unable to feel anything below his neck. He later told me it was the most frightening two or three minutes he has ever experienced.

When feeling did return to his limbs he knew one of his coaches was kneeling beside him, tightly holding his hand. “Mom, Coach Bryan never let go of my hand the rest of the time,” he said. "He stayed right there with me the whole time."

And they took time with him.

Finally, after taking all the precautions--including immobilizing his neck--the trainers and emergency staff decided he had experienced a severe back spasm. It was a hot day and my son has had leg cramps before. They iced his back and my son asked to go back into the game. He pestered. He said he was fine, just a bit sore. Reluctant, the coaches finally agreed.

My son finished that game as their running back and defensive end. An hour later he played, both ways, for a second full game.

In his positions he was a constant target. Each tackle, he told me, brought him excruciating pain. Even his head hurt with every step.

In one touchdown run, pain kept him from diving over the goal line and he was brought down one yard short. At any other time he would have made those final three feet but he told me later “it hurt too much Mom. I couldn’t do it.” He felt bad, genuinely hurt, that he'd let his teammates down.

No one knew he was playing with his back broken in two places.

When I picked up my son after the camp I knew instantly something was wrong. I could see it in his eyes. They were a different color.

We took him into the doctor and discovered the broken vertebrae and the dislocated neck.

The doctor told him he was lucky. He could have been paralyzed at any time. He was amazed my son had kept playing--even more amazed he had gotten up and walked away from each subsequent tackle.

Later, a back specialist confirmed what the first doctor told us. Then he said, “you need to realize how serious this injury is. If anything had been even a fraction of an inch different, you’d be in a wheelchair right now and you’d be there for the rest of your life.”

My son--who is so passionate about the game that he played football for two hours with a broken back--wept uncontrollably...not because of the possibilities but because of the reality. His football career was over. And I wept right along with him. There is deep, deep pain in seeing something taken from your child that means so much to him!

At some point, when the doctors left us alone, I told him, "Even though you don't feel like this is a blessing right now, you need to realize that the Lord truly protected you during that accident and has blessed you in every single step you've taken since."

Then I made a call to my husband who was out of town. He, too, was devasated--made worse by the distance and his inability to get back to us.

Though he couldn’t be there that night, he fulfilled his role as husband and father perfectly. He called a close friend and asked him to give our son a priesthood blessing that night.

The friend did--changing his schedule to help us through our crisis.

The blessing was the most amazing experience I and my son have ever had. Promises were made that astounded all of us, even our friend. The Spirit was tremendously strong...and with it came understanding and courage to move forward. And hope for my son's future.

Tonight my son is going to his team’s preseason scrimmage game. He will be on the sidelines, encouraging his teammates while wearing a back brace. But he will be standing and walking that sideline, something the doctors say is a miracle.

Because of the gift of the priesthood, we know that many more miracles are still ahead of him. I am anxious to see the 'other' miracles my son will experience in his life.



<--My son breaking tackles and heading for the goal line. His determination on the field follows him off the field, too.


Watching from the sidelines. He was never content to sit there long and, even with a broken back, he still isn't content to sit there. He now goes to every practice and helps with the coaching. His teammates have commented how much they appreciate having him there with them. -->



<-- Ready to face whatever is coming. Though his senior year dreams have suddenly changed, he's still ready to face whatever is coming.

Priesthood blessings

My son did something today I didn’t do until I was much older. He asked an older man, who is not a member of our church, if he would like his son, Brian, to receive a priesthood blessing. The man said yes.

We believe that worthy men can be called and ordained to the receive the priesthood. Christ had the priesthood. He was a high priest in the Melchezidek priesthood. (See Hebrews 5.) He gave this authority to his disciples. That priesthood authority is the power of God to officiate in His name and enact the ordinances of salvation. Another function of the priesthood is to give blessings to the sick, downtrodden and seeking.

A year and a half ago, Brian played on the same football team as two of my sons. One son, in particular, formed a close friendship with Brian. Together they worked to improve as football players year-round. They also went snowmobiling in the winter, floated the creek in the summer, and played video games often. Brian spent a lot of time at our house. He was always polite and fun. When I opened the door and saw him standing on our back step I always had to return his smile. He brightened everything with his fun, quiet nature.

After graduation, Brian received a scholarship to play football at college. He came to our house when he could but we didn’t see him as much as before. I missed him. I also worried about him. So did my son.

We knew Brian had begun drinking. He told my son several times he liked hanging out at our house and around his LDS friends because he didn’t feel he needed to drink to have fun. It was a different kind of fun. It was clean fun. He didn’t have to worry about what he did.

We asked Brian if he wanted to learn more about what we believed. He said, ‘definitely’ but we were slow in our follow-through and one lonely night Brian was involved in a drunk-driving accident. The accident left him in a coma for a month and now he is permanently brain-injured.

Recently, while visiting Brian, my son explained priesthood blessings to Brian’s father. He then asked his father if he would like Brian to receive a priesthood blessing. The man said yes. My son called, excited that we could help Brian and his family in a way no doctor or therapist could.

The call touched my heart. It took courage for my son, who is still in high school, to ask an adult such a question and explain priesthood blessings to him. It also took faith. How grateful I am that my son has faith in the power of the priesthood—faith enough to know that it can bless the lives of others--and faith enough in its importance to share that knowledge with a non-member.

I also feel very strongly the blessing won’t just bless Brian. It will bless my son and all those people who deeply love Brian, both on this side of the veil and the other. Furthermore, I strongly feel that there are those on the other side of the veil who have prayed that someone would offer to give their beloved Brian a priesthood blessing.

Priesthood blessings always touch more lives than one. And that is so appropriate, because Brian has also touched many more lives than one.

Football, win or lose

It's football season. For mother's of football players that means worry.

It's been said that you don't have to see a hard hit, you hear it. That horrific crack of helmets and bodies can be heard over every announcement and volume level of the crowd; and when that noise reaches the ears and hearts of mothers in the stand, they all feel life stop for a moment. Their heads turn while their minds race: Is that my son out there? Will he get up?

Even after numbers are identified and all sons but two are accounted for--every mother, in both stands, nervously waits to see if those two 'sons' will stand on their own.

My son, in the white, after making a "big hit" on someone else's son. Thankfully, both got up and both congratulated the other on a great play.

Mothers don't have to know the players who were caught in the epicenter of that awful sound. Every mother at the game still waits and worries. Maternal instinct isn’t just for our own children. It is for all children.

I learned that more deeply during a losing season. Everything is different when the scoreboard reflects a numerical defeat. Injuries hurt more. Weaknesses are noticed more. When your son comes off the field with a pain in his eyes that goes deeper than any physical injury you want to hug him and give him part of your soul just to buoy him up. You tell him how great he did but you see in his eyes that what you are saying isn’t registering. At that moment those illuminated numbers are speaking louder than any thing he is hearing.

During that losing season my son’s team found themselves ahead at the half for the first time all season. The other team they were playing had also struggled that season. I knew it wasn’t a game of two Titans battling for supremacy, or even David versus Goliath. It was a game of failure versus failure and one, I knew, would have to fail again.

Selfishly, with thoughts of my own son, I went home during halftime and hit my bedroom floor in prayer. Please, I pleaded, let my son’s team hold on to the lead and win this game. The team was so discouraged, so emotionally defeated from all their defeats that season. Let them have at least one win.

Why would you pray for that? a voice asked. Why would you pray for another mother to have to greet her defeated son after the game and see the same pain in his eyes that you have seen?

That questioning entered my heart and soul with a power that has never left. I still feel its power when I reflect on that prayer.

Today, I don’t remember who won the game. All I really remember is during that halftime I won deep, unexpected understanding from a heartfelt prayer. It has changed the way I look at football and so many other things in life. It has changed my prayers. Now, before a game, I plead that all players will be safe from injury. I plead that all players will have the opportunity to play their very best. And I especially pray that that both teams will form bonds of respect and friendship across the line and set examples of sportsmanship for their teammates and others.

I haven’t been disappointed. My son has made many new friends across the lines in the games and seasons since that prayer.

This year my son’s team is 3-2. Not playoff numbers but better than that previous losing season. Now when he steps off the field, win or lose, he’s more likely to talk about the acts of sportsmanship and good players on both sides of the line. Last week, after my son’s team experienced a tough loss against a powerhouse team that left the numbers, 54-6, shining on the scoreboard, he still came off the field with a smile on his face.

“That was a great game! No one got injured and both teams were helping each other up after every play, telling each other good job. When we lined up to shake hands after the game, one of the guys on the other team told each of us God bless.”

Obviously there are other mothers out there praying for the same things.