Psalm 91 has been the guiding principle for most of my life. Verse 14 says, ” I will rescue him; I will protect him for he acknowledges my name. He will call on my name, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will be will deliver him and honor him.” This has certainly been the case for me. God has continuously protected me. And guided my footsteps. As I look back I can see how events fit together and impacted other events that had no visible purpose or reason at the time.

My story doesn’t start here in Tennessee as many might think, but way back when I was about four year old. No, I’m not going year by year. But the age of four was a critical year. It’s the year I called “shotgun” on the way to daycare at the hospital where my mom worked with my two brothers were stuck in the back seat. It was the mid 60s, which meant no seatbelts or child seats. We lived outside of Washington DC in the suburbs. My mom worked at the county hospital and to travel there we had to drive on the Capital Beltway. On that specific morning, a woman we were following slammed on her brakes unexpectedly. My mom did the same. I flew forward and hit the windshield. I ended up with a concussion and had to spend the day on a cot at the daycare counting cracks in the wall. The only good thing about the day was that I had a really good green milkshake.

Throughout childhood and adolescence we quickly learned that I was a klutz. I could be walking down the street and fall and sprain my ankle for no reason. This happened on a regular basis. I had my fair share of sprains and stitches. As a teen, I went on a camping trip with church. While on the trip, we went apple picking and I chose the wrong branch. I fell fifteen feet onto rotten apples and thus began my back problems.

My back issues were further exacerbated during my first year of teaching. It was January. I was living in Missouri, where I’d gone to college, teaching in a rural school district. My parents were living out of the country and we’d had a major snowstorm a few days before. On the way to school, I remember being in the right lane, with a car in front of me having their right turn signal on and slowing down, so I moved to the left lane. That’s the last thing I remember before I woke up the wrong way on the highway with some guy saying “I knew she was going to hit me so I jumped out of my car.” His car was in a ditch. Mine was a foot and a half shorter. By God’s blessings, I walked away from that accident with very sore muscles and bruised ribs. I later learned, I had two fractured ribs, most likely from that accident when I broke the steering wheel.

After Missouri, God moved me to Texas for about ten years, then to Maryland. I was living in the city I’d grown up in for about fifteen years. I was counseling middle schoolers and doing scheduling for the school, as well as being the department chairperson. At church, I co-lead the adult singles withone of my friends. I had a lot going on. In 2009, my fall from the apple tree caught up with me at work. My back went out permanently. After jumping through all the hoops with a pain doctor and physical therapy, it was decided that surgery was the best option. My pain was off the charts. I got up went to work came home crawled in bed, repeat. I walked like a 90 year old weeble wobble and was in excruciating pain. In the summer of 2013, I had my lower back fused.

The surgery was not the success the doctors and I had hoped. I continued to be in pain.

Ten and a half months after my lower back surgery, my friend and I prayerfully made the decision to pass the reins on co-leading the singles group to others within the group. So one Saturday we went to a restaurant on the Potomac River for some good crabs for a celebration and to pass the baton. On the way home, my car was rear ended and hit 3 times by a 17 year old in a Ford F150. I was driving a Honda Accord Coupe. He hit me so hard I had the shape of his license plate in my bumper punched out. Initially, I had a severe case of vertigo. Then several months later at work, my neck started tingling.

I went and saw my primary care physician. She said it was probably arthritis, but wanted to get some X-rays. A day or so later, I got a call from her office saying I needed to go see an orthopedist or a neurosurgeon as soon as possible. First, I got a copy of the X-ray report. I wanted to know what was so critical, that I couldn’t pass go, with PT. It said I had a remote fracture, which means an old broken bone. What? I’d never broken a bone! Lots of stitches…no bones! I didn’t know about the rib bones at that point. The condition of the bone I broke is called Os Odontoideum in honor of the odontoid bone I broke. You’re probably wondering where the heck is that bone. Well, if you’re old enough to remember Christopher Reeve, it’s the bone he broke in his neck when he fell off his horse. It put him in a wheelchair and paralyzed him from the neck down. He needed oxygen to breath. The other option when you break that bone is it could kill you. There are about 15 people a year that are incidentally found to have this condition each year, usually in later life from an injury to the head. It almost always requires surgery to stabilize it. It’s a little bone in your neck attached to your C2 vertebrae and very hard to break. Mine was in two pieces. The lower half attached to C2, the upper half attached to my skull.

I called my neurosurgeon at Hopkins and made an appointment with him. We had a discussion about my condition. He thinks I broke the bone in the accident when I was 4 and had been walking around with my head unattached since about 6 when the bone attaches to C2. He said we should do surgery if I start to get clumsy, otherwise we monitor it. I let him know my picture is in the dictionary next to clumsy. Clumsy is a symptom of the condition. When I told my mom, clumsiness was a symptom, her response was, “So you have a medical reason for being a klutz?”

I responded,” It appears so, and Dad was wrong.” I continued with”I can just imagine every timeI fell, God telling my Guardian Angel to grab my head….she’s going to fall again!” I imagined all the things I had done in my life , like skiing, not very well and skiing into trees on the bunny hill.

I knew God had been protecting me my whole life.

At first I wanted to wait until the end of the school year to do the surgery to screw my head back on, but the tingling began to become so prevalent I couldn’t wait that long. I worked in a middle school where I was bumped regularly and fell on a regular basis. Going to work was a risk for me. My neck was very unstable. I could turn my head a ridiculous amount. Linda Blair jokes were made by my friends. I scheduled surgery for right after Christmas 2013.

December 27, 2013, I had my head screwed on.

By Gods grace, I have a significant amount of rotation in my head. If you don’t know me, you wouldn’t know, I have limited head rotation. I was told to expect 20 to 30 degrees rotatation. I have the rotation of a normal person.

Again God. I most notice it when I’m backing up my car. It’s hard to see behind me.so I’ve learned to go slow and rely on my back up camera and others around me helping me see what’s around me.

My neck surgery is when I truly knew God had been watching over me all my life. I had fallen so many times, the car accidents. God knew I was walking around with my head unattached and how dangerous it was. At any time, I could be paralyzed or suddenly dead. I never had any problems with my neck until I had surgery to screw my head on.

In 2017, I was blessed to be able to retire from my job in two states. God then lead me to Tennessee. My original plan was Texas, since I have family there and had lived there. But he used fb to show me that financially Tennessee was a better fit. So after taking a quick vacation here, we moved my mom to assisted living in Morristown in 2016. My aunt and I followed in 2017. My aunt to Morristown near my mom, me to Corryton and Fairview Knox Church.

In late 2018, I got the worst news of my life. I was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma. I was told by my doctors that I most likely had it while I was still in Maryland. Here’s the thing, had I known that I wouldn’t have moved. I would have stayed in Maryland because of access to Hopkins. God knew that. I believe that’s why I didn’t find out until well after I was here. God wanted me in Tennessee. He wanted me at Fairview Knox Church. I still don’t know all the whys. I just know that’s where I’m supposed to be planted. He did allow me to drive back and forth to Hopkins for treatment since that’s where my insurance had the best coverage. I know he blessed me unmistakably with healing multiple times.

To say the past five years here in Tennessee have been rough is an understatement. It’s not how I planned retirement. Retirement was supposed to be lunches out. Day trips with friends. Short trips once or twice a year with friends. Instead I got a calendar filled with medical appointments. The appointments have dwindled. I’ve dropped a doctor or two. I’ve survived the ventilator from Covid, a fungal infection meant to kill half who get it, and a staph pneumoniathat had me ventilated and thinking I was in a secret experiment. If you want to know about that one, just ask. It’s a story for another day. I was close to dying with Covid and the staph pneumonia. My mother was told to prepare when I had the staph. The prayers of many people, some I’ve never met, are what brought me through those illnesses. A good God saw me throug all of those. I’ve learned to walk twice during these years. What is clear God has work still to do.

To top it all off, I finished off by breaking my leg. Even that had a blessing. It got me the physical therapy my insurance company cut me off while I was in the hospital. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to walk on grass or have been able to get or handle my dog. There is a purpose in everything that happens, even when you think it’s bad.

Life is returning to normal and that’s a good thing. I am ready to start my original retirement plan.