Blankets

Blankets are my love language. If you give me a blanket, I will be forever grateful and find a place for it.

Four different cozy throw blankets hang off the end of my bed. I keep one between my bed and the wall because it doesn’t go with my color scheme, but it’s soft and needed sometimes at night. I’ve draped two additional blankets over the chair in the corner of my room.

I’m cold natured, and the blankets are like a hug of warmth and comfort.

Fifteen years ago today, April 10, 2005, I was driving home from church on a two lane highway going 55 MPH. I topped a hill and saw headlights in my lane. My heart sank. My sister was in the car too. I sighed and whispered her name.

I woke up with my steering wheel in my lap and my front wheel and bumper wrapped around my legs like a vice as my car balanced precariously on the embankment off the side of the road.

Trying to create as much stability as possible for the rescue, the first responders lowered a hose down from the firetruck parked up on the road to tether my car to the truck. 

A firefighter sat in the front seat of my car and held my hand distracting me while the other firemen used the jaws of life to set me free from the metal that had crushed body and kept me captive in my mangled car.

We brought cookies to the station months later as a thank you for saving my life, and the man who had held my hand mentioned seeing two men holding up my car when he first pulled up to the scene. My heart fell because after hearing the testimonies of all the witnesses in the initial hearing against the drunken driver responsible for the head on collision, not one of them mentioned seeing men holding up my car or holding up my car themselves. I knew it must have been angels.

Even if they weren’t heavenly beings, I’ll call strangers angels when they’re risking their lives to keep nearly 3,000 pounds of crumpled metal from rolling down a cliff with me inside.

I apologized for screaming so loudly when the firefighters finally pulled me from my twisted car and placed me on a backboard to carry me up the hill to the ambulance that would take me to the helicopter flying me to a hospital in St. Louis.

I saw my dad in the ambulance. I smiled and told him I was fine. I’m sure he didn’t believe me and broke all kinds of speeding laws to get to the hospital 30 miles away.

The woman said she was sorry when she missed my vein the first time she tried to start my IV, but then she gave me morphine and tried to keep me awake on the helicopter ride.

The nurses in the ER were so kind, and I apologized for complaining so much about the pain when they had to move me to different positions to get all the X-rays and scans the doctors requested.

They told me they had to cut my clothes off and I remember thinking this was a new shirt and wondering if there were any boys in the room, but I had already had morphine at this point and didn’t care.

Then the nurse brought in a warm blanket. I don’t know who came up with the idea of putting hospital blankets in a magical heating contraption, but that person deserves an award. I’m talking Nobel Peace Prize type of major award.

Hospitals are cold. I was alone. My body was broken, but that blanket was warm. The pain remained, but warmth covered me, and I felt a little bit safer.

Once I discovered their existence, I kept asking the nurses for another warm blanket and morphine.

I definitely got more fresh warm blankets that night than I did shots of morphine—probably because you can’t overdose on blankets. The next day I learned you can OD on morphine.

My parents finally made it to the hospital with my sister and future brother-in-law and Sunday school teacher and pastor and youth pastors. All these familiar faces like warm blankets reminding me I wasn’t alone in the cold. 

The doctor said things like lacerated spleen and internal bruising and bleeding and multiple fractures in my feet and right wrist.

I don’t remember conversations. I remember my people were there. I remember warm blankets.

Just peace.

The past few years, this day has not brought peace for me though.

Guilt took root in my thoughts whenever I was reminded of someone who hasn’t survived a story similar to mine.

Shame holds me captive whispering that I’ve wasted all this extra time God has given and have nothing worthwhile to show for His miraculous provision.

The enemy lies telling me I have to do something big with my life to warrant such a big rescue all those years ago.

But that’s not how grace works. God’s rescue has never depended on my merit; God’s rescue always depends on His character.

Even with 15 years of hindsight, I can’t pretend to have all the answers about that night and the ways it has permeated in my life.

God doesn’t always give us all the answers—in fact, He almost never gives us all the answers. 

I’ve often gone to the Bible looking for answers, and instead find God himself with all His goodness and love–and sometimes I still wonder if it is enough. Help my unbelief.

Yes, I need to be reminded of God’s promises, but sometimes I just need you to sit with me and remind me of His presence.

Sometimes I need reminding that my presence matters too even if it’s not exciting or loud or big. Maybe I can be a blanket. Maybe that’s enough.

If you’re alone and cold in a hospital with a broken body, something as small as a warm blanket is a welcome gift. 

Even now as I look at all the blankets purposely placed throughout my room, my heart swells with the thoughts of the people they represent. The people who haven’t always had all the right words, but who’ve sat with me and been a warm and safe place to be broken.