God Whispers Before He Speaks

....and next time He whispers to me, I'm gonna listen.

I've been meaning to blog about my accident for the last week, but to put it mildly, it's been an incredibly rough 8 days. And, typing with 5 left hand fingers really blows. I'll rewind to the week before this happened just to explain.

As if getting ready for Thanksgiving wasn't hectic enough, the weekend was incredibly busy (but fun! Go Cougars!). The next week at work was just as crazy; constant meetings, not a minute in between each one to catch my breath. I mean literally, not 5 minutes to spare from one thing to the next. We all experience that, right? The evenings were even booked solid; client skating party Wednesday night, (see blog below!) kids piano and visiting teaching Thursday night, Bonneville Christmas Party Friday, (see below also!) then crazy Saturday with a birthday party, Brandon's indoor soccer game, a funeral in Bountiful, and a United Way Future Leaders dinner at The Depot. Sunday with church, church again for a family baby blessing in Provo, and Easton had a Scout Court of Honor that evening at Church. During this whole time, I kept second guessing myself...feeling and knowing I had to slow down soon and that I was doing too much. I needed to look at my calendar and just start deleting things so I would slow down. Say no once in a while. These were Heavenly Father's whispers to me.

Back to the hectic work week. Don't ask how late I'd been up doing laundry, cleaning, and all the other fun responsibilities we all have to do. Monday and Tuesday were crazy as usual. The KSL Radio Sales team had a service project planned at the Happy Factory in Sandy building wooden toy cars for needy kids. It sounded really fun but I wasn't planning on going - I had reports and proposals due that afternoon as well as appointments in between and besides, I did my service project the week before at the food bank. And hey, I needed to delete things off my calendar and I was feeling like I should not go with all that I had going on. That morning I got the phone call asking if I was planning on going and would I go, and so being the obliging crazy woman I am, I rearranged things and went. I wondered why I was ignoring myself and when was I going to listen to Heavenly Father's whispers to "Slow down". I think it was Oprah I heard say, "God Whispers Before He Speaks."

At this service project, the Happy Factory employees set all of us up at different workstations (power tools) working on the wooden cars. I was put on a router saw, routing hard edges off of the cars. I was having fun and being incredibly careful and did this for 20 minutes or so. I was focused and envisioning the kids that would end up with the toys. I was pondering how much less stressful a job like that would be. (sh-yeah!). I was proud of the work I was doing and thinking I should add woodworking expert to my resume (lol). Then in a split .0005th of a second, the router caught a knot in the wood, sucked in the car and....to spare you the gory details, let's just say the middle and index fingers on my right hand lost the battle. I mean, they're still there, but will never be the same I'm told. Without being too gross, from what I know so far it took a good chunk of the right side and underpart of each finger including some bone. Ok that is gory, sorry. (you're wincing and grabbing your fingers, aren't you!)

There's lots of details in between I'll spare you, but 2 hospitals and 55+ stitches in surgery later, I don't know the extent of the lasting damage and probably won't for a while. All I could deal with at the hospital was the pain - and believe it or not after the shock wore off I stayed relatively composed and never cried. But when the Doctors were discussing details with anyone I made them talk outside the room. I just didn't want to hear the extent of the damage. At the end of the long and horrible night after the hand plastic surgeon finished piecing my fingers back together as best he could, he said to me, "You're one tough girl. I know that pretty hands are important to girls, and I'm sorry you won't have that anymore."

SCREW THAT! I'm hoping to prove him wrong over time, I just don't know how yet. And right now, I still don't wanna know exactly what's wrong. I sure as heck can feel it, though.

Needless to say, I've slowed down. Actually, I've come to a complete STOP! I haven't left the house in 8 days except to go back to the hospital for the Dr. appointments. I have no idea yet how long my recovery will be. All I know is, God Whispers Before He Speaks. So I'm listening from now on. I'm just sayin!

PS. Just to clarify. I'm not trying to say God wanted my fingers hacked up to slow me down and teach me a lesson. I'm just saying things happen for a reason and you need to find the lessons in them. After the last 8 miserable days, that's the only logical one I can think of.