God’s Blessing in our Marriage is Reason to Celebrate

Today we are celebrating God’s blessing in our marriage. April 22nd marks one year since the day Bruce returned home from 30 days in intensive care during the first Covid-19 surge in Michigan. God’s been busy, and so have we…

The Back Story

You might be wondering what’s so special about returning home from 30 days in intensive care during the Covid-19 surge? Just stick around, there’s more. We suddenly found ourselves where we never expected to be.

Bruce had been suffering with increasing headaches, and had gone through different medical tests but nothing seemed amiss. Then, finally, his PCP asked him to walk the “drunk walk.” You know, where you walk in a line heel to toe?

Bruce hit the wall twice trying. That was when the doc suggested a brain MRI.

Bruce left for his MRI as I fixed dinner. A short time later, Bruce called me. Could I come to pick him up? They had found a massive bleed above his brain, called a Chronic Subdural Hematoma. They told him he was “emergent” (which means his condition is an emergency), he couldn’t drive and needed to go to the ER immediately.

That call launched us on a roller coaster that included two brain surgeries, 30 days in intensive care, uncontrollable seizures, a ventilator, loss of his ability to talk, write, and move his right hand. Covid patients filled one ICU after the other necessitating the hospital to transfer Bruce four times. I only got to see him once in 30 days, on the day of his first surgery, because of the Covid lockdown.

We look so happy in the photo above because I had just picked him up from the hospital and we were on our way home. There was still a lot of recovery but we were finally together again after the longest separation in our 43 years of marriage. Here’s a short video on our sweet welcome home.

God’s blessing in our marriage

We can point to several miracles along the way. There was a large prayer team supporting us and we believe God answered their prayers. Bruce fully recovered after having Physical, Occupational and Speech therapies.

God also strengthened us spiritually. Our faith and resiliency has increased. We both felt at peace with trusting God during our ordeal. I was alone at home because of the pandemic, with only porch visits from friends and family for company. For me, my extended time alone felt in some ways like a personal retreat. I was truly abiding in Christ for most of my waking hours. It was a precious time of feeling His comforting presence and knowing He was God.

For everyone who knows your wonderful name keeps putting their trust in you. They can count on you for help no matter what. O Lord, you will never, no never, neglect those who come to you.

Psalm 9:10 TPT

We believe God allowed us to go through this struggle because He knew we would be able to weather it with His strength. In return, we want to honor Him for what He did, not just the physical healing but most important the spiritual strengthening. We wanted to celebrate God’s blessing in our marriage. When Bruce recovered somewhat, we took a trip to get away and process all that had happened. We took my copious notes (I am a writer, you know!), my journal, the emails to the prayer team, and the medical records. Much of what I had experienced was news to Bruce. Our experiences were so different. It was a healing time for us to process and talk through all God had done from each of our perspectives.

What We have been Up To

After our trip, we felt compelled to tell our story in some way. We wanted to celebrate this blessing in our marriage – that we both came through this life-altering event with our marriage, faith, and strength intact. However, so many people are going through terrifying health issues and overwhelmingly stressful situations today. The stress on marriages is at an all-time high. We wanted to share our story to encourage others that they can make it through anything with God’s help.

Our story had all the elements of a great novel – three disasters and a happy ending! After some research and a discussion with a literary agent, we settled on writing a romance novel.

Since we are volunteer marriage mentors, we decided to write our true medical story using a fictional couple whose marriage is on “life support.” Chris and Amy are struggling in their marriage already when Chris is suddenly rushed to the ER and their lives are changed forever. The tension and stress of what they go through is so great that it can completely destroy what’s left of their marriage, or they can be transformed and their marriage can have a second chance.

Love on Life Support is Chris and Amy’s story—based on our personal story as well as our experience in mentoring couples with “flatlined” marriages. There is hope, no matter how bleak the situation seems! With God, all things are possible. That’s the message we want to infuse into discouraged and hurting hearts.

We began working on the organization of the novel in July of 2020. When we finished, we hired a Christian editor, Lora Doncea. We finished applying her edits in late March. BTW, Lora was so wonderful to work with, she was patient with us newbies to the fiction writing process. We learned so much from her.

Yesterday we submitted a query to a literary agent seeking representation for our novel. We worked hard to complete this work in such a short time, and are really looking forward to the next steps in our saga. Here’s a sneak peak at our back cover.

What’s Next?

We’ll be starting up a newsletter soon for anyone wanting to follow along on our journey to publication. If you are interested in joining, comment below and we will add you to the list.