Big Bertha and Other Blessings

(2014)

It all started several months ago with a dream about being in a small boat with Michael and Lauri and seeking shelter in a cove after a huge storm made the seas to wild.  After the storm died down I knew it was time to leave the cove but there was a huge wall of water blocking us from leaving the cove and getting back to the ocean. As I moved the boat towards the wall of water I didn't know how we were going to make it past the wall I just new we needed to so I pressed forward.  Then I woke up.

This may be just a crazy dream but to me it definitely had meaning and there are probably multiple analogies you could pull from this dream.  At the time the dream represented how we kind of hunkered down after Mikes accident and lived a simplified life in the hospital and that now that things weren't so crazy it was time to get back to a more normal life.  The problem in both the dream and in real life is that there is a giant obstacle in the way of this transition and just like in the dream I don't know how to get past this obstacle but I have decided to move forward.

The first thing this dream lead me to do was to buy a house.  I don't think many people know that it was a crazy dream about a boat that got me thinking about buying a house. I realized that living on a third floor condo was not going to be very conducive to having a fiance in a wheelchair.  Although at the time it wasn't very plausible from him to visit me anyways because we had no way to transport him, if things were going to change we would need a place to be.  So after much prayer and thought and promptings and a few tears I found a perfect home in Lehi.  It is all one story with not a lot of stairs leading up to it, it is halfway between my work and where Mike stays, it's close to my brother and his family, and it has great walking paths all around it.  Mike's aunt Julie and uncle Grant's family even made us a moveable wheelchair ramp for Mike for Christmas.  Mike was able to come check it out before we closed on it and he loved it.

So now I had a house, which was great, but Mike couldn't get to it without extreme difficulty and getting lots of people involved.  If fact after his first visit we hadn't been able to get him back to the house.  This needed to change but how..... I contemplated our dilemma many times over and over no solution seemed plausible or even remotely doable but I soon settled on a solution well actually I felt very inspired about the solution.  We needed to buy Mike a wheelchair van.  There were many problems with this solution, I will list them out for you.

1. Mike is so large he doesn't fit in a conventional wheelchair van.
2. We could not afford a wheelchair van they are very expensive.
3.  Where on earth do you find a giant wheelchair van/bus that could hold Mike?
4.  Could I drive it (well I know I could drive it, would I want to drive it was the problem)?
5.  Was it even possible to load Mike in a van without a lot of help?
6.  Would Medicare even let Mike have a van?

Of all these problems the greatest problem was the money for a wheelchair van .  I didn't know how this was going to be possible but I decided not to let that stop me.  If the Lord wanted Mike to have transportation he would have transportation.  I started looking, I paid attention to vans to see what would or would not work for Mike, I told everyone that I was looking for a van and to keep their eyes open for one, I started searching KSL for used wheelchair vans, I got input from other van owners, and I strategized about how we could come up with enough money to buy one.  This process didn't yield a van but it did help me know more of what I was looking for.  We needed a van that had rear entry wheelchair lift instead of the standard side entry, It needed the roof to be heightened, and it needed to be full sized van not a minivan.

Then all at once everything changed Mike got some unexpected money from the insurance company that Lauri had been fighting to get for 4 years and was told she would never get it.  We had completely given up on the money and were not expecting to see a dime of it.  Then one day Lauri was informed the they were giving Mike $10,000 of that money, not a lot but better than nothing.  Soon after this I found a van on KSL that had a rear entry wheelchair lift, heightened roof, and was a full sized van for only $9,000.  I took a test drive and also tested transporting Mike in it and it all worked better than expected.  We had just enough money to buy the van, pay for taxes, and pay the licence/registration coisodence? It all happened so fast we didn't even realize what a miracle/blessing it was until later.

So here she is, we call her Big Bertha

Now Michael comes to my house almost every weekend and we can go out and visit people or have adventures.  What a blessing in our lives and we are thankful everyday for these wonderful gifts. We haven't made it past the huge wall of water to get back to the ocean of life yet but this has been a giant step forward. We are still moving toward through the wall not knowing for sure how to get past it but knowing that the Lord is mindful and is helping us get there one step at a time. We don't have to know how it's going to happen we just need to know that it will happen.


Some of our Big Bertha outings

Mike and Lisa, A Love Story

February is the month of love for Michael and I.  Not just because of Valentines Day but we got engaged February 7th 2010, and February is the month that we were able to bask in the ignorant bliss of love and engagement before our lives were torn apart. I wish February had more days than 28 so we could have lived in our ignorance a little longer.  To commemorate this month of love I thought I would share our love story.

We met online, after seeing that I liked the movie "Vanilla Ice Cool as Ice" on my profile Mike sent me a message about how he just went to a Vanilla Ice concert.  We wrote a few messages back and forth, it wasn't love a first write but he seemed like a good guy so I was interested in getting to know him.  After basically forcing him to ask me out and waiting a couple of weeks (it wasn't love at first write for him either), we finally went on our first date. After our first date I realized I had no interest in Mike, he wasn't really my type and I didn't feel any sparks.  Near the end of the date I was ready for it to be over but I had an experience that showed me I should at least give him a chance so I did.  Our second date went much better and by the end of it I realized I did like this goofy, nerdy, manly man. 

It took us two months of almost constant dating to realize we should become boyfriend and girlfriend.  It only took us four more months to realize we should become engaged.  When we first started dating we both agreed that couples should date for a year before deciding if they should make things more serious. But what you think should happen and what should really happen aren't always the same thing.....

At five months we both realized that we did love each other and that our relationship was definitely headed towards marriage but we both weren't ready for the next step. We were comfortable in our dating and wanted to really get to know each other before moving to the next step.  Then the antsiness set in, things just weren't going right something seemed really off (not in our relationship but with things around us).  After a particularly frustrating event of Mike not being able to fix his car yet again because of mysterious circumstances, I told him that something was off and that he needed to figure out what he needed to do to fix it.  I realized this wasn't just a Mike problem so I told him I would pray too and hopefully we could figure out what was going on.  To my surprise during my prayer I had the distinct impression that I "should not doddle in getting engaged" I found myself saying I wasn't ready to be engage and I was told "then get ready".  How a prayer about a frustrating car problem turned into me not waiting to get engage I'm not sure.  Maybe the Lord had to use a back door problem so he could sneak up on me without scaring me away.  I was scared because I wasn't ready to make the next step but I knew what the Lord had told me and I knew I had to go on faith.

I feel that popping the question is definitely the boys responsibility (call me old fashioned) so I didn't know how I was supposed to tell the boy I was dating that we should not doddle in getting engaged.  I was busy that weekend and would only see him for a short time so I decided I didn't need to figure that out just yet, I would wait until we would have more time together to figure out how to bring this up.  Just as I arrived for my short visit with Mike I realized my rationalization to wait to tell him was not valid and that I needed to talk to him about my feelings as I prayed.  If you can't talk about personal things with the man you are thinking of marrying someday you probably shouldn't marry him.  I got up my courage and told him my experience he looked at me funny and said "I know I have felt that for awhile I was just waiting for you."  I realized that I had let fear close me off from what the Lord was trying to tell me and that lucky for me he didn't give up on me, just like Mike he patiently waited for me to finally hear.

Following my promptings did not take my fears away or make me instantly ready to get engaged but I knew that it was important not to wait any longer so we moved forward with our plans.  Mike didn't have money for a ring yet so he decided to make me one in the mean time.  With ring in hand we made a very quick trip to Idaho so that Mike could ask my dad for his blessing.  Mikes plan was for us to go to Idaho to talk to my dad then the next day he was going to take me snowshoeing and pop the question.  Mike informed me of his whole plan, he was so excited he couldn't keep it to himself.  I made fun of him for telling me how and when we were going to get engaged but that is just how Mike rolls.  After talking to my dad, we headed back to Utah. On our way out of town Mike asked if we could stop at the Rexburg Temple so that he could get some of his nervous energy out before heading home.  The request didn't seem that strange because we had stopped off at the temple last time we were headed out of town.  Once there despite my protests we got out of the car on a frigid Idaho evening and walked around the temple.  I did have a thought that maybe Mike had changed his mind and was going to ask me right then and there to marry him.  I dismissed this because Mike did not vary from his plans once he made them so to my surprise he did vary from his original plan and stopped, got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him.  I said yes and he slipped the home made ring on my finger and just like that we were engaged.  Luckily my family talked us into coming back to the house so they could see the ring so we were able to get pictures of that night.

One month later Mike was in his accident and everything changed for us.  I can never describe or explain what it was like to have this happen, it is not an easy thing.  There are so many scenarios and questions running through your head, you are thrust into making decisions that are way above your pay grade. Luckily I was not alone Mikes family and I joined in a team effort of care and decision making and with the help of the Lord we were able to decide what needed to happen and what we should be doing.  I am so thankful that Mike and I listened to the Lord and got engaged before this happened. If we were not engaged I would have been an outsider through all of this and it would have definitely altered some of our decisions.

Mike and my love story did not end with the accident that is where it truly began.  We were in the beginning stages of love when we decided to get married, we were no more in love than your average engaged couple. We did not possess the kind of love it required to get us through all that we have been through but lucky for us, love grows if you let it.  At times the love I have for Mike floods over me like a mighty title wave at others it's more like a decision I make "I choose to love Mike". But through time our love has been forged into a beautiful seemingly unbreakable bond.  Our love has been fortified through the deepest despairs, through murky black trials, through endless patients, through hope, through faith, through laughter, through tears, through understanding, through disappointments, through triumphs, through acceptance, through service, through dance parties, through hard work, through opposition, through support, and through the Lord.

Some people feel that I am wasting my life on Mike that I need to move on and leave him behind.  All I can say is, how is walking beside the man you love more than anything through the darkest, hardest trial of his life wasting your life? What is life for but to love and be loved. And what is love if it is not sacrificing for the other person. I know for some the decisions I have made would not be right but for Michael and I we are on the path we need to be on.  I would love it if our path were a different one but it is not so we will make the most of it together.

To Mikes friends and family I want you to know that Mike is loved more deeply than you can imagine.  He does not walk alone through this trial.  He may have lost a lot of things but he has not lost me, his love.

To my friends and family I want you to know that I am loved more deeply than you can imagine.  I do not walk alone through this trial.  I may not have the perfect life but I have my love Michael.

I love Michael Benson!