Looking Back

Most of you who visit my blog know the story of my life in the past year. This blog is for those of you who don't know me, or what my family has gone through.
Let's start in October 2008. A door-to-door salesman for disability insurance stopped at our house while Mom wasn't home. Because my mom wasn't there to convince my dad to wait for a better time, Dad bought disability insurance.
On March 4, 2009, Mom went in town to wash laundry, seeing as how our water made our clothes yellow, and we had a moody dryer. My grandpa and Uncle Tim were at our house with my dad fixing some of the Tree Service equipment. When they left, my dad noticed that the house was cold so he tried to start the wood stove. A quick note: wood stoves are even moodier than a teenager! If at all possible, avoid wood stoves!! Ok, back to the story. My cat, Jazmin, was meowing at the door. Well, Jazmin didn't meow, she yelled, if that's possible for a cat. On most days, you would hear this: MEOW!! "Shut up!!" (dad) MEOW!! "Cat, you're not going outside!" (dad), and so on.
So after that little conversation, Dad let Jazmin outside. Then, he went back to the task at hand, starting the grumpy wood stove. It wasn't starting, so dad decided to help it along. For safety issues, we won't discuss how. Needless to say, the fire jumped out of the wood stove, and started burning at the only passage to water in our house. Dad headed for the back door, grabbing the computer and ripping it from the wall, and knocking over a lamp. Dad said that as the lamp broke he thought, "Josanne's not going to be happy about that" and continued at the back door. He dropped the computer in the back yard and ran around the house to the front door. He grabbed his wallet and cell phone of the counter, then went to the back door again. He called 911 and went back into the house and into his bedroom, which was two rooms from the fire, and closed the door. He threw his guns, Bible, study material, and Mom's Bible through his open window. By this time, his bedroom was filling with black smoke and he was starting to not be able to breathe. The fireman kept telling him that he needed to get out of the house immediately, so Dad jumped out the window. I should mention that when look at our living room after he left his bedroom, flames were touching the 11-12 foot ceiling. So, needless to say, our house was on fire. Because Dad had left the back door open, the oxygen drew the fire away from the kitchen, and away from our garage, which contained two ATVs, a car, and multiple cans of gasoline. We lost everything in the house that day. Mom was in town with the dirty laundry, so we had some clothes, but other than that, we had nothing. Thankfully, we had insurance on the house. During that time, I realized how much people really do care. My sister and I stayed with my principal and her family for three weeks. As I mentioned above, Harry rented his house to us for about 3 1/2 to 4 months, even though he kind of needed it himself. God has blessed us so much.
Now, it's a month after our house burned down. My mom and I were in Cranberry shopping, my sister was in Indiana, and my dad and brother were at the house cleaning the basement. My mom got a call from my grandma as were heading home. She told us that they were taking my dad and brother to the hospital, because they had carbon monoxide poisoning. My brother had been laying on the couch because he had a headache and was sick to his stomach. Dad didn't really think anything of it until he started getting really tired. He knew something was wrong and he needed to get out of there. Dad told us that it was like angels were dragging him out of the basement. He literally had to make himself put his foot on the next step and drag himself up. We found out that Dad's level of poison, or whatever it's called, was at 27. At 28, they take special procedures to get oxygen in a body. Dakota's level was at 22 or 23. That was April 9.
On April 9, I had just gotten home from school and was changing or something. My mom was in the restroom. The phone rang, so I answered it. My uncle asked if he could talk to my mom. I told him that she wasn't able to come to the phone right now, but he told me I needed to get her, he really needed to talk to her. I told my mom that Uncle Tim was on the phone and that he needed to talk to her. She took the phone and didn't say much, except, is everyone ok? She hung up and I asked what happened. She told me that Dad had fallen out of a tree and was going to the hospital. We didn't tell my brother, but told my sister and she was going to do something with him to keep him occupied. When we got to the hospital we found out that dad had only fallen about 10 or 12 feet, but when he fell the first time, he landed flat-footed, and it made his arms go numb so he couldn't grab the tree. Then he feel the rest of the way, and his whole body was numb. For years, since dad was 12, he had problems with his neck and different areas of his body going numb. Dad was having severe pains through his stomach, so the head nurse at that time said he needed a neurosurgeon. We don't have a neurosurgeon in Titusville, so Dad was life-flighted to Hamot Hospital in Erie. I didn't go to the airport to see him leave because I had been at the hospital for hours and hours. Dakota and Elissa went however, and Mom told me that seeing Dad strapped down, Dakota asked if he was gonna die. Dad spent 10 days in Hamot and had back surgery there.
Some people look over our past year and think that it's just awful, but we see the true blessing behind it. We heated with wood at our old house, and my dad can't split wood anymore. When my dad and brother got poisoning, it let us know that there was a problem with the furnace. If we hadn't known that, our whole family could have died that night because the fumes were so bad. If my dad hadn't fallen out of the tree, we wouldn't have known that he was one step away from being paralyzed from the neck down. Dr. Dalton, who is the best Hamot has, told my dad that his neck looked like something from a horror movie. He also said that it's a miracle my dad wasn't already paralyzed. Yes, God has truly blessed us, and taken care of us. The reason I mentioned the disability is because for 6 months after Dad fell, we had a source of income.
So, that's my story. Call it coincidence if you will, but I KNOW God has a plan for our lives, and I KNOW that His hand of protection is on my dad, and the rest of our family.