Kim's story

Boy, do I have a story for you! You are in luck today.

You are about to receive the best gift imaginable in just a few moments, but first, I would first like you to say this prayer before you read this story. Christian or otherwise. Just do it for little old me. Wait, I'm not old. I'm only 20 something...OK, fine 30 something.

Lord, I open my heart to you. I want to receive this message I am about to read, and let my stubbornness escape me in these moments. Let my lack of faith be squashed. Open my mind and crush my ego, my unwillingness, my disabilities. When my problems are small, and you are BIG. I will come to you in my times of need. Lord, you are my Savior.

Thanks if you did it. Screw you if you didn't. JK.

Grab a box of tissues. For real. Grab it. Now. Run.

To follow is the brave story of a wonderful woman I am blessed to know and have in my life. She is a lover of all things good, a fighter for what she believes in, and a fighter also....for own life.


My Story…..by Kim Hill

December 28, 2011 was both the most terrifying and in the end, the most incredible day of my life.

 I don’t really even know where to begin to tell the story because it is really more of a circle of events involving my dogs, my children, my church family, myself and GOD. So I guess I’ll just start with the terrifying part. Somewhere around 530 pm as I was getting ready to go to my eGroup meeting, my 2 rescue dogs, Judah and Meshach started to fight over a toy that I had given them. (Meshach was a 67 pound boxer that I had just taken in 1 week prior. Judah is a smaller boxer mix that has been living with me since September) The fight escalated to a level that frightened me, and I was afraid that Judah was going to get seriously hurt so I opened the glass patio door and attempted to break up the fight.

It was my intention to pull Meshach off of Judah and hopefully send him out the door, but they were so caught up in their fighting that when I pulled on Meshach’s harness, it snapped off in my hand and he turned on me like a wild animal, biting and growling and tearing at my arms. He lunged at me, grabbed my right arm and pulled so hard that we both fell out through the open door, down the step and out onto the patio. I was screaming for help and trying to keep him away from my face but he just kept coming at me over and over.

I remember crying out for help and looking out into the darkness thinking/praying “God this can’t be happening to me...Please help me...Nobody can hear me ...don’t let me die out here” and the next thing I remember I was standing inside the door slamming it shut and hearing it latch at the exact moment that Meshach lunged at the outside of the door. As I turned to run away from the door, I heard him slam up against the door over and over and I knew that if he got it open, I would not likely live through it, so I grabbed my phones, locked myself in the bathroom, put my feet up against the door to brace myself in case he did get in and called 911 from both my land line and my cell phone. (not a good idea by the way but I was freaking out!)

When they answered from my land line, I hung up my cell phone. The 911 operator was trying to calm me down but I was in such a panic that I could not get a hold of myself. I heard my cell phone ring and saw that it was my daughter, Jaimie, so I picked it up, crying and yelling for her to come help me, (meanwhile the 911 operator on my land line was ASSERTIVELY telling me to pay attention to him) and then my daughter and I were interrupted by another 911 operator saying that they had received a call from my cell and needed to know what was going on. It was a very chaotic few minutes of back and forth between the 2 911 operators, who were both doing what they needed to do in spite of the fact that they had a completely terrified crazy person on the other end of the line. (Jaimie would later tell me that she had an overwhelming feeling that she needed to call me when she did. I am certain God was behind that.)

A few minutes later I heard my door bell ring and I assumed that it was the Medics, but it was Nate, my neighbor who lives behind me through the woods about ¼ mile away. It turns out that he had been outside in his yard and DID hear me screaming. He said that he wasn’t sure exactly where it was coming from but he knew that it was a desperate cry for help, and he had a feeling that it could be me because he knew I had taken in a new rescue dog. He took one look at my wounds, took the phone out of my hands, told 911 who he was and what was happening and followed their instructions on how to take care of me until the rescue team arrived to take over. The Mint Hill Rescue team arrived minutes later and carried me out to the ambulance on a stretcher. I could not believe what I saw when I was being loaded onto the ambulance, there were police cars, animal control vans, fire trucks and ambulance all lined up along the road as well as everyone of my neighbors. One of the firemen told me that the police were surrounding my house with shot guns and I remember crying out to one of my neighbors to be sure they knew it was NOT Judah who attacked me and to please not let anything happen to him.

We were on our way to CMC ER.

When the ambulance pulled up at the emergency room entrance, my daughter, Jaimie, was already waiting there and I remember thinking how blessed I am to have her in my life. Once they pulled me out of the ambulance, she never left my side for the next 10 days. She walked alongside the stretcher into the trauma room, called all of my friends and family to let them know what was happening, and literally became the mom for the next 10 days. She even videotaped the whole procedure in the emergency room, while at the same time holding my hand or rubbing my back during some of the more painful moments.  I have yet to see that footage, but several other people have and based on the looks on their faces when they watch it, I am pretty sure I never want to.

Very shortly after I arrived at the hospital, people from my small group and other family members started showing up. Initially my nurse said that only 2 people were allowed in my room, but at one point there were 10 people in my room, not including the doctors and nurses, all claiming to be my “Family” and the nurse just shook her head and gave up trying to get them to leave.

My friends from Elevation have become my extended family over the past 2 years and the love that we all have for each other is amazing. I honestly do not know how people get through some of the things that life throws our way without friends like I have found at our church. One of those friends, Jon Spencer is actually a flight paramedic for CMC. He had just dropped off 2 patients when his wife Kim sent him a text telling him what happened, so he turned around, came back inside the building to find me and also stayed by my side assisting the Doctors in my treatment. At one point, when he felt like too much time had passed without any treatment being started, he turned to me and said “you are my sister in Christ.. I’m going to find someone to get in here to work on you….if anyone asks you, it’s not a lie.. You ARE my sister” and it may be just my imagination, but it seems like everything moved pretty quickly after that.

For the next 10 days, the love and support from my family and friends, most of them ELEVATORS, was beyond words. There was not one minute of the day that I was not either on the phone with or physically surrounded by people who love me. Everyone took turns coming over with food, or to play a round of dominoes, or just to talk about what happened and to pray with and for me. My daughter was so profoundly affected by the support and love that she has decided to take her next step and get involved in a small group.
I remember telling every one over and over again that I was so grateful to be alive and that I believed the whole incident was a blessing.

Like Pastor Steven, I listen almost daily to sermons via podcast from all of the pastors that he has brought into our church, and somewhere in those messages, I remember hearing that everything can contain a blessing if we are willing to believe. And that sometimes the blessing can’t be seen or felt….sometimes the blessing is found in what DIDN’T happen….perhaps even to someone else. I have 4 small grandchildren who are my heart.. I cannot imagine what COULD have been if Meshach had turned on one of them, or on some other child. I believe that what happened was a blessing. I am alive, and ultimately, as God has shown me, I am alive because of the Grace of God. Which is really the best part of this story!

Every time I would talk to someone new about what happened, they always had the same question. “How did you get away?” and I would just shake my head and say “God”. My dad asked “who was there with you,” and I said “Jesus” and while somewhere in my heart I really did believe that, it still made me crazy to not be able to remember how I got back inside the house, and I have spent hours replaying it over and over in my mind trying to get those few seconds back.

I can vividly remember every detail of what happened before and after, but that part is completely erased from my mind. Some people have suggested that I got a burst of adrenaline from being in a flight or fright situation, but I am here to tell you that did NOT happen.

I was there, and I thought I was going to die.

There is no way I could have gotten him off of me, picked myself up off the ground, moved into the house 6 feet away, AND shut the door in the condition that I was in. I knew there had to be Divine Intervention, but in my humanness, I wanted to SEE it so that I could believe it.

God had other plans.

About 4 days after the accident, at about 4am, I was up talking to God, asking/begging Him again to show me how it happened, when He answered me with the words from my favorite poem FOOTPRINTS. I am not sure if I had my eyes open or closed, but somehow I “saw” the last sentence of the poem:

The times when you only see one set of footprints is when I carried you.

I sat straight up in my bed and said out loud “ IT WAS YOU?!," and as I always do whenever I feel like God has spoken to me, I grabbed my Bible and quickly asked Him to point me to something as evidence that it was Him and not my crazy mind playing tricks on me. I opened to and landed on these words in Matthew 4: “He will order his angels to protect you, And they will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone."

 Freak me out! I quickly sent a text to Linda, one of my e-Group leaders, telling her that I thought God was trying to tell me that He saved me and I needed to talk. It was only about 430 in the morning, but she’s awesome, so she called me and I cried and she listened and then she said “of course He saved you, He loves you. Why don’t you think that’s possible?” But it just seemed too unreal for me.

I could not wrap my mind around it, even though if it were someone else, I would be telling them the exact same thing Linda said to me. So God kept on shining His light on the subject. For days I would be bombarded with what my friend Betsy calls “sacred echoes”. She said that when God wants to tell you something He will put it in your face over and over and over in whatever form He needs to until He gets your attention. And HE DID. It seemed like everywhere I turned I was hearing something that said GOD SAVED ME.

One morning, Mark, my other e-Group leader, sent me a video about the Trinity and it was so amazing that I had to call him to talk about it. I told him about all the things that had been happening and he said “the fact that you can’t remember those few seconds is all the proof I need that it was God.. you know we are not allowed to see God’s face. He wants you to believe by Faith. Why wouldn’t He save you?” and still, I found it hard to accept that it had happened to ME..

So, God kept on with the sacred echoes in various ways over and over again until Saturday morning, January 7th again. As I was laying in my bed talking to God when I felt like He told me to go back to the Matthew 4 reading and look at the scripture reference in my study Bible... so I did... and it led me to Psalm 91 and finally,

I got it...

If you will make the Lord your refuge, IF you make the Most High your shelter,
No evil will conquer you, No plague will enter your home
For He will order His angels to protect you wherever you go
They will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.
You will trample upon lions and cobras, you will crush fierce lions and serpents under your feet!
The Lord says “I will rescue those who love me.
I will protect those who trust in my name,
When they call on me I will answer,
I will be with them in trouble.
I will rescue and honor them.
I will reward them with long life and give them my salvation.

I do love Him. I do Trust Him. I did call on Him (loudly and frantically!)
He did Rescue me. He did protect me. He did answer. He was with me!

I am not going to comment on this story in this post because I want you to reflect on it. I will tomorrow. Please leave a comment with your thoughts.

2550 Valencia Terrace, Boy you've changed a lot over the years

I have to admit, I have been completely smitten with the idea of driving to Jacksonville, NC and finding this woman who gave birth to me. It wouldn't be hard to locate her with my handy dandy little GPS Psycho Tracker app that I downloaded. I'm joking about the app, but I am fully confident that I could find her purdy easily. But the question is, do I really want to be that girl who just shows up unannounced?

Sure. I just did that exact same thing yesterday when I showed up at 2550 Valencia Terrace. The new occupants/owners just so happened to be unloading their minivan with their beautiful 1 and 3 year olds, who undoubtedly adorn initial engraved jumpers for Easter to the country club.

The house that we just crept up on like I was reenacting a drive-by shooting, the one where I shamelessly waved my pointer finger in the air, while hanging my neck slightly under the passenger side window so I could see what I was pointing at was the house that I grew up in. The two little girls, cousins in fact,  giggling uncontrollably in the backseat probably gave it away that we were not there to shoot up the place, but nevertheless, when I saw the man lugging the carseat up the side steps,  and he locked eyes with me over a hundred feet away, I immediately let the cat out of the bag. "I grew up in this house," I shouted out of the rolled-down window to the stranger who was looking at me with such puzzlement. Why is this strange lady pointing at my house, and stopped in front of my driveway, I'm sure he was wondering.

Part of me hoped that he would invite us in.

I had done it before with Wanda, a previous owner of my home that I live in today. She showed up on my front porch one Saturday, introduced herself,  and had a story that her brother had accidentally sent her a Christmas card to her old address (mine), and it had cash in it. Who sends cash money these days? It's odd if you think about all the ways that you can transfer money today, but there is just something exciting about opening a card and finding a crisp bill laid nicely across the inseam of a card. She was telling the truth because I had just received the card in mention the day before. It was sitting on my kitchen counter ready to be returned to sender. Lucky for her, I was there, and lucky for me I was saved the trip to the post office. I don't trust the mailbox. My mom scared me into that idea quite early on. It still stuck.

When Wanda came in, waltzing through the downstairs in shock and amazement, as if she was immediately flooded with fond memories, I was happy I could play a small part in her stroll down memory lane.  She obviously had wonderful times there, and was feeling very nostalgic, and might have even shed a few tears, in which case, I most assuredly shared a few in return. If you cry, you better believe I'm gonna cry with you. After the nickel tour of our modest house and a cup of coffee later, she informed me while siting next to me on the couch, that she had lost her first husband, and father of her children there. He died in the house of a heart attack in his thirties- a freak accident. I knew what that was like. Never having lost a husband myself, I still know what it's like to lose someone special at a young age to a heart attack, and in your own house. It wasn't easy. It's still isn't.

My wish came true, because Parker, I believe that was his name, waved for us to come in after he put the baby carrier down as he unlocked the side door- the side door that we always went in, the side door where your best friends enter and exit, and rarely knocked if you were coming to the Fairley household, the side door that I had mastered opening with only a slight creaking at 2am when I was coming or going.

 I pulled in the driveway, which even felt slightly unfamiliar after the 15 years it's been since I pulled in on a regular basis. It felt so long- the driveway. I felt so small, my enormous Buick barreling through. It was odd- like I was entering uncharted territory. This wasn't mine anymore. I had to pull in slowly now, avoiding the grass.

We got out, Sarah, MacKenzie and I. MacKenzie is Sarah's best pal ever, and cousin who is a year older, and with insightful curiosity, like Sarah, she seemed genuinely interested in seeing the place where I grew up.  Kids care so much more than adults about matters of the heart I'm learning. They blindly invest, whereas we want to know what we are always getting out of any relationship before we shake hands on much of anything.

The young good looking couple both introduced themselves, probably shocked that someone would even have the audacity to intrude on their home just to see what it would look like these days. Although, we all knew when we were introducing ourselves that they were giving me something that no one else could provide, and I was sharing some history with them- with total strangers. They could ask me questions about the house, which they did, and I could give them stories about missing awnings, and one raging party that took place there that will go down in the history books of high school parties. People still to this day bring that up. As shameful as it was, it was fun. Something reminiscent of the movie Weird Science. Abbey, the wife, had even heard about it. She is cousins with a childhood friend of mine, and neighbor, whose family still lives in the neighborhood to this day. Small world or small town? I'm not sure. Either way, it was nice to be welcomed into their home. They didn't have to invite us in. Most people wouldn't probably. But they didn't hesitate, and it was nearing bedtime for the kids- the first day of daylight savings. Spring was in the air.

It didn't feel like 1998 anymore. Nope still 2013.

As we walked up those side brick steps that I had walked up and down thousands of times in my childhood, I didn't feel anything. I didn't take in any sadness or joy. There was no, OMG, I haven't been here in forever feeling. And the feelings continued, or should I say didn't continue as Abbey showed me around the house, which looked absolutely NOTHING like the house I grew up in. It was really nice. It was shiny and new, completely gutted. It was born again. It was beautiful.

Not my 2550 Valencia. Not the house that I celebrated my 16th birthday in, surprised my parents for their anniversaries in with cheesecake and candles and ugly sweaters I bought for mom with the money I earned from working at Kenny Roger's Roasters on the corner or Gloria Jeans Coffee Shop in SouthPark mall. I couldn't see the desk in the kitchen that held the rotary phone with the extremely long cord that Wilson chewed on incessantly while he was on it. I couldn't see the Christmas tree in the living room- that God-awful tree that had more gaps in it than Jodi Arias's alibi. There was no ugly flowered couch that could sleep a small army, no small round blue and red plastic table that we drew our love notes to Mom on, no front door that swung open at the slightest breeze allowing Hershey to tear out of whenever he felt like it. I didn't see any of those memories in that new house. They might have as well changed the damn address number, because that house, though beautiful in its entirety, though marvelous and granite laden with gorgeous Brazilian hardwoods dancing across your feet, that house was not my house- anymore.

I didn't get that lump in my throat that I fully expected to have. There was no, OHHHH and look at that- that's where that happened. There was just, Wow, this doesn't even look like the same house. The only thing that remained original to my 2550 Valencia Terrace was the ugly chandelier with the crystal droplets that I never liked to begin with. Isn't that funny? The new owner said she loved it, and wasn't going to change it, but she had doctored it up with her own flair. She had put mini lamp shades on the bulbs- something my mom had never done on any of her chandeliers. Incidentally, both of mine wear them.

We walked out to the back porch. The bushes my dad had planted were all gone. All of them. The trees in the front that he planted were all gone too. He had planted probably 25 pine trees in the front yard. At the time, I hated them because that meant I had to mow around 25 trees. After we were gone, I loved those trees. They represented something that a tree most always represents-the test of time. They represented my Dad, his existence, our existence together, our rich history, and hard work. He might not be remembered for being a hard worker, but the one thing in this world that my dad loved doing was planting things. He enjoyed planting to propagating to actually digging up wild plants in the woods, which I found odd, until I caught myself doing it.  I'm not sure if planting seeds or trees, whatever it was that he put into the ground, was what he enjoyed most, or if it was seeing the change and growth in something you put forth effort into- watching things evolve.

After my brother died a very sudden death of a heart attack at 20, my Dad mentioned a few times that what he felt he missed most about Wilson was the opportunity to see him evolve into the man that he was becoming. This is what he liked about planting. Seeds don't always have to be physical. So I don't know why I got so hung up on the fact that 2550 Valencia Terrace was not what I remembered it to be. The seeds that were planted are left to grow in my mind. The memories that I have are left to be written about in stories like this one, and there is no amount of Spackle or Sherwin Williams Oceanic Blue paint that can smear them. I am left with treasure chests full of them, as I am of my family who I spent my life getting to know, and still getting to know, even in death.

I didn't intend on this story having this ending, but I guess things don't always end the way we intend for them to. All together, I felt I had closure when I pulled out of the driveway. That was something that I needed evidently. We all need closure no matter how hard we try to just move on. It's part of living and I guess it's part of dying.

I'm glad I stopped by and was received with such grace. As I was driving home this afternoon, and I was telling a close friend this same story, I realized in that moment that it's not about reliving my childhood anymore. It's time to live Sarah's. That was my time, and now it's hers. I have all the power to make hers just as memorable as mine, and that's my plan.

I took a number of lessons from this experience, with one that particularly struck a chord. People might not always receive you the way you think they will, and it's easy to change your mind. I'm not sure how much impact all of this will have on my quest, but there are no circumstances in life that ignore perspective.