After Lost & Found: Annesley's Story

Truly, there are few things that could rattle us as parents more than running over our own child. The day that I ran over Annesley in our 12-passenger van in our driveway is one of the worst of my life, if not the worst. Really, how does that happen?

When I was writing Lost & Found, this is the chapter that nearly did me in. I cried, I prayed, I groped for the words to clearly illustrate the raging emotions tormenting my heart, I wrestled with God. I don't ever want to have to write that story again.

I lived with such terrible guilt and fear after that incident. God did a formidable work in my life, but what has the outcome been for Annesley?

Annesley is 13 years old now. She sings and performs in a choir and on the youth group worship team. She loves children and told me today that she wants to be a nanny. She is cheerful, creative, and a good friend. She also starts high school in the fall.

When I tell our story to an audience, hers is the narrative that elicits an audible gasp, and I think that's simply because every parent fears that we cannot protect our children from accidents like this one, but I assume it's also because most people jump to the worst possible outcome in their heads. Annesley didn't die. In fact, of the three harrowing stories told in Lost & Found, hers is the one that doesn't have permanent ramifications. 

Tiny girl in a tiny wheelchair. January, 2009

Except in her heart. She tells her story, too. She tells it with gratitude and awe that God saved her, and dare she believe that He saved her for a purpose? Yes, because we all can believe that of our own stories. Our lives here? They aren't useless, even if no one ever writes a book about us. Our stories are written by the God who loves us so very deeply, nothing we can write into our own personal histories is ever beyond the improbable scope of His grace and mercy.

Sisters, December 2016

---

After Lost & Found: Mighty Joe's Story

Let's start with Mighty Joe, the baby I found in a coma at the beginning of Lost and Found: Losing Religion, Finding Grace.

Joe will be 9 years old in May. 

Life with Joe is not easy. There is no "off" button. He's perpetually impulsive, impossibly loud, consistently unpredictable, and prone to the regular meltdown. He sits on a ball at the dinner table, smells everything new to him, and packs his blankie in his backpack to school.

If you recall, Joe has six actual holes in his brain, but the two that seem to affect him the most at the moment are the bilateral holes in his frontal lobes. They affect his executive function ability (how the brain organizes all incoming information), seizure activity, and impulsivity. Joe could sit on his hands all day long but those holes in his frontal lobes are going to make those little hands dart out and grab something he shouldn't at any moment. It's hard to be Joe.

But Joe is a marvelous miracle. Someone once told us he isn't, that Biblical miracles aren't that. Whatever. Pick a different word. Joe is a continual tear-inducing wonderment. Will that work? Because Joe has no brain matter in his occipital lobe, and yet he sees. He can't process what he sees at 100%, but he sees. And he rides a bike, jumps off the diving board, and plays baseball on a team for kids like him. He also reads. 

His future is punctuated by a giant question mark. He likely won't live independently. He needs us to be his missing executive function. He lately has so many odd questions about God and Jesus and I can't make him understand even the basic gospel, but that's quite alright. God made Joe, God loves Joe, and God will never leave nor forsake Joe. 

Joe in the PICU, day 2. 

---

After Lost & Found

It has been a month since Lost & Found: Losing Religion, Finding Grace was released, and I am so thankful for the response. It seems to be resonating with so many of you. How do we get ourselves so tangled up in ourselves?

One of the things I'm hearing from readers is, "I want to know more! What happened after Lost & Found?" I wrote the book to be a quickish read, so that we could sit with the basic truths of the gospel and our identity in Christ, and how both change everything. But I suppose that left room for a sequel.

There won't be a sequel, at least not yet. There will, however, be a series right here on the site that will tell the rest of the story and what has transpired since we found Mighty Joe in a coma, I ran over Annesley, and Caroline's very sick appendix ruptured. Some stories can't be told yet because they are the domain of our now-older children, but I think I can give you a glimpse into what God has done, what He is doing, and how He has restored and redeemed and reworked and rewritten.

Would you tell your friends? If you know someone who has found a path to freedom through the story of Lost & Found, would you lead them here, too? They can sign up to hear the rest of the story, which I'll be telling in a series over the next month or so.

---