Praise God I'm a Calvinist!

In all honesty, I attempted to put together some thoughts for a Monday post, but alas, the FL sun has fried my brain and all that I could think of was sleep, pool, and more sleep. I did want to take some time to share something very personal in nature. Last Tuesday, the 25th, my sister was in a very serious car accident. She had just given birth to my nephew, Alton Joel Spears. She was heading back to the hospital for a checkup: her mother-in-law drove both her and Alton. On the way there, a woman blew a red light and slammed into the passenger side her truck. My sister received the worst of injuries: later I was told that she had suffered from "acute subdural hematoma," that is, a hemorrhage in the head that produces pressure on the brain. A better definition is, "Subdural hematomas are divided into acute, subacute, and chronic, depending on their speed of onset. Acute subdural hematomas that are due to trauma are the most lethal of all head injuries and have a high mortality rate if they are not rapidly treated with surgical decompression." When my brother-in-law told me this, I realized that I had heard this term many times: on CSI. I quickly put the connection together: most people die from this (as you can tell, I'm quite brilliant!). Right off the bat, my sister was given a 50-50 change of survival. Seeing as how she had just given birth, her chances were reduced: to 20-80. With a 20% chance of survival, my sister when into a very delicate type of brain surgery. My nephew had been taken to a different hospital that was better equipped for infants. Alton had also sustained head trauma, but his diagnosis was different. Alton had severe bruising of the brain, but praise God that there was no bleeding. Long story short, God spared my sister and nephew's life. My brother-in-law, Joel, told me that the doctor's have called Delilah a "miracle," and that they were going to record her surgery and recovery in the medical journal's. My nephew has been healing well. He has been eating and sleeping well and it looks as though there will be no negative long term effects from the accident. Both he and Delilah are at home now: Delilah is suffering from a few side effects from the accident. First, her left arm from the elbow to the hand feels as though it is asleep and she has difficulty with the fingers on that hand. Second, her speech is a bit slurred because her tongue is not functioning properly. She is also have some difficulty remember simple things, like how to open the gate on her fence: these little things are the most frustrating to her because they are things she feels like she should know and should be able to do. I would covet the prayers of my few readers as I'm sure my sister and the rest of our family would. A few good friends encouraged me on the night of her surgery, and I told them that these are the days that I am so grateful to be a Calvinist. I did say it to try and lighten the mood, but in all seriousness I am grateful that God is sovereignly controlling all events and that none of them are outside of his control and knowledge. Here are a few pics of baby Alton and one of my sister from just a few days ago. I stole them from her blog, but you can visit hers to see more and to follow her recovery (a link to her blog is in my sidebar).