Miracle Story #20
“It was on August 14th, 1991.
On a Wednesday morning.
I was supposed to be on a camping trip with some school teacher friends of mine. We were going to do one last little trip before they started school, but I was sick. I had bronchitis and a bad sinus infection, so I was at home.
And my 6-year old son, Brian, was there as well. My husband of that time had left for work and I was just kind of hoping for a few more minutes of sleep, but I could hear my son get up when he ran downstairs.
We were living in one of our rental condos at the time and it was two stories. His bedroom was across from ours.
He ran downstairs and pretty soon here came his little feet again, coming back upstairs.
And he said, “Mommy, Mommy! Whiskers had her babies!”
That was our cat. She wasn’t supposed to have her babies yet.
I had gotten this cat because I grew up on a farm, and when you have a child growing up in the city, there’s only so much you can do to give them that farm experience.
So the Christmas before, I had gotten him this cat thinking that would be his farm experience. Well the cat ended up becoming pregnant. (laughs)
All I could think of was, ‘I need to make this day special and exciting for him.’
So I got myself out of bed and I went downstairs and sure enough, she was giving birth to these kitties in the dining room. So we started to get a box and make a box for her.
And about that time, the front doorbell rang.
I looked out and there stood a man that had been helping my handy-girl.
We had about thirty-two rental properties at the time and since we were living in this townhouse, which was a complex of eight. I was busy getting them all fixed up while I lived there because it was much easier to oversee the work while living on the property.
I had a handy-girl that could do anything.
And she was kind of a ‘rough and tough’ individual who had been on her own since she was fourteen, but I really admired her work ethic and her knowledge. And she could do anything from wiring to drywall to whatever.
One of the jobs that I had asked them to do was to paint the front and back doors and then do some landscaping around there, because it was too heavy for me to do. I would give them money and they would purchase supplies, and then they would bring me the receipts showing how they spent the money.
I opened the first door, then on the other side of the screen door was the guy that she had been bringing with her to help with the heavy work.
His name was Larry.
Larry just had like a jean jacket on, and blue jeans, and he was kind of looking down. And he always seemed to either be kind of hard of hearing or slow in speech, something like that.
He said he had work receipts for me and he reached into his jacket to get the work receipts as I opened the screen door.
And what happened next happened so quickly that I don’t even know how it happened.
Instead of pulling out work receipts, he pulled out a knife.
And just that fast, he had turned me around and he had his left hand over my mouth and had the knife in his right hand, up to my neck.
I had stepped outside just over the threshold when I had answered the door.
It’s just amazing how much time you have to think when this type of thing is going on.
I kept thinking, ‘I have to keep him outside. I can’t let him get inside to where Brian is.’ But I struggled and struggled and I just couldn’t do it.
He got me back inside the front door.
I was struggling to get away and I would reach up and grab the knife to pull it away from my neck, but then he would draw the knife and it would go through my hands.
And then he would approach my neck again.
And as I looked ahead, there was little 6-year old Brian.
There was the entryway, living room, dining room, all in one area. And there was Brian standing back in the dining area, back where we had been making the box, with his little cubbie night shirt on.
And he was just watching all of this. I thought, ‘There is no one here to help me. I can’t fight him off. I can’t stop this.’
But then I thought, ‘God is always with me. Jesus is here.’
And so through tears and barely above a whisper, I said, “In the name of Jesus, no!” And at that same time a small voice inside me said, “Quit struggling.”
As I quit struggling and said that, he immediately let go of me like I was a hot potato.
And I fell limp to the floor, just like a rag doll.
When I fell, my head landed behind a recliner but close to the fireplace hearth. I’m a bit of a clean freak and I can remember thinking, ‘I hope I’m not getting the carpet dirty. If I could just land on the bricks of the hearth then the mess would be there.’ But as I struggled to lift my head to see where he was at, I saw him kind of get up from a crouching position with the knife still in his right hand. And he was headed for Brian.
I had fallen limp and I had no power. But in that instant, when I saw him going for Brian, I was just filled with power on the inside and it was just like I raised up.
I remember clamping my hand to my neck. And I knew I couldn’t fight him off. I knew if I went from behind that I might push him into Brian.
So I went out the front door screaming. The townhouses were four on one side, four on the other side, separated by a parking lot but facing each other.
And I can remember thinking, ‘I don’t want to run straight across, he’ll see me and he’ll come and overpower me again.’ I looked around and it appeared that the man who lived two doors down might be home. So I ran to his house and banged on the door.
No answer.
So I had no choice but to cut back to the condo across from ours, and I knocked on their door. And of course, all the time I was screaming.
Across the street was the back end of a Village Inn pancake house. The owner happened to be out in the back by the dumpsters, and he heard me screaming.
And I remember he yelled over to me and he said, “Did that man steal something from you?!” I was still running with my hand on my neck and I remember thinking, ‘Can’t you see I’ve been stabbed?!’ And I kind of took my hand away from my neck and he dropped the boxes he was putting in the dumpster and he came running across. And at that same time I knew the attacker was leaving our town house and running out the side.
The young man that lived at the door I knocked worked nights, and so he answered the door. He happened to be home. This was happening about 8:30 in the morning.
“Call an ambulance. I need help.”
And then I slumped down.
At that point I was not able to hold my eyes open or really talk that much because I had lost quite a lot of blood, and I was very weak. I remember I laid down on the front step there so that the blood would slow down.
And at that time I could hear Brian crying, so I knew he was alive.
He came running across the parking lot to where I was and he was evidently standing on the step and he said, “Mommy he cut me too.” So all I could think of was that I needed to get him laying down and calm so that he wouldn’t lose a lot of blood.
“Lay down by Mommy, buddy.”
The young man had brought a towel. The guy from Village Inn was holding my neck and standing over me. The ambulance was coming. But I could feel myself fading away.
It was very peaceful, very calm.
I never had any pain.
I didn’t actually feel the knife cut my neck.
The scar starts here and goes around here, and up. And it’s 4 inches deep. I didn’t feel any of that.
What I felt was from trying to grab the knife away. It cut my fingers and the side of this finger, you can still kind of see a little tiny scar. That hurt like a son of a gun.
Grand Island has a population of about 50,000 people.
The ambulance got there and I could tell that one of the ambulance attendants was a man that I had actually graduated from high school with. He was actually the first boy that I went steady with after my family and I moved to Grand Island.
So I always tell young gals, "Always leave your boyfriends on good terms. You never know when you might need them!" (laughs)
But it was a comfort to know somebody who was there.
And I knew he would take good care of us.
They got Brian and I in the ambulance and I could tell when they were assessing Brian’s wounds that he was going to be okay.
I don’t remember specifically what they were saying. I knew his neck had been cut, but I knew he was going to be okay. For me, all that hurt was that finger.
So they got us in the ambulance and I thought, ‘If they get us to the hospital I’ll be fine, because they have blood and stitches.’
It felt like I was on one side of the ambulance and Brian was on the other. One man was attending him and another guy was attending to me.
At that time of course they had cut my clothes off, and so I was naked. They put anti-shock pants on my legs due to blood loss.
And that was kind of embarrassing, knowing the guy.
He actually was sitting on what felt like Brian’s side of the ambulance and he threw a towel over me to cover me up.
And I was always grateful for that little act of kindness.
Even though I wasn’t responsive at that moment, not talking and not communicating at all with them, I could hear everything that was going on. People that have loved ones that die tragically and then worry about the pain and suffering, I always tell them that if it’s anything like my experience, it’s just so very peaceful. It’s just like exhaling. And I did feel like if I would have exhaled once really good, I would have been gone.
But I thought, ‘I don’t want to die with my 6 year old son by me. I don’t want that to happen.’ And I’m not so vain as to think that I am in control of my life in that respect.
I feel like that the moment we’re conceived that we are given…it says that, "...our days are numbered and they are written in the book." But that was not my day to end my earthly journey.
On the way to the hospital it seemed like they were driving extremely slow. At one point they were trying to find my pulse and they couldn't find it.
And I thought, ‘Don’t worry about that, just speed up and we’ll get there faster.’
So we did finally make it to the ER and they put me on a gurney. And again, my eyes were shut so I was just gathering all of this from the feel of the sun on me, and the wind blowing and that type of thing. A nurse ran out to meet us and right away when she started to talk, I knew it was our pastor’s wife. And she was all business-like but when she saw who it was she was like, “Oh Sue.” And I could tell she kind of crumpled. And about that fast, she just perked right up and she went into ER nurse mode and she was all business.
Then I felt like I was in a room that had curtains on the sides, and beds. And Brian was in the next bed.
I could hear the doctor come in and talk with him and tell him they were going to get him stitched up. Then I heard the doctor say, “What do you want to have for breakfast?”
And then I knew that Brian was okay.
And that was a huge relief for me.
The detectives came right away and they tried to question me.
And I remember saying over and over, from the time that I was laying on that step, “His name is Larry. He is a friend of my handy girl.” I kept saying that over and over because I wanted them to know who had done it. And I also kept saying, “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.” When I was laying on those steps I kept saying, “Jesus. Jesus.”
Because I could feel myself slipping away.
The owner of the Village Inn even finally said, “Yes, Jesus.” (laughs) In the meantime, our Associate Pastor came to the hospital and he took one look at me and he started to faint. And so he ended up in a bed next. (laughs) We always joke that it was Pastor Bill, me, and Brian all laying in the ER room.
My good friend Mike was an anesthetist, and he was the one on call that morning. And I remember him coming in and also seeing that it was me. And that’s about all I remember because they whisked me away to surgery.
From what others told me, they called every doctor in the hospital to come to the ER room because they weren’t quite sure what to do with me and my wound. They finally got a doctor that had been in Vietnam, and he had done a lot of dressing of the wounds on the battlefield. He was the one that actually packed my neck area before they life-flighted me to Lincoln. What I didn’t know that morning, and didn’t think about until sometime later, was that I was about to go on my first helicopter ride, naked.
And totally drugged out. (laughs)
That makes for quite a story.
I did start to come to on the helicopter.
I remember that I heard a sound that sounded like a duck quacking. And then finally it dawned on me that it was a bag and that they were breathing for me.
So then I thought, ‘Well that’s kind of unusual. I wonder if I can make that bag quack myself.’ And then I tried to get something on my body to move, so they would know that I was awake. I can remember I started at my toes and I just concentrated really hard to get them to move.
Of course they had given me a drug to paralyze me so I wouldn’t move, because I didn’t need to lose any more blood.
But I finally got my toe to wiggle a little bit.
And I got the bag to quack. One attendant said, “She’s trying to take some breaths on her own. And I think I saw a toe wiggle.” And about that time the helicopter landed in Lincoln and I had the sensation that they were taking me off the helicopter. But then they put me back under.
So I don’t remember anything for a little bit.
I found out later on that they told my family in Grand Island that I had lost a lot of blood and that it was imperative that I not bleed anymore on the flight to Lincoln.
And that if I did survive, that I would probably have a stroke and I would probably be a vegetable. I had lost about as much blood as you can lose and still live.
Right on the borderline there.
So my family and friends gathered and prayed that I would not bleed and that everything would go okay. And my precious dad, who just turned ninety-five and is still living, he was the first one to the hospital in Grand Island to give them permission to work on me.
So that’s just a special moment.
Always looking out for his little girl.
I later found out also, that when my family and friends got to Lincoln, the nurse called back to see how I was doing while I was in surgery.
She gave them the report.
She said, “She’s still in surgery and they’re finishing up, stitching up her hands.”
And then kind of as an afterthought she turned to them and she said, “Oh, and she didn’t bleed anymore on the flight down.” And they knew that that prayer had been answered.
The next thing I remember was coming to in an intensive care and not being able to be strong enough to open my eyes or move in the bed. But I could tell from the sounds going on all around that I was in intensive care with all the machines beeping and the nurses coming in and out. I do remember waking up.
At that time in my life I did book-keeping for small businesses. The attack had happened on the 14th of the month. And on the 15th of the month there were some payroll taxes due. And on the 25th of the month there were some sales taxes due, or vice versa.
But as I started to come to, my husband at the time was by my bed and I remember saying, “The payroll taxes are due. Tell Ralph that I sent those in already.”
I was just rattling off a ‘to-do’ list and one of the doctors, who kind of dressed like a cowboy and had a real gentle way about himself said, “Well, we don’t have to worry about that!” (laughs)
And I didn’t know it at the time, but they were quite concerned that I would be a vegetable.
So when I woke up giving orders, they knew I was probably going to be okay. (laughs)
And I always tell people too, that if a loved one is seemingly unconscious or has Alzheimer’s or is in a coma, talk to them.
Because chances are they can hear you fine.
They might not be able to respond and let you know they hear, but man my ears were huge.
I could hear everything.
So to make a long story longer, I was in intensive care for three days. I also didn’t sleep for three days, even though I probably looked like I was sleeping.
I was on wide alert.
I kept thinking, ‘What if that guy comes back to finish me off?’ Or what if he sends a friend to finish me off?’
So I just remember it being scary.
And I felt so helpless because I couldn’t move.
And I had discovered that I had lost the use of my right arm totally. It just hung lifeless like I had had a stroke.
The detective came back to question me after a couple of days, when I was a little bit stronger.
I felt almost like I was at my own funeral.
People paraded by my hospital bed and just wanted to make sure that I was alive and okay. And I remember it was very exhilarating on the one hand to know that so many people cared, but it was also very draining on the other hand.
Because I felt like I just had to fight to conserve every little bit of energy that I had within myself. So my dad finally took up a chair in the corner of my room and he said, “I’ll protect you. You go ahead and go to sleep.” And I remember I dropped off to sleep for only 15 minutes and it just felt like a long time.
And there was dad again, watching out for me.
I felt a little bit guilty that my neck didn’t hurt and that I didn’t feel any pain.
And I wondered what my son was feeling, because his scar…
What Larry did was…Brian was sitting on the couch and he came around and clamped his left hand over Brian’s forehead to hold him, and he basically cut his throat from the right hand side.
When you look at my scar, you can barely see it.
But Brian’s scar…they stitched it up on the outside and it’s very jagged.
You can see exactly where the knife went and it went right over his jugular vein.
That little boy was spared.
And I am so thankful.
It was a miracle having him in the first place. I went through infertility for seven years.
I had always wanted three children. And then really unexpectedly, I was pregnant.
And Brian was born.
At day four or five we were home, but he became severely jaundiced. When we took him in to the hospital the doctors told us that he was about twelve hours away from dying from the jaundice. So I felt like I got him the first time.
Then I got him after the jaundice.
And then the third time I got him after the attack.
So I got my three kiddos…just in one package.
He’s a wonderful young man.
He is 32, married.
And he has three precious little girls.
They live in the Dallas area.
I do have two step-children now.
And I’ve been remarried now for 10 years.
So back to the room….the detective came and he questioned me for six and a half hours.
There had been some concern that my husband at the time had something to do with it, and so the detective questioned me for quite a long time on the sequence of events and what exactly happened.
And that whole process was actually the beginning of a very slow awakening.
And one that I was often resistant to regarding the way things really were in my marriage. No, he didn’t have anything to do with it.
He never would’ve done anything to hurt Brian.
But that’s another story.
So after eight days I came home.
We decided to go back to the townhouse, even though it was kind of scary to go there. But that was the place we knew as home then.
We had moved quite a bit. Friends from church had gone in and cleaned it and put it back together.
And the sofa had been hauled away as evidence.
As we drove up, the parking lot and the townhouse itself, were filled with friends from the church.
And as I stepped inside for the first time and I looked over at the fireplace where I had fallen, there were some very dear friends standing there that I had worked with and gone to church with.
The kids were special to me and it was like a bad memory was replaced with a good memory.
With the arm, I was in physical therapy for 11 months. They think that when they packed the wound to get me to Lincoln, that it pressed on the nerve and caused it to not work.
And for the first five months I went to therapy six days a week and just very slowly started getting the use of my arm back. And then for the next five months I went three days a week.
I can tell it’s different than the other one, and a lot of time there is pain and pressure. There’s not a lot of feeling there, which is weird.
It seems like something you can’t feel shouldn’t hurt, but it does.
But I can do anything and you probably wouldn’t even know, would you? (correct)
When the doctors initially explained my injuries, they said that the nerve runs around from the top to the base of your neck on each side of your head, and joins at the top of your spine, and then goes down your spine.
The tip of the knife stopped right at the outside of that nerve.
Right there.
It was between the C4 and C5 vertebrae.
And I can’t remember if that kills you or paralyzes you, but if it would have severed the nerve, I would have been dead.
Right down to it. So, “Quit struggling”... Straight from the Lord.
On the aftermath regarding the attack:
It happened a block from the country club. And for a long time I didn’t know why.
And then one year from the date that it happened, he was sentenced.
We took a plea agreement to settle it because the prosecutor said that the defense would drag our name through the mud if there was a trial.
And we didn’t want to put Brian through anymore.
He did testify in one of the proceedings. I kind of get lost in the legal details. But we settled on a plea agreement so that we wouldn’t have to go to trial.
And as part of that he had to say why he did it. He said that he had used drugs all the day before and he thought that I had money.
So he came to rob.
He said he hadn’t intended to hurt us but that he kind of wigged out. He didn’t actually even steal anything.
He just ran away.
I didn’t have money.
That happened in 1991.
And I believe it was April or May of 1997, but he himself was murdered in prison.
He was sentenced to 16-32 years on each of two charges of attempted murder. He was to serve one sentence, and then the other sentence.
The prison system in Lincoln was quite crowded and they had two inmates to a cell. And as I understand it, he and this guy, who had killed a young mother in Oregon, were cell mates. They had requested to be cell mates.
And one morning they were all called for breakfast and the one guy came out, but Larry did not.
And after breakfast, he was found with his head bashed in.
On the journey through healing and finding a new normal:
Keep talking about it.
I remember when I came to, I just kept obsessing over the whole thing and what I could have done differently.
How could I have protected Brian better? Should I have told him to run into the garage? And then I’d think, ‘Well if he had gone into the garage he couldn’t have reached the opener and would have been trapped in there.’ My mind was just like a squirrel cage for just three solid days, as I didn’t sleep. And then finally it was like the Lord said, “You did everything perfectly.”
And then it was just little snippits along the way.
We got Brian into counseling with a counselor that specialized in children that were victims of traumatic crime, or traumatic acts.
I learned a wealth of information from her. And I can remember the day when she told me that at some point, it would be okay not to remember it every second that I was awake.
And I can just remember thinking, ‘Really? I don’t have to think about it all the time?’ Little things like that.
For people that are around people that have been the victim of a violent crime or traumatic experience, whatever it might be (and some of it might be emotional)….a lot of women are in marriages where they are emotionally battered and there’s not maybe a physical wound or a trip to the ER in that respect…but, do not be so quick to give advice.
We’ve heard the Bible verse, “God causes all things to work together for those that love Him.” Yes, I believe that. Do I believe in saying that to somebody at that point in time?
No.
I don’t know what it does in a person, but let them come to terms with that on their own.
Just let them talk.
Let them be there.
People kind of want you to hurry up and get over it.
Several months after it happened I remember going out for coffee with a group of friends. And I don’t think they intended this but not one, throughout the entire evening, asked me how I was.
And here I was still reeling from this very traumatic thing.
Brian was in counseling.
I was in physical therapy.
We were doing the legal stuff.
So much had just turned my life upside down and not one said, “How are you?”
If you could just be a safe place for someone to talk.
To say, “I’m struggling today.”
A lot of time people just do not know how to react. They have every best intention. They never would hurt a person.
But sometimes just simple little things can make a difference.
A simple, “How are you?” opens the door for them to say how little or how much might need to come out in that moment.
There is no going back.
I remember I kept thinking, ‘If I could just get back to normal.’
But there is no going back to normal.
The only normal I know of is a setting on the dryer. There is no going back.
But you become a new normal.
Because it’s now a part of who you are.
With any trial that I’ve gone through, whether it was infertility or the attack, marriage problems, anything like that…
I’ve found that after a while it became my teacher.
And it was okay that it went with me on this journey called life.
I always tell people, “There is somebody coming behind you that needs to know your story.” And I just hope that I get in touch with the people that are behind me.
That I can somehow be there for them.
I told the Lord, “Use it for all its worth.”
I was saved as a young adult while I was living in San Diego and searching for myself.
I had taken my Bible one night and let it fall open, and it fell open to The Great Commission. And it kind of scared me as the words came alive.
And I shut it and tried again. And all three times it came open to that verse. It says to, "Go into all the nations and make disciples of all people."
I think that can take on many different looks as far as how you do that. It might be through your work that people see.
It might be through…I did travel and share my story through Christian women's clubs for several years. It might be something more direct like that. I definitely feel like I was saved for a purpose. And I’m very grateful for that.
I just retired on May 5th. And so now I’m excited to see what’s next.
I’m also a two-time cancer survivor.
Thyroid the first time.
And then the treatment from the thyroid actually gave me thymoma. The thymus gland is in the chest. Even doctors aren’t quite sure what it’s for, why we need it, that type of thing.
With some people it just disintegrates by the time they’re an adult, but with some people it does not.
By the time they found it, it was pretty much filling my chest cavity and around my heart and it had collapsed my left lung halfway.
So I did treatment to get rid of that. I have experienced several miracles.
I had a very good faith base.
As a child, my parents always took us to church as a family. And I can remember that I had one Sunday school teacher who everybody kind of thought was odd. She was a tall, thin lady and she always wore a hat.
And when she taught us in Sunday school, I swear she had a flower sticking up out of that hat and it would bob as she talked. I remember her saying over and over and over again, “The Bible, in a nutshell, is John 3:16. God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whomsoever believes in Him will not perish, but WILL have everlasting life.” Then she’d say it again, and that hat would bounce and that flower would bob and she’d be shaking her fingers at us. (laughs) I am so thankful for people like that who were faithful to the Lord and planted those seeds in my life, all along.
Shortly after I had committed my life to the Lord in 1975 while I was living in San Diego, there definitely was a change.
It was just like a new direction and purpose.
And a new hope.
And truly a new beginning.
The Bible says that you become a new creature. The old things pass away and all things become new.
And it really was like that when I committed my life to the Lord.
And then it was kind of a very slow progression of growing through Bible study, church, friends, that type of thing.
I was 39 when the attack happened. My relationship with the Lord definitely became deeper after the attack.
In some respects it was a great preparation, because I had basically walked through that alone with the Lord.
Because there was no one there to help me. And it prepared me for what were maybe even harder times to come, down the road. Having to do with my marriage. Because I had to learn to walk alone. If that makes sense.
You lose everything and all you have is the Lord. And maybe even family or friends don’t understand you, but you walk alone with the Lord. And you just keep going.
It has brought me to where I am today.
And I love where I am today.”
© 2017 by One Million Miracles. All Rights Reserved.
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“My name is Sue, and I live in Grand Island, Nebraska. In the midst of a knife attack that should have ended my life, I AM Miracle Story #20.”