When your HEART stops
By Ruth Schenk | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
When Southeast member Jill Abrams got up early Thursday, Sept. 8, she had no idea that her world was about to be rocked.
The healthy, devout mom of three loved her life. If there was anything she would change, it would be to go even deeper into her faith.
After seeing the kids off to school that morning, Jill asked her husband, Mitch, to linger a little longer before leaving for a business appointment in Hodgenville, Ky.
He agreed, even though as a senior member of Signature Healthcare LLC, every day is busy.
Crushing chest pain began as Jill was putting on her tennis shoes.
“It felt like somebody was pushing on my chest,” Jill said. “Then I had shooting pain down my right arm.”
Mitch said Jill looked worse every minute until she was the color of dull pewter and her breathing seemed labored. He put her in the truck and headed to the
closest emergency room.
The last thing Jill remembers about that crazy day was nurses at the emergency room saying, “You come with us,” as Mitch filled out insurance papers.
As Mitch filled in the blanks, he kept one eye on Jill and the nurses, noticing within seconds, a hub of activity in that direction. As he followed the commotion, Mitch
saw a blue flashing light above Jill’s door.
“It dawned on me that was code blue” he said. “I knew that meant she had flat lined.”
“My world crumbled,” Mitch said. “I immediately called a few people to ask them to pray.”
As Mitch paced up and down the sidewalk outside the hospital, minutes passed like hours.
Finally a doctor explained that Jill’s heart “collapsed.” Three shocks with the paddles brought her back. She had been seizing, and they were transferring her to
Jewish Hospital in downtown Louisville.
From the hallway, Mitch heard Jill thrashing and yelling, as the doctor asked him to calm her down.
He described his first glimpse of Jill as “something out of a horror movie.”
“It was so far from her usual demeanor,” Mitch said. “Jill never yells. But in that room, she was hollering, flailing, blood was running down her mouth, chest and
gown, and I could not console her.”
Mitch dropped to his knees beside Jill’s bed and began to pray, “God, I can’t even comprehend what has taken place this morning. This doctor has told me I need
to calm Jill down. I have accomplished nothing. You have to do something here.”
Mitch later described it as the most “blatantly answered prayer of his life.” Jill took a deep breath and lay back in her bed. The change was so immediate that Mitch
looked up at the monitor to make sure she was still breathing.
At Jewish Hospital, doctors tried to piece together what went suddenly wrong. They mentioned “heart trauma” and some kind of “cancerous blood clot.”
Mitch clamored to find answers for all that had happened. His close friend and mentor, Tim Marcum, drove from Campbellsville to see and pray with the couple. On
the way out of the hospital room, he told Mitch, “You have to be ready for the doctors to find nothing because miracles don’t leave calling cards.”
It was an epiphany for Mitch.
“All along, my prayers had been me telling God how to fix the situation instead of trusting Him,” Mitch said.
Though Jill had a battery of complex tests, doctors never found a reason her heart stopped beating that day. As a precaution, she now has a pacemaker/defibrillator.
On a short-term mission trip to Haiti last June, he was struck with the excesses in his life—a fancy house, a car, a country club membership, all the stuff he had
worked hard to buy, but knew it had no eternal value. And he was so grateful for the things that money could not buy.
A few weeks ago, at a Faces of Christ retreat at Country Lake in Underwood, Ind., Mitch realized that his view of God was skewed. He longed to be in control—to
call all the shots rather than let God do what He does. Surrender was a new concept.
When Mitch went back to work, a co-worker asked, “Who are you now?”
Change continues.
There’s a “For Sale” sign in the Abrams’ front yard. They already have found a house that is one-third the size of the one they own, but it is within walking distance
of the children’s school.
As Mitch listened to sermons at Southeast on baptism, he realized that he didn’t remember much about the day he was baptized as a 5-year-old.
“I classified myself as a ‘closet’ Christian,” Mitch said. “I’ve heard preachers say that you will remember the moment. That hadn’t happened to me.”
He was still thinking about baptism on Sunday, Oct. 16, when the family left for the 9 a.m. service at the Blankenbaker Campus. Jill packed shorts just in case God
did the unexpected.
At the end of Senior Minister Dave Stone’s sermon, as Mitch looked at Jill, she pulled out the shorts she had brought to the service, just in case.
Jill wanted to be baptized to signify surrender in her second chance.
Back in the First Step Room, Jill picked up one of the free T-shirts given to those being baptized during services that day. She picked a maroon shirt because it is
one of her favorite colors. What she didn’t immediately comprehend was the significance and irony of the message on the front of the shirt.
When Mitch saw her again, just before they were baptized by Teaching Minister Kyle Idleman, Mitch zeroed in on the word emblazoned across the front of the shirt. It
said “ALIVE.”