His Grace is Sufficient

Well, as you can see...we had quite an adventure on the way home from Jonesboro last night. We were entering onto the on ramp of the highway near Newport when the road was completely covered with smoke. A farmer was burning his wheat fields and it was getting too close to the highway. It was like we were in a yellow cloud. We heard a loud crashing sound and wondered what in the world had happened. As the smoke cleared a bit we could see that 2 semi's had run into each other right beside us. We veered to the left and got out of their way and thought that we were in the clear...through the smoke....and then we were hit from behind by another semi. It was so scary and Payton was crying, and in moments like these you almost come out of yourself, become calm, and then come back to reality. Payton was fine, there were vegetables all over the place because I had been feeding her in the back seat....but we were all fine, or so we thought. 2 cars stopped behind us and they were girls from my conference. It was so amazing to see familiar faces...they could take Payton and we could try to get ourselves together. Except my neck was hurting a little, so the paramedics looked at me, and as soon as I said that my neck hurt I was whisked away to the board with a neck collar (the first picture). Quite a unique experience for sure. I didn't want them to take me to the hospital, I really thought I was fine, but we went just for precaution. And I am glad that we did. There are tons of funny circumstances now that we look back from the Newport Hospital.....like the pregnancy test that took forever...that was negative...whew..to the many other oddities...but we came out with a fracture of my C4 vertebrae. Nice. I have now broken my neck. After talking with some doctors (thank you Bradley) the hospital decided to release me (and not transfer me to LR by ambulance) if I would go see an orthopedist the next day. So they looked for 30 minutes for a C collar for my neck only to find out that I already had one on. Great!
We are at home in LR now at my parents house, and Brian has driven down to be with us, and all in all we are doing fine...His grace is sufficient. Below are some pics from the wreck and me getting fitted for a new collar because the other one was majorly uncomfortable. I will explain them.....but thank you to everyone for all of your prayers and calls. They have been so wonderful. I have the best friends ever!


Here is me on the stretcher. It was not as scary as it looks because at this point I was thinking these people were crazy.
You can see the smoke in the background, and it doesn't look that bad, but the wind had carried it right across the road and you could see nothing in front or beside you...or behind obviously.
Here is the back of my car- they had to pry the trunk open, but thank goodness we weren't going very fast or we would have been smashed to pieces.
This is probably about 10:45 at night and I finally got to sit up after being on the back board since about 5:30.....thank you! Payton had just woken up, and all I could do is just hold her on my lap. I wanted to squeeze her so bad- she is so precious to me! Notice the uncomfortable plastic collar that digs into your ears.....
And here is the better one....we love it! And I think you all might need to get used to seeing it because I think I will be wearing it for awhile.....we will find out on Monday and I will let you know what the Dr. says....Love you all!