My wife came to me today asking if I knew what today was. Now the issue is I did this to her like 3 weeks ago on a day that had no significance or any special affiliation to anything as a joke to watch her lose her mind and spend an hour googling and searching her photo albums for anything to tell her what was special about that day. After an hour or so and 2 little girls joined in on the quest for the answer I finally folded and told her that I was messing with her. So when she came to me I immediately wrote it off as her trying to get me back and said nothing special today we’re good. She doesn’t have the patience to play games with me so she snapped back with Yeah three years ago today you got out of the hospital.

It has been three years since I walked down that hallway I had stared down for 5 months from my bed. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be for motivation or a way to get back at you for being so needy but the “long-term” room in the Burn Unit is straight down the main hallway and you can watch the main traffic all day long and worst of all watch the parade that happens every time a patient is discharged. Upon discharge, you walk down the hallway with the nurses, Doctors, and all burn unit staff blowing whistles and spinning light sticks. I watched many parades in those five months. Like I said it depended on the day but some days it seemed like motivation to get out and some days it felt like a kick in the face that I was stuck eating hospital food and watching HGTV reruns again that night.

I cannot explain the emotions and moods that went into each of those days. Then came the day I was to walk down that hallway. I went from it will be a year to it will be the beginning of the year to how about next Wednesday. I walked down that hallway and honestly, if it weren’t for a month of physical therapy I had to do at the hospital I would have never walked back onto that floor again. Not because I despise the place or am mad but because I do not wish to ever feel that vulnerable or not in charge of my own self again as I did multiple times while in that hospital bed.

I will never be able to convey the feeling of walking out of that hospital after being seen as most likely another dead intake in a unit that sees death weekly if not daily. I flew into that unit and my wife was told he is dead say goodbye and I walked out 105 days later. The feeling of freedom is something I can only compare to that feeling you get when you realize your just a sinner and someone loved you enough to pay the price of sin for you. The feeling of freedom in your stomach. Nobody can ever truly explain the feeling to someone who hasn’t experienced it. I can’t explain the feeling of watching your love walk down the aisle in all white to someone who hasn’t seen it. I can’t explain the feeling of seeing your kid for the first time to someone who hasn’t held their own child for the first time. I can’t explain the feeling of being told you’re dismissed from work after a year in Iraq and seeing your family just waiting for you to move to anyone who hasn’t been to war and back.

Many moments in life hold so much significance and that day I walked down the hall and said goodbye to the people who took care of me and made sure I lived for 5 months was bittersweet. I truly liked these people but I really didn’t want to be with them 24/7 anymore. I loved my brothers I went to war with but I was ready for a bed by myself that first night. 

I will never forget the experience of being let go from captivity and I wish all could at least get that feeling once in their life by finding Jesus and being let go from the captivity of sin.  I love the people of the Burn Unit at the University of Utah but I am glad they get to help others now and that I am out here living a better life than before that fire took me down.