Beautifully Broken

by Paige Wetzel

  We had done several exercises over the course of the week, but I felt Paige and I sealed our commitment with an exercise called “taking out the trash” the night before we left. Our chaplains led us through a long and messy talk about forgiveness. Lord knows I have been in several positions of needing forgiveness from Paige, but our chaplains explained it in a way I had never understood. While repentance was necessary, we could not move forward without forgiveness. I know that seems so simple, but I had lived my life on constant rebound, waiting for Paige’s forgiveness, and because it got results, Paige had used that to her advantage. If we were going to commit to giving each other the best twenty-four hours we had, we were going to have to let go of the things that made us doubting and critical of each other. Each couple was given a piece of wood and a piece of paper. On the paper, we were to write all the things we were done hanging on to—sleeping in separate rooms, letting issues build up, withholding love in tough times, and the word divorce—and then wedge the paper into our piece of wood to be burned. Seeing “the trash” from our relationship go up in flames was more than a symbol; it was both of us recognizing how Satan had both divided us and conned us into blaming each other. The exercise helped us give each other grace, with a promise to never take advantage of the grace given. We humanized each other, looking at our faults equally instead of comparing, judging, and condemning. When we left, I still didn’t feel like I was responsible for Paige’s success, nor she mine, but my relief and hope was anchored in knowing God planned to prosper us both.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WELCOME HOME

  But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.

  —James 3:17

  JOSH

  God is always on time. The Operation Heal Our Patriots trip concluded just before our home build started to take off. We had finally found a great builder, who got to work on our property the moment he was hired. He had broken ground on the project as soon as the rainy spring season ended. What once looked like a wooded jungle was making radical process toward becoming a home. Every time we drove by the property, there were fifty people working on the job site. Paige and I were excited to see trees cleared and a foundation poured, but by the time we got back from Alaska, the drywall was going up and floors were being installed! What a way to start over. Since Paige and I had reconciled, this house was going to be our home. We finally set June 4 as Volunteer Day. This is the day the community is invited to help with the finishing touches on the home. We spread the word to all potential volunteers who could help lay sod, plant shrubs, and clear debris around the home site. I hoped and prayed the communication for Volunteer Day would draw everyone to the right location this time, since the groundbreaking had taken place almost four miles down the road. I could tell Paige was filled with anxiety the morning of Volunteer Day. I worried that people wouldn’t know where to go or that they would think it was a joke after the groundbreaking ceremony. Then, it started raining. Paige sighed, her face crestfallen, saying, “Great. No one is coming now.” Our Homes for Our Troops project managers asked us to be at the site around 9:45 a.m. Mentally preparing myself to sod a two-acre lot with just Paige and me—and let’s face it, really just Paige—we headed out to the site of our new home. When we got there, we had to park our own car about half a mile down the road because so many cars were parked all around our house, including our own driveway. Auburn athletes, university employees, next-door neighbors, local businesses, friends, and family showed up to help out. I was amazed at how many people were there. I walked through the masses with my jaw dragging the ground. A short list of instructions was announced on a loudspeaker by the Homes for Our Troops staff, then the volunteers scattered and got to work. It looked like ants at a picnic. Everyone walked to the top of our property and got armloads of sod squares off the trailers. One by one, they laid the squares down on the dirt. Paige had tears in her eyes the whole time while trying to thank each worker as they walked by. A local news station asked us to do a live interview with the job site in the background. After a ten-minute segment, we turned around and 80 percent of the yard had already been done! Our volunteers laid sixteen thousand square feet of sod in forty-four minutes. Incredible. We were now two weeks away from the final event in the Homes for Our Troops gifting process: the Key Ceremony. The keys to our home would be presented to us in front of our community, and we would finally be homeowners.

  On June 18, 2016, I woke up with a smile on my face. By the end of the day, we would be moving into our brand-new home. I hopped out of bed and got ready to for our Key Ceremony. Even Paige being five months pregnant didn’t seem to slow the skip in her step. We met the police a few miles down the road from our new home and followed a motorcade and the Auburn mascot, Aubie, in a convertible to our home site. As soon as we turned onto our road, we could see the entire street was lined with people cheering and waving American flags. Paige and I walked down to the bottom of the driveway, where the whole town had been asked to join us. We sang the national anthem and listened to a great keynote speech from the executive director of Homes for Our Troops, Bill Ivey. Dr. David Crumbley, who began the wound care program at Walter Reed and now worked at the Auburn School of Nursing, spoke, and our friend and fellow Walter Reed alumnus Andrew Smith spoke on the importance of a handicap-accessible home. Then, we had a chance to speak. My eyes were already watering, but then there was a freak dust storm that blew debris into both of my eyes and I could not stop crying. My thoughts and emotions were racing, but my most prevalent thought was the fact that I was going to own this home.

  Military people know nothing is ever ours. It all belongs to the government, and it is all temporary. This place would have my name on the deed, and I will not pay a cent for it. We had searched far and wide for a home that we could live in that would be safe and meet my needs, and it did not exist. Nowhere can you find a freestanding home that is wheelchair friendly. Homes with handicap accessibility never start that way; typical homes are torn apart and repurposed to fit and store adaptive equipment. Our home had been custom made to fit our needs. This home had automatic doors, square layouts for every bathroom, a roll-in shower, bidet toilets, roll-under countertops, and pull-down shelves for cabinets I couldn’t reach. Paige would never have to worry about me slipping trying to get myself out of the tub or climbing on our kitchen counters like I used to in our old apartment. Even if we had doubled our income, Paige and I couldn’t afford a custom house like the one that we were walking up to. As I stood to speak and looked out into the crowd, I felt all the air leave my chest.

  Suddenly I was crying uncontrollably. Right before starting my thank-you speech, I caught sight of two of my Earthpig brothers, Brent Buffington and Tony Ayalla, sitting in the crowd. I think all I managed was “Thank you.” I was so blown away by the moment: the whole town in our driveway, a brand-new home waiting for us, two of my deployment buddies in the crowd, my two-year-old drooling over Aubie, and a wiggly baby in Paige’s belly. To top it all off, Bill Ham, the mayor of the City of Auburn, declared June 18, 2016, Josh and Paige Wetzel Day. I composed myself enough to raise the flag in front of our home; our pastor, Wren Aaron, said a prayer; and then we crossed the threshold of our home for the first time. For the rest of the day, I was the definition of giddy. I just couldn’t believe what God had done. This point was a defining moment for Paige and me—it put all bad days behind us and gave us great perspective on where we’d come and what a great future we had in front of us now.

  PAIGE

  My belly continued to grow, but I was thankful not to be having a baby in the heat of the summer. My new home and my October 8 due date put nesting into hyperdrive. It’s amazing how quickly your body goes into pregnancy mode the second time around! This pregnancy was so different than the first, and not just physically. The whole experience was completely different. After my experience giving birth at Walter Reed, the questions I asked
my civilian doctor earned me strange looks. In fact, when I went to check out after each appointment, the receptionist would ask who I needed to make my next appointment with and I would say, “Oh, whoever is available,” not realizing they were just confirming that I was one of the expectant mothers assigned to a doctor in their practice. After seeing the same doctor three times in a row, I asked, “So, is it your plan to actually deliver this baby?”

  My doctor got this weird look on her face and slowly said, “Yes…”

  I responded, “Oh! That’s awesome!”

  It was not lost on me how different this second delivery would be. There would be no poor intern looking over her shoulder praying for the real doctor to come in during my final push, like at Walter Reed. My doctor also offered her personal cell phone number to me and checked on me constantly in the last weeks of my pregnancy. Once I got into the third trimester, my pregnancy started sidelining me much earlier than I anticipated. I started having swelling in my legs and ankles. The swelling would be so bad that I would have to go into our athletic training room at Auburn and alternate time in the hot and cold tubs just to put shoes on. I waddled everywhere, and I had a ton of pain and mobility problems in my right hip. After the third week of the season, I was having labor scares several times a week. One day, sitting at my desk, I felt a frightening pain in my lower back and belly, and I began sweating like crazy. I texted Rick down the hallway, “I’m going to go stick my feet in the cold tub because I’m not feeling well right now.” I put my feet in the cold tub until my heart rate went down, and then I went back to work.

  Unfortunately, I had another situation that wasn’t helping my stress level or keeping my heart rate low. My grandfather, G.B. Beasley, who was the patriarch of our family my entire life, was not in good health. Nearing eighty-seven years of age, G.B. (aka Dangreddy, because I couldn’t say “Grandaddy”) began to have severe breathing and heart problems. He and my grandmother, Jean (aka Nan), did everything together. They would come to my volleyball games in Auburn, escorted by my uncle Tim, and make time to have dinner with me, Josh, and Harper on a regular basis. My entire life, they have checked on people, family or not, and I knew things were different when they weren’t making their rounds like they used to. G.B. couldn’t stay out of the hospital. Once an issue would get resolved, another would flare up. I was not allowed to travel with Auburn volleyball anymore because I was nearing my due date, but G.B.’s touch-and-go issues were causing me to spend weekends traveling the two hours to his hospital in Gadsden to check on him. He wasn’t sick enough for a long-term inpatient stay but also wasn’t well enough to spend an entire week at home with no medical mishaps. After several weekend visits, I wasn’t sure his condition would ever fully improve, but I could have never imagined the dramatic turn life would take.

  In September, my grandmother was pulling onto the road and was hit by another car. She broke her arm, collarbone, and both of her knees. She was rushed to the hospital. As soon as I got the call, I packed my things and Harper to go see Nan. Nan’s motto has always been, “I’d rather wear out than rust out,” and even though she was badly bruised, sore, and bandaged seemingly head-to-toe, my eighty-five-year-old grandmother still perked up in her hospital bed and tried to be presentable when I walked in the room. When I reached to help her adjust her pillows when she was wriggling around to get comfortable, she swatted my hand and replied with, “Oh, I’m all right, but I tell ya right now, don’t ever break your kneecaps.”

  Doctors and nurses bragged on how strong she was and that the medication they gave her for pain should do its job and help her heal because she did not take any kind of daily medication, which was unheard of for a woman her age. The visit with Nan was relatively easy, all things considered. She was a great patient and seemed to be cognizant enough for the doctors to rule out a major concussion. Josh’s grandmother didn’t live far from the hospital, so Harper and I spent the night there to get ready to help out with Nan the next day.

  The next afternoon Nan, G.B., Harper, and I were sitting around watching Judge Judy when I noticed that G.B. didn’t look right. I tried to keep Nan in conversation while I watched my grandfather sitting in the chair in the corner. He suddenly started gasping for air and sweating. I went out to the nurse’s station and asked if any of them could check his vitals. Technically they couldn’t, but they could provide transport to get him to the emergency room. With it being Nan’s third day in the hospital, I had sent all the other family members home to take showers and get food. I didn’t have time to ask permission from any of them. I flashed back to Josh’s infection night, and I knew in my gut this was going to be just like that night. I drew a deep breath and told the charge nurse to take my grandfather to the emergency room.

  As we were waiting for the wheelchair to arrive, I was torn about leaving Nan alone. Because of the pain medication cocktail, I’m not sure if she fully understood that something was wrong with G.B. I was hoping she would doze off for a nap so that I could get G.B. downstairs and diagnosed, but we had to leave her when we put G.B. in the wheelchair and Harper and I went downstairs with him to the emergency room. I called Tim and told him what was going on—something it pained me to do, because I wanted him to have a chance to take care of himself for a second—and he came back to the hospital to sit with Nan. After hours in the emergency room, the doctor told me that a valve in G.B.’s heart was not operating properly, causing his blood to not oxygenate and therefore causing the breathing issues we had seen upstairs. He was given oxygen in the ER, but there was conflict over the course of treatment. Doctors informed us that he would need to be transferred to Birmingham, about an hour away, so his normal heart doctor could treat him. Oh God, I thought to myself, now they are going to be in different places? I said to the ER doctor, “Look, his wife is actually the patient here. She was in a car accident and is upstairs. He just happened to have an episode while visiting with her. Is there any way we can at least let him stay here?” But G.B.’s condition was so delicate that no doctor in Gadsden would touch him. I assembled the family troops and we decided who was going where. Before taking G.B. to the ambulance, we were able to take Nan down to his hospital room so they could kiss goodbye. I stayed behind for a few more hours with Nan and then headed down to Birmingham to check on G.B.

  During all of this, Harper was right by my side, and she did exactly as she was told. I strongly feel like God has calmed Harper for my sake more than once in my life. She was back and forth from Nan’s room to the ER and then hopped in the car and continued to stay her calm self at an entirely different hospital. Throughout this day that seemed like it would never end, I had a constant prayer in my head: “God, thank you for not letting me have this baby in Gadsden Hospital. Now please spare me from having it in Birmingham.” My legs were swollen and killing me from all the walking and standing, but I needed to get to Birmingham to see if my grandfather was okay.

  When we arrived in Birmingham, G.B. was in a rough place mentally—he was becoming visibly stressed and short-tempered. He kept trying to get up to leave, and I eventually had to ask nurses to come help him stay in the bed. His actions gave me uneasy flashbacks to Josh when we first arrived at Walter Reed. I worried that G.B. would fall and hurt himself if someone wasn’t watching him around the clock. We kept him company way after Harper’s bedtime, and finally we had to hit the road back to Auburn. Harper gave him a big hug and told him to get some rest. I wasn’t sure if that would be the last time I saw G.B. alive. I definitely couldn’t travel anymore after this, or I really would be having a baby in another hospital or, worse, on the road. I made it safely home that night with excruciating pain in my back and legs, but baby number two stayed put another day. There were only ten more days until my due date.

  I worried and prayed over my grandparents for several days. Nan progressed to an overnight rehab center, where she was learning how to walk with a walker, and G.B. eventually had a procedure to get his heart valve working the right way. Both were working r
eally hard to get well so they could see the newest great-grandbaby.

  We played the University of Alabama at home on my due date, and by this time I was so big I could only wear a sweat suit and Josh’s size 10 shoes on my swollen feet. We beat Alabama, and another day rolled by with no baby. Four days later, this baby was finally ready. On October 12, 2016, I woke up feeling awful. We dropped Harper off with friends and headed to the hospital. I wasn’t in labor yet, but our doctor agreed that it was past time to evict this baby. I checked into the hospital and was put on Pitocin to jump-start my labor. As my labor progressed, I couldn’t help but notice how different the environment was. Josh had a comfortable place to sit, and I was even able to doze off a couple of times. I had the same nurse the whole time, and my doctor checked on me regularly. The focus here was so different. Everyone around me strived to make me comfortable. At Walter Reed for Harper’s birth, Josh was the only one trying to make sure I was not panicking, puking, or passing out.

  After about ten hours, it was finally time for this baby to make an appearance! I was calm because I knew what I was doing, but it was also very reassuring when everyone who was supposed to be there even arrived a few minutes early! On my last push, the doctor let the head and shoulders pass, and I was able to reach down and deliver the rest of her body—it was another girl! We named her Payton Ruth Wetzel. Her first name is the Irish derivation of Patrick, Josh’s dad’s name, and my great-grandmother’s maiden name was Patton. Her middle name is after Josh’s great-grandmother.