Rise to the Occasion
From Tragedy to Triumph; A Christian Perspective
by
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The doctor came out and told me I had broken my neck. I knew two other men in town who had broken their necks and were quadriplegics. I remember asking the doctor, “What are you saying—that I am going to be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of my life?”
The doctor ever so slightly nodded. It was such a slight movement I wasn’t even sure he had nodded at all. But I remember that I shouted, “Noooooooo!” and I began to cry.
How could I not move my legs? I had just finished an intense and very strenuous aerobic workout in my basement. Yesterday, I had hosted over fifteen people for Thanksgiving dinner! The day before that, I had prepared homemade Puerto Rican rice and beans and chicken and rice for Steven and Marisa’s school in celebration of Thanksgiving. Just last Sunday, I was teaching religious education to St. Matthias’s CCD Students. The Friday before that, Steven and Marisa were helping me cook and serve meals at our local soup kitchen, Elijah’s Promise. Never a spare minute was idle but, rather, filled with something meaningful. And my job! I taught Spanish to high school students! It was only November! How would I ever be able to teach again? How could I not walk? This can’t be happening to me! All of these thoughts raced through my head until I heard a voice call me back.
“Let’s pray,” Father Jim said. He started praying, and I shut my mouth. All good Christian girls keep quiet when they hear prayers.
But my thoughts were racing. The first thing you think is “no way,” as in this can’t be happening to me, “no way” as in they are not going to tell me I can’t walk. The denial runs deep.
I told Tom that if it was not for our children, I would rather die, because he did not sign up for this injury. He said, “yes I did, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, until…”
The team of doctors asked me to raise my right arm, and I couldn’t. The ER Nurse raised my right hand for me and told me to hold my arm up, and I couldn’t. My arm dropped to my side like a lead balloon..
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About the Book
On November 23, 2001, one tragic second changed almost everything author Jeanine Senerote Valenti knew in her life. A thirty-seven-year-old mother of three children under the ages of ten, she experienced an accident that affected her career, her future, her home, and her body. What didn’t waiver was her family, her husband, her three children, and their strong Christian faith. In fact, their faith in God grew to gigantic proportions through small miracles.
In Rise to the Occasion, she narrates the two parts to her story—the pre-injured part that holds many wonderful memories, and the post-injured part that has been transformative and gratifying in ways she couldn’t imagine or predict. Her pre-injured life was Valenti’s “Plan A” when she thought she controlled her destiny. That plan ended abruptly when she became a quadriplegic in one cruel second.
In this memoir, she tells how God taught her he isn’t the cause of injury and why tragedies occur, especially to good people. He woke Valenti up from sound sleep on several occasions to guide her in her journey toward healing and writing.