During a week-long break from running track at Utah State University, Brittany fell in love with climbing the red rocks of southern Utah. And a moonlight rappel from a 200-foot cliff with a friend was just the adventure Brittany was looking for. But that night, adventure quickly turned to tragedy, leaving Brittany with a life-changing diagnosis that ultimately led her to a new relationship with her self and her Savior. This episode of THIS IS THE GOSPEL is sponsored by the First Light Concert Celebration of the First Vision presented by Deseret Book. SHOW NOTES To find the pictures and videos of Brittany's story, head to our shownotes at LDSLIVING.com/thisisthegospel EPISODE TRANSCRIPT KaRyn Lay 0:03 Welcome to This Is the Gospel, an LDS living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. We all know that person, you know, the one who takes all the hard things that life sends their way and eats them for breakfast. The one who somehow finds the way to remain fully cheerful regardless of their circumstances. And can I tell you a secret? I've always been a little bit suspicious of that person. As someone who generally seeks consistent happiness, but sometimes can't find it, I often wonder if it's all a show- a mask- because I felt the pressure to put on a happy face even when I wasn't feeling it, so why wouldn't someone else? And I guess you could say that I'm a little pessimistic about whether it's actually possible for someone to remain fully optimistic in the midst of really hard things. And then I was put into a church calling with someone that I would have described, once upon a time, as painfully cheerful. From the outside, her life seemed perfect. Her children were perfect. Her hair even seemed perfect. And if she was struggling with anything, it would be impossible to know. And I didn't trust it. I made it my mission to try to figure out what was really under all that optimism and hope. I brought all my suspicions to our joint service. And do you know what I discovered? To my chagrin, as I grew to know and love this woman, I learned that life her life was far from perfect, but her choice to see and speak the positive was as real as it gets. In those moments of conversation, when it would have been easy to head below the line, I could actually see the wheels turning in her heart and in her mind as she worked her way back up to the top, finally landing her words in a place of hope, and goodness, and possibility. Now listen, I'm a huge fan of honoring our vulnerability and allowing our vetted safe people to cradle us in our sorrow, but this wasn't about that. She had her people to mourn with her. But she also made a conscious effort to speak hope. To turn her words and her face to the Savior in all things. And frankly, that's something I'm still trying to learn how to learn. Well, today we have one story from Brittany who learned her lessons in optimism in a unique way that she believes was tailored specifically to her. Here's Brittany. Brittany 2:27 In 2012, I was a 21-year-old student athlete at Utah State and I ran cross country in the fall and track in the spring, and I was always on the go. I rarely sat still. And I just loved being in nature. I genuinely loved running. Running in nature is where I would pray and felt closest to God and just loved every moment of life. I had great friends. I was doing well in school. I was healthy, no stress fractures and I felt closest to the Lord than I ever had in my life. And so just every aspect of my life really seemed to be going my way. And it was just this beautiful, busy life that was spent outdoors as much as I possibly could. So, in March of 2012, our coaches gave us the weekend off before outdoor track season started. So, I took the opportunity to join some friends down in St. George for a little bit of a spring break climbing trip and it was there that I fell in love with the red rocks. I think I went on like six runs in one day. We started climbing at 7:30am - climbed all day- I fit in six runs in between and ended the night I think swimming. So when I got the invitation to go out for a moonlight rappel... If you haven't gotten the gist, I was always up for an adventure... And so when I got that invitation I, I accepted and, and was all for it. And it was there that we went to Cougar cliffs. Sitting at the top of the cliff, I was just looking up at the stars and had this peaceful feeling while the fellow I with was setting everything up. And once we started the descent of the rappel, I had no idea how big the cliff was. I hadn't seen over the edge. And so as we started rappelling, that rope was really heavy and I never done a repel like this before, of this size. The cliff was 250 feet. And so as the speed kind of picked up, I tried to slow myself down, and my hand was burning so badly that, just kind of like when you touch a hot stove, it was just instinct to let go. We later found out I had a third degree burn on my hands so I had held on for as long as I could to try and slow my slow my descent but... At that point, it was a free fall for the next 80 to 100 feet. If you've ever been cliff jumping into water, it's that same feeling in your stomach or a roller coaster. I couldn't scream. I couldn't make any noise because I was falling so fast. But I kept wondering, when's the ground going to come? When's the ground going to come? And all of a sudden, just bam, there was.I fell about 80 to 100 feet, I hit the ground. From that moment, things went a little blurry. After the initial shock of the fall, I kind of came to my senses again. I looked up at the sky and how peaceful it was. And the fellow I was with had gone to call for help so, I was all alone. And I knew something was wrong. I assumed there was some bone sticking out in my legs, so I didn't look down at the damage... But as I looked up at the night sky, I just had this peaceful feeling again, and I thought to pray. And I think it was just instinct. And so I tried to roll over for the first time since I had fallen. I tried to roll over to maybe kind of kneel and pray and I couldn't even roll over. I didn't think anything weird of it. I just decided to stay on my back and look up at the stars and pray and it was kind of one of those desperate. "Heavenly Father, you know, please help me. I know I'm in trouble. I don't know what kind of trouble, but, like, if you help me in this situation, I'll do anything you ask." and maybe kind of bargaining with the Lord. But I I just felt such peace as I laid there alone. Slowly, search and rescue came and found me and started boarding me up. Lifeflight had landed and they were getting ready to take me to the hospital. When search and rescue had been called, they typically get two types of calls: a rescue and recovery. Recovery, they're just going in to get a body and rescue, they're going in to get someone in danger, someone who's hurt in a tight place. And so when they heard my situation, they assumed they were coming in for recovery just to get a body. And so you can imagine their surprise when not only was I alive, but I was awake. And so from there they life flighted me to Las Vegas. I went through all the initial CAT scans and MRIs. And from there, they whisked me away into surgery, and I woke up 10 hours later, 12 hours later, I think, is how long the surgery took, with my mother by my bedside. She had had time to fly from Chicago- book a flight from Chicago and get to the hospital to be by my bedside. But I was still intubated and couldn't speak and my mom was able to just sit by my bedside and read scriptures to me to help me calm down because I'd woken up really anxious. I knew what had happened, but I didn't know why I couldn't talk or move. And so the scriptures were able to just bring peace and I was able to fall back asleep until they could take all the tubes out of my throat. And the first few days were just cycles of in and out of sleep and pain medicine. I ended up with lots of broken bones in my legs,a burnt right hand and multiple fractures in my spine, including my T 12 vertebrae, which burst instantly paralyzing me from the waist down. The official diagnosis was a spinal cord injury and paraplegic. And it wasn't until I had been moved out of ICU. I had been filled with a lot of optimism and hope in those moments that I was awake. And it wasn't until I had been moved upstairs and I looked down my legs for the first time. I'd been so afraid that there were bone sticking out. But I figured at this point, I've had surgery on my legs. I've had surgery on my back, like, it can't be that bad. And when I looked down, I wanted to see my strong running legs, my great calves and quad muscles that helped me run fast in college. But instead, what I saw were these swollen, lifeless, cut up and bruised legs. That ...was.... that was my first moment of kind of doubt and discouragement crept into my mind. And that was the first time that I questioned "Who am I anymore?" You know, before I was this student athlete, this rock climber and this runner, all these things that I identified with my legs, and that was no more. So I kind of went through this identity crisis, wondering Who am I? doubting myself for the first time. From Las Vegas, I was eventually transferred to another rehab hospital in Colorado, which was Craig Hospital. It was a hospital just for spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injuries. And it was there at Craig hospital that I learned to live life again in a wheelchair. I learned how to dress myself; how to go the bathroom; how to drive a car; how to cook in the kitchen. The simplest tasks became such a struggle to learn again, and from there I went through months and months of intense rehabilitation and physical therapy. And even after I was discharged from the hospital, I continued to learn how to walk
