Mercies Not Wasted: How My Near-Death Experience at the Grand Canyon Spurred Me on to Realize a Lifelong Dream

By C. F. E. Black, Simquily.com Contributor

The year of 2014 humbled me. A series of challenges began to cut out the idols from my life one by one, leaving me near death, and with nothing but the clothes on my back (which happened to be really ugly pajamas). But these challenges changed the course of my life—for the better. 

The biggest challenge of the year came during the summer, as my husband and I traveled to the Grand Canyon. 

My husband, Will, and I love to travel and spend time outdoors, and hiking the Grand Canyon had been on our bucket list for many years. In 2014 we decided to visit the Canyon to hike its renowned walls. The trip was planned for June, right after the start of my summer break from teaching. The earlier in the season we could go, the better the conditions for backpackers, considering the temperatures in the Canyon soar to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. 

Our water bottles filled, our backpacks packed, our boots laced, we began our descent into the Canyon just as the sun broke over the eastern wall. We planned to chase the shadows as far into the Canyon as we could to avoid hiking in the dangerous temperatures of the afternoon. By lunchtime, we would be at the bottom and could rest during the heat of the day. 

But the day did not follow our well-made plan. 

Will and I reached the bottom by noon, but not even an hour later I began experiencing my first symptoms of what we later would learn was a severe case of hyponatremia, a drop in blood sodium levels that can be fatal. Neither of us had ever heard of this condition, despite our active lifestyles. Even the wilderness survival guide my husband brought contained no information on this condition.

The symptoms of hyponatremia look eerily like the symptoms of heat exhaustion, which is what Will decided I had when I could no longer communicate clearly or answer his simple questions. Fear began threatening to take over Will’s mind. 

Prayer and a logical attempt to lower my body temperature kept him somewhat calm as he watched me, his wife of only three years, go from lucid to incommunicable. There was simply no explanation for what was happening to me, a fit twenty-four-year-old with no health problems.

After praying with me, Will and I went to sleep around nine o’clock. My memories of the afternoon and evening are spotty, as my mind was slipping closer to unconsciousness. Neither of us could have known my brain was swelling, slowly, pushing out against my skull, my body beginning to turn on itself as it lost the ability to regulate normal functions.

Will assumed I would be better in the morning. He had no other option but to believe this. We were in the bottom of the Canyon, not another soul for miles, and no way to call anyone for help. I would be fine, he told himself as he let the stars over the Grand Canyon blanket us in the open tent.

An hour later, his hopes crashed to the rocks beneath him. I woke him up with the convulsions and screams of a grand mal seizure, my first of at least three. A few desperate attempts to revive me ended with my body still and unconscious, my mind unable to wake.

Will had tried everything the survival book recommended. There was nothing now to be done but pray, which was, after all, his most effective tactic. He believed this with his whole heart, but he still couldn’t sit by and watch his wife die.

So, two hours after midnight, he told my unresponsive body that he loved me, laced up his boots, and proceeded to hike out of the Canyon, alone, by the light of his headlamp, carrying only a few snacks and a water bottle.

He made the top by 7:00 a.m. and immediately placed the call to 911 when his first bar of service became available.

By the time the helicopter arrived with the paramedics in the bottom of the Canyon, I had little life left in my body.

Treatment in the Canyon took the better part of an hour—raising the blood sodium too quickly can also be fatal. I then was airlifted to the nearest hospital and admitted to the ICU, where doctors monitored alarming levels of toxicity in my blood, which can cause a host of problems.

By the time Will arrived, I was stable but still unconscious. The swelling of the brain that accompanies severe cases of hyponatremia can cause lasting damage. Will waited, overjoyed that I was alive, but unsure what would happen when I woke.

Thankfully my mind was preserved despite the permanent scarring to my hippocampus. My mind recovered within days; my body took a little longer to regain strength.

A new sense of purpose gripped me after returning home. I thanked the Lord for each day, and started retraining my body to run like it did before the Canyon. Even when the exercise was harder than I thought possible for my tired body, I pushed harder than I ever had before and ran farther than I ever thought I would.

I became determined to accomplish things I’d always put off, always relegated to “someday.” That day may never come, as I had learned, and as long as I had been given “today,” I’d work toward the goals that I had.

Aside from training for an ultra-marathon, I wanted to do something else I’d always dreamed of doing: write a novel.

After discussions with Will, I decided not to pursue another full-time teaching job in the fall of 2014 and instead focus my time on writing a novel for teens—my lifelong dream.

I’d been teaching teenagers since I graduated college and wanted to continue serving them, but this time through fiction.

The fall of 2014 brought what I needed to finish a novel: time. That fall, I worked to complete my first manuscript of what would later become Mind of Mine, my first published YA book.

But the fall brought another challenge of its own. In the middle of an unusually cold November night, our home caught fire and burned till it was no more than an ash frame. Many of my hand-written story ideas disappeared for good that night. But, thanks to the Lord’s providence, a hard drive survived—charred as it was—and my book was salvaged.

I pressed on, the fire adding urgency to my desire to see this dream come true. I was reminded again of the fragility of everything we think will never change. My mental and physical health had been restored. All those hours of work on the novel had been restored. I would not let these mercies be wasted.

By 2015, I began querying agents, diving into the world of seeking publication. Summer came and went without any offers of representation. I kept on, hoping for some sort of confirmation that this was not some pipe dream, but 2015 ended with no such confirmation. But I wasn’t ready to give up.

In the fall of 2016, I entered the manuscript in a contest with the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, a national organization for writers. My book won. I took this as the long-awaited confirmation to continue to pursue publication of this book.

By this time, I was working full time again, teaching at a local high school. I kept editing the novel, trying to perfect it. I kept submitting. I kept attending conferences. Though I received much encouragement and positive feedback from these conferences, I did not receive the one thing I wanted: a contract.

However, in 2018 my persistence paid off. Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas offered me a contract to publish with their imprint, Illuminate YA, a small press dedicated to bringing clean entertainment to teenagers. I signed the contract and thanked the Lord for bringing about what would be my longest held dream come true.

Now having just celebrated the publication of Mind of Mine, I am grateful for each step that brought me here. To the Canyon, for teaching me not to put things off. To the house fire, for teaching me to value what matters. And for the long road to publication, for teaching me to persevere. Without these things, I might not have become a published author.