God Said, “It’s Not Your Time.”

By Chad Klosterman and Emily Klosterman

A couple’s separate near-death experiences bring them closer to God. Chad survived an ATV accident that nearly killed him in 2000, and he lost everything. Three years later, he found Emily, and they married in 2003. Told they would never be able to have children, they welcomed their son, Keegan, a miracle baby, to the world in 2005. Life was beautiful, but a storm was on the horizon. In 2008, Emily nearly died from a ruptured colon. Together, their experiences brought them closer to each other, made them better parents, and—most importantly—brought them closer to God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796022674

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Copyright © 2019 by Chad Klosterman & Emily Klosterman.

ISBN:                        Softcover                            978-1-7960-2250-6

                                 eBook                                   978-1-7960-2267-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®,

Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman

Foundation. Used by permission.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/19/2019

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Contents

Forward

Chapter 1 Chad’s Story

Chapter 2 The Accident

Chapter 3 Chad’s Hospital Experiences (Told to me by my wife, family, and friends)

Chapter 4 Post Coma

Chapter 5 At Home: Outpatient Therapy

Chapter 6 Life Changes: Post Nerve Transplant

Chapter 7 Divorce and Moving On

Chapter 8 The One, The Woman Whom I Would Marry

Chapter 9 Our Wedding

Chapter 10 Emmy’s Reflections

Chapter 11 Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Chapter 12 Speeches

Chapter 13 College: Degree #2

Chapter 14 Employment, Surgery Possibility, College (Again), and Extra-Curriculars

Chapter 15 Myopro—RoboChad

Emily’s Story Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two Teaching and Dating

Chapter Three Married Life and Pregnancy

Chapter Four Surgeries

Conclusion

FORWARD

M ARRIED LIFE IN 2000 began with a new job, a move to South Carolina down by Hilton Head, a new house on an island with a golf course in the back yard, everything a 25-year-old guy could want, but it was short lived. Sometimes we must experience the darkness to appreciate the light. I soon hit rock bottom and spent some time in extreme, physical darkness. What made it even worse was the fall I had to experience in order to hit rock bottom. When the dust had cleared, and all was said and done, I lost my career, my marriage, and my self-worth. It hurt, and it left scars, both physically and emotionally; however, I now know the warmth of the light and would not trade my time in the darkness.

One summer evening in July of 2000, I was taking my four-wheeler for one last test run before selling it the next day. I don’t remember the accident itself or even most of the details about it; all I know is that three months later I awoke from a coma after suffering a traumatic brain injury from my head and body hitting a concrete drainage culvert. Along with the traumatic brain injury, I suffered bleeding and swelling of my brain, skull fractures, a paralyzed left arm, a broken collar bone and shoulder blade, a blind eye from a severed optic nerve, an amputated pinky, eight broken vertebrae, a damaged short-term memory, a ruptured and removed spleen, a collapsed lung, a complete loss of the sense of smell, and near fatal infections like pancreatitis, pneumonia, peritonitis, and septic poisoning with 900cc’s of fluid removed from around my heart and lungs.

I spent two more months in hospitals before going home to continue my recovery with my wife and family. It wasn’t long before my determination set in to learn how to walk again and to become more independent. After spending three months comatose, my muscles, especially those in my legs, had atrophied so much that they couldn’t even hold up my body weight. It took a month of physical therapy to help me simply hold myself up in a standing position for a short period of time.

In addition to losing my career to my accident, I also lost my marriage. After the accident, my relationship with my wife wasn’t the same. She became my caretaker full time, and that was too much for our young marriage. When we divorced, I thought that I would never find a woman who would be able to love me, crippled, disabled, and broken. It wasn’t until I experienced some bad attempts at relationships, ones with women who couldn’t offer anything resembling what I really wanted in a relationship that I found Emily.

Emily was a teacher who was never married, a Christian with good morals, and a woman who actually liked me for me, scars and all. We met online and were married six months later. She wasn’t scared off by my injuries; instead, she loved me even more because of them. She didn’t look down on me because I didn’t have a good job; instead, she encouraged me throughout my endeavors to improve my employability and education. We have a handsome, gifted son named Keegan and a loving marriage that has already lasted 15 years. I now have the family I always wanted with a loving wife and a miracle son as we were told that we could not have children.

When our son was only 2 years old, I realized why God allowed me to experience the darkness: He wanted me to be there for Emily when she experienced her own darkness. On Father’s Day 2008, her colon ruptured, and she nearly died of septic poisoning. Five abdominal surgeries and many complications later, Emily now has the physical and emotional scars of the darkness found at rock bottom, too and continues to deal with serious, chronic health problems while being an awesome wife, mom, and high school English teacher for grades 10 and 12. Her near death experience made her more health conscious and brought her closer to God. I am blessed to have been by her side through it all.

Eighteen years after my accident and ten years after Emily’s near death experience, I have my self-worth back, too. Our scars have healed: both the physical and emotional ones. My wife and son, family and friends, and the prayers offered up to God during my crisis and Emily’s have helped to rebuild the life that I once believed was out of reach. I thank God for all of His blessings and for bringing us both back into the light. I also thank Him for letting us experience the darkness so that we appreciate His gift of life even more.

CHAPTER 1

Chad’s Story

I WAS BORN AND raised in West Central, Ohio, and my parents raised my brother and me in the Catholic Church. We were a typical middle class family in a typical small town in the Midwest. Like many families, we experienced our ups and downs, highs and lows, eventually changing from the nuclear family to a split family with step-parents and step-siblings, a half-sibling, and step-grandparents. I was blessed with two sets of loving parents after the split, but I was a challenging teenage boy. I didn’t do anything really bad, but I was ornery to say the least. My family still tells the stories to my wife and my son while I roll my eyes as a now much more mature adult, at least in my mind, which my wife still questions occasionally.

After high school, I entered the Army. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up, and serving my country seemed like the best route to find discipline and find myself, not to mention identifying my strengths and weaknesses. At an inch short of being 6-feet tall and only weighing in at 125 pounds, I didn’t fit the mold of the strong body-builder; however, I had the desire to prove myself and was stronger than I looked. In 1993, I entered basic training at Fort Leonardwood, Missouri. During basic training and even at AIT, Advanced Individual Training, I faithfully attended mass every week if only because it provided me with an hour away from yelling drill sergeants and P.T. Actually, I was one of the more squared away privates that knew what I needed to know, did what I was told to do, and I pushed myself to never be singled out. Of course, mail call changed that because I received a lot of mail.

One day while we were standing in formation, one drill sergeant announced, Somebody here has a letter from West Point. West Point is the top military academy of the United States Army. The drill sergeant then announced, Private Klosterman, this is your mail and you have a phone call to make. I was shocked. I didn’t really know much about West Point and talked to their recruiter. I was told that I would have to serve my two and a half years first, finish one year of prep school at West Point, complete my four years of school at West Point, and then serve a mandatory six years on active duty. The thing that bugged me the most about it though was that the 5 years at West Point did not count towards retirement, and that was a big no-go to me, an 18-year-old whose wisdom was incomplete. I told them to send me information on West Point, knowing that I had 2 years to figure it out since I had to fulfill my original service first. I sometimes question my decision to ignore the invitation to West Point, but it’s no use living in the past.

With an MOS, or Military Occupational Specialty, of 62 Echo, Heavy Equipment Operator, I was stationed in Panama, Central America, at Fort Kobbe, a small Army base attached to Howard Air Force Base. I was part of the 536th Engineer Battalion, Combat Heavy. The friendships I made while stationed in Panama still last today and span across the country, from Howie in Minnesota, Craig in Michigan, to Bill in New Hampshire, One of my buddies was also Catholic, a good man named Craig, aka The Old Man because he was 21 while the rest of us were 18. He didn’t go out to the clubs or bars like we did since Panama’s drinking age was 18, allowing us to drink both on and off base. Though Craig didn’t go out and enjoy the nightlife with us, he and I always went to mass on Sundays. Many of the single guys hit the town on the weekends, and as a single guy, I did so as well. Going out to a club was different in Panama than in the U.S.; the clubs did not close until 5:00 in the morning. When we would go out to My Place on Thursday nights for lady’s night, we would make it back just in time to get ready for our P.T., or physical training, which usually involved a 5 mile run on Fridays. Lack of sleep and too much to drink made for a long run. Friday nights usually involved a club called Pot-a-Tus where we’d pay $20 at the door and drink for free until closing time, 5 a.m. Saturday nights we went back to My Place for the evening for another long night with little time between arriving back at our barracks until it was time for church, and I always went to church.

While stationed in Panama, much of our time was spent running or maintaining our equipment. Mine was a 2-½ yard bucket loader that I had named Barely Runnin, but I also ran equipment like a D7G bulldozer, a Cat 130G grader, and a 621B scraper/pan. At one point, I was given the opportunity to teach incoming soldiers how to run the scrapers. Our first major operation during my tour in Panama was Operation Safe Haven in the fall of 1994. During the Cuban and Haitian Civil War, 10,000 refugees from Haiti were sent to us, and we were given the task of building housing—sleeping quarters—for them all, which meant laying concrete pads for GP medium tents compliments of the United States Army. Upon hearing the news of the incoming refugees, we were put on 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week to build these refugee camps; this entailed laying concrete pads during the day, setting up tents at night, and running equipment to build adequate roadways during the day. This kept us quite busy, but it was good experience.

During this time, we also served in policing and peacekeeping efforts whenever there were uprisings among the refugees; regardless of their safety in our camps, they wanted to be back home, and when the population of a camp grows exponentially, so does the tension. It was during this time when I earned my distinction as a 10% service-related disabled veteran due to nearly getting my head blown off from friendly fire when another soldier, an E-5 Sergeant, fell asleep on guard and dropped his loaded 20-gauge shotgun way too close to my head. I’ve had tinnitus and mild hearing loss ever since that event, and I praise God that I only felt the heat of the friendly fire and not the sting of it!

Fortunately for Craig, Howie, and me, we had our Christmas leave submitted early; therefore, we were allowed to enjoy Christmas of 1994 at home with our families. While we were gone for break, there was a major upheaval among the Haitian refugees, and Army Rangers were called in. Bill, the unlucky one who didn’t get to go home for Christmas, told us when we returned that he had an interesting one-sided conversation with one Army Ranger when he went to relieve himself in the bushes outside of the camp and was told by a hidden Ranger, Don’t even think about it. We all learned to look before we leaked!

Shortly after our return from Christmas leave, Bill, Howie, and I were sent to El Salvador to build roads and schools for kids who lived on the side of a mountain near an active volcano outside of Usulután. We slept in a lean-to on cots for 3 months, took ice cold showers, and ate some really weird food. The experience was humbling and eye opening. People living there still traveled mainly by walking, women carried food and supplies by balancing them on their heads, and families hauled larger loads by donkeys carting wooden wagons with wooden wheels. I was amazed at the huge, heavy plates women balanced on their heads as they traveled; I was even more surprised by a lengthy power cable leading to a grass hut for a radio or a television that we could hear from a distance on the side of the mountain that I was being graded for a good road.

For one of my assignments in El Salvador, I was running a 5-yard bucket loader to get bedrock from the river to use as the base for a road, and I felt bad running the loud equipment in that river while the local women were trying to clean their laundry only 40 yards away. It just seemed paradoxical to me to disrupt their quiet routine with the noise of equipment. I also was assigned to scoop up dried lava rock from the base of the active volcano as filler for the road. Again, I was struck by the paradox of the noisy equipment and the quietly smoking volcano not far away from where I was working. The most incredible part of this experience was the peace, serenity, and faith in God held by the people of this town. When we had the opportunity to interact with them, I was in awe of how humbly they lived and how much we take for granted in developed countries. They washed their clothing in the rivers where they also got their drinking water, and the countryside was free from litter and pollution, not to mention industry of any sort. Occasionally, we got to go to the headquarters base camp and were allowed to use the phone to call home. I found out on one phone call that West Point had even called my mother about my invitation to attend the academy. They must have really been interested in me to be calling my mom, too.

When we returned to Panama and prior to my return to the states, our company had some occasional downtime. Prior to joining the military, I had both a fear of heights and a fear of drowning. It made sense to me to tackle them both head on at my first opportunity, which happened to be while I was stationed there during. I took up skydiving and scuba diving, and the adrenaline-junkie in me loved every minute of it. Shoot, at 16 I drove in my first demolition derby and finished 7th out of 21 cars. A demolition involves an old car, stripped out interior, glass, and any trim or pieces that would detach on the outside of the car. The cars are closed in an area and the last car running wins. Thankfully, God protected me as I pursued the adrenaline rush from these experiences. My first experience skydiving involved a static line jump with an automatic parachute pull; unfortunately, my lines tangled, but my training was a fortunate blessing at the time. I bicycle-kicked to make myself spin until the lines straightened out, and I landed safely. I loved the rush of sky diving so much that I jumped two more times while I was in Panama. Unfortunately, I did not get to jump more often since only one of us could drive us there, and the drop zone was extremely busy with one Cessna prop plane that could only take up about 5 at a time.

After I experienced the highs of sky diving, I tried my hand at scuba diving and enjoyed that, too, especially since it helped me overcome my fear of drowning. The irony of my fear of drowning is that I was a very strong swimmer and I was actually asked about being a lifeguard in the Army during our water safety training that our unit was doing. Once again, I laughed it off and let it go. Outside of learning about the hazards and safety precautions or rules of scuba diving, part of our testing was jumping into a pool with