It's All About Him Read Online Free PDF

bone sticking out.
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    WITH MY TWIN BROTHER NEAR DEATH, BROKEN AND BLOODY, I WAS SHAKEN TO MY CORE. I PRAYED LIKE I’D NEVER PRAYED BEFORE, ASK-ING GOD TO SAVE DANNY’S LEG AND HIS LIFE.
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    Danny went into surgery, and my parents made us all go home. They knew it would be many hours before we had any news . . . and perhaps they wanted to protect us from what might happen.
    Thankfully, Danny made it through surgery. But his battle had just begun. The next few weeks and months were a blur for us, and excruciating for Danny.
    If I was a golden girl, Danny had been the masculine version of the same thing. A football player who was quite popular, he always had a girlfriend and had an energetic, happy-go-lucky personality. At the time we didn’t know that the accident would change his life’s direction.
    Danny’s accident was the first time I’d been confronted with trauma and crisis. I had prayed all my life, and accepted Jesus as my Savior at age twelve. I had gone to Sunday school as long as I could remember, and I knew all the right answers about life and death and heaven. But with my twin brother near death, broken and bloody, I was shaken to my core. I prayed like I’d never prayed before, asking God to save Danny’s leg and his life.
    To Walk Again
    During the two months Danny was in the hospital, Alan drove my mother and me to Atlanta every day. Mama wasn’t comfortable with the traffic there, and Alan took over the driver’s seat for her. It was his natural place for all of us. Even though he was young and we had dated less than a year, Alan was the type of person who took care of everyone else.
    After sixty-three days of lying flat on his back in traction in a hospital bed, Danny finally came home. His leg was saved. Gradually, he learned to walk again. But the accident crushed his spirit more than his legs. He couldn’t go back to football or the rosy future he’d always assumed he’d have. As he would be the first to say all these years later, he chose a path that spiraled downward. Though he eventually overcame this way of life, his despair after the accident pulled him toward bad choices, unhealthy friendships, and failed relationships .
    My relationship with Danny had always been a source of strength and security. My twin was part of who I was. But as the months and years went by, particularly after the trauma of Danny’s accident and the shock waves it sent through my family, Alan became my all in all. My friendships with other girls dropped away. My family no longer seemed invincible, like my image of Alan. Bit by bit, my life and thoughts focused on one thing. Alan: it was all about him.

Chapter 5
SURPRISES

    Remember when we vowed the vows
and walked the walk
Gave our hearts, made the start, it was hard
    Alan Jackson, “Remember When”
    O ver the next few years, whenever Alan and I were out in his little Thunderbird convertible, people told us we looked like a dream couple. In fact, a local store used the car—and us—as models for an advertising campaign. Today I look at that faded black-and-white photograph, and it makes me smile. Both of us look so young and eager, driving toward a future we couldn’t yet see.
    We were each other’s first true love, but we had never talked about marriage. We were too young.
    On Christmas Eve my freshman year of college, we were at my mother and daddy’s house, sitting on the sofa next to the Christmas tree. Alan handed me a beautifully wrapped gift a little smaller than a shoe box. I smiled; I never knew quite what to expect from him. One Valentine’s Day he had given me a powder blue car fender—romantically wrapped with a big red bow—to replace the fender that had been crumpled when my VW bug was attacked by an angry cow.
    But this box was too small to hold any major car parts. I carefully opened it. Inside was another wrapped box. Alan grinned as I opened it. Inside was