Finding Life’s Purpose After Catastrophic Injury
If you are reading this, you or someone you know may have suffered a traumatic and/or catastrophic injury.
We hope you will find courage and inspiration as you read about Stephanie Decker in the story and video link that follows.
Stephanie Decker finds her life purpose after becoming a double-amputee
It started off like any other typical day in the life of 37-year-old wife and mother, Stephanie Decker. On March 2, 2012, an EF-4 strength tornado came out of the spring sky and enveloped her home in its mad fury.
Stephanie and her children hurried to the basement of their Henryville, Indiana home. Stephanie says she had little time to do anything other than place herself over her two children as a human shield in defense of this monster tornado that had come calling.
By the grace of God, this would be the only action of unwavering courage necessary for her to spare her children from certain injury and death.
When the tornado finally moved on, Stephanie realized her two children were alive and without injury. Not one piece of plywood was left on the foundation.
Stephanie’s quick reflexes had saved her kids from the damning effects of the tornado. In the process of shielding her kids with her own body, Stephanie’s legs were so severely lacerated and injured that they had to both be amputated.
Courage in the storm
As you will see here in this YouTube Video – Courage in the Storm, Stephanie uses mental toughness that she learned from her dad to overcome her life-altering tragedy.
This brave wife and mother explains how grateful she is that from a young age her father instilled in her a spirit of mental toughness. He did this, she explains, by throwing his heart and soul into his trade as a dye and tool maker. She watched him grow his business from nothing to something through hard work and goal setting for steady growth and improvement.
Stephanie’s father also fostered a love for sports into her. Stephanie became a talented athlete under the watchful eye of her dad. A fierce competitor, she learned the important quality of mental toughness that would later come to define her life. Playing sports, she says, required teamwork. This would soon become another quality she would need one day. She says that the strength and leadership that sports taught her really prepared her for the things that life would unexpectedly send her way.
“Storms in life are inevitable – letting them defeat you is optional”
Born from the rubble of this spring tornado came Stephanie Decker’s true life purpose. She explains how small her life used to be with all of the rushing to this event and that event, preparing meals, arguing over bills, doing homework and running to Starbuck’s to get coffee.
On the day that she learned she had become a bilateral amputee, all the training she learned from her father began to take root in her life. She set out by formulating a plan to walk again. It took the teamwork she learned from playing sports to recover her life again. She promised her medical team she would do her part to do everything in her power to overcome this tragedy if they would do the same to help her walk again.
Having accomplished the goals she set for herself along with help from her family and surgeons, Stephanie is walking with some quite amazing prosthetic devices attached to both hips.
The Stephanie Decker Foundation
Stephanie Decker explains how her life has a deep purpose now and a whole new level of joy as she pours all of her pain and sorrow into her new found purpose.
Introducing the Stephanie Decker Foundation.
The Foundation’s Twofold mission:
- Giving kids with prosthetics the same access to athletic opportunities as others. Stephanie and her husband Joe have always loved kids and loved playing sports. They have teamed these two loves toward kids living with prosthetics.
- Giving kids access to cutting-edge prosthetics. Stephanie was fortunate to receive the best and latest high-tech prosthetics available to her after her injuries. She explains that many are not so fortunate. The Stephanie Decker Foundation helps kids of all ages have access to cutting-edge prosthetic technology to increase their mobility.
Stephanie Decker has literally taken the worst storm of her life and turned it into her life’s purpose.
The Edward A Smith Law Offices salutes Stephanie Decker’s mental toughness in finding the courage to not only walk again, but to pursue all sorts of sports related activities and help others in similar situations do the same.
She has found her life’s purpose after sustaining a catastrophic, double-amputation injury.
For a truly inspirational testimony of her faith and courage in her own words, click here.
Losing a limb is a devastating life changing event, both physically and emotionally. Limb loss injury victims require a lifetime of rehabilitation and life care planning assistance.
I’m Edward A Smith, an amputation injury attorney with over three decades of experience helping victims who have suffered the loss of a limb as a result of someone else’s negligence. If you or a loved one has lost a limb caused by someone else’s negligence, contact the Attorneys at the Edward A Smith Law Offices to protect your rights.
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