Tri-City pastor on the road to healing — and so grateful

Brent and Kylie Johnsen will probably never know exactly what happened in the moments before impact.

Kylie was in the way back, deep in conversation with a friend, so she missed it.

The other passengers did too.

Brent was driving, but he certainly doesn’t remember.

The Pasco man woke up from a December car wreck on Highway 12 near Touchet to the “taste of windshield and airbag.”

He let Kylie know he was alive. First responders freed him from the mangled SUV.

The next thing he knew, he was in the hospital. And it was several days later.

Miraculously, the 33-year-old pastor of EastLake Tri-Cities in Richland is back home and on the road to full recovery.

He suffered serious injuries, including breaking a vertebra in his neck. But he’s healing.

And while Johnsen can’t remember the moments leading up to the wreck, he does remember this: his church and community stepped up to help him and his family.

He’s so grateful. Kylie is too.

“We’ve had people we don’t even know helping us, praying for us,” Brent said.

“It’s humbling,” Kylie added. “ ‘Thank you’ feels so silly to say, because your gratitude is so much bigger than those two tiny words. We’ve been moved to tears so many times.”

The wreck happened on the afternoon of Dec. 10. The Johnsens had taken some out-of-town friends to their favorite restaurant in Walla Walla and were headed home.

The crew included Brent and Kylie, plus Blaine Charette, a professor at Northwest University in Kirkland who was set to speak at EastLake the next day, and Dave and Becky Magill and their 18-month-old son.

The sun was low in the sky, below the visor, and the road was shiny from recent snow. Brent was going the speed limit, then slowed by 10 mph after an oncoming car flashed its brights, indicating police ahead.

The Johnsens’ SUV rounded a corner then slammed into the back of semi-truck stopped for a wreck ahead.

“I never saw it. Never saw anything. Just brightness from the sun,” Brent wrote in a moving blog post about his experiences.

Kylie also shared her perspective in her own vivid online post.

She wrote of the sound of the crash — the worst sound she’d ever heard.

It was “a deafening eruption of metal and glass and plastic. Of airbags deploying and seat belts locking. I smelled exhaust and gasoline and saliva and burnt rubber,” she wrote.

And then, “it was excruciatingly silent. My new worst sound,” she wrote.

The car’s passengers started to speak, revealing they were OK. Dave Magill suffered a broken sternum, but — other than Brent — no one else was hurt.

Brent was taken to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland, where he spent four days in intensive care. Besides the neck fracture, he had bleeding on his brain and other injuries. He was put in a medically induced coma.

Kylie was by his side.

“I sat next to Brent in that room and held his hand while he slept. I cried and asked him to stay with me. To stay him and stay with me. And I begged God to help him do that,” she wrote.

Her prayers were answered.

“Three days later, Brent woke up. Smart, kind, funny Brent,” Kylie wrote. “Before they even removed his breathing tube, he gave me a wink. The wink. The wink he’s given me since we were dating. In the past, that wink always said, ‘I see you and I love you,’ but that day, it also said ‘It’s me.’ ”

After a week in the hospital, Brent went home. He’s not at 100 percent yet — that will take time.

He must wear a neck brace while his neck is healing. He has some double vision, some pain.

He hopes to be cleared to drive soon and to be able to return to work. For now, he’s on a mandatory health sabbatical from EastLake.

He and Kylie helped start the church about six years ago. Known for its open, come-as-you-are vibe, it typically draws 300 to 400 people on a Sunday.

EastLake met for several years at Southridge High School in Kennewick before moving to Richland’s Uptown Theatre. The church has breathed new life into the once-shuttered movie house with its services and activities, and it also helped turn the space into a bustling community arts and cultural hub. The theater regularly is the site of plays, concerts and events.

As news of the car wreck spread, people from EastLake jumped in to help — and so did many in the community who know the Johnsens through the Uptown.

Meals were cooked, snow was shoveled and an encouragement campaign spread across social media, with post after post starting with, “I am grateful for Brent and Kylie because ...”

The Johnsens — parents to Londyn, 8, and twins Greyson and Jovie, 3 — said they will never forget the kindness.

“It’s inspired me,” Kylie told the Herald. “I want to love more. Whose driveway can I go shovel? Who can I help? It makes you not hesitate to say those kind words, to deliver that care.”

She said the experience also has added a sweetness to life. “I feel like things that used to be big deals aren’t big deals anymore. I hope that stays. I want to do whatever I can to keep that perspective,” she said.

Brent also is grateful — for the community, for his friends, for his medical team, for his church’s leaders, for his kids. For Kylie, “who has sacrificed more than I’ll ever understand.”

And he’s grateful to God, “who cared enough not to let my story end in that way,” he wrote in his post.

“May I live with a proper understanding of borrowed time, and may I write a story worth telling about a God who loves ... .”

This story was originally published January 14, 2017 at 6:54 PM with the headline "Tri-City pastor on the road to healing — and so grateful."