Smell the Onion

We always know, somewhere in the abandoned corners of our
consciousness, that it is a precarious position we hold here on this
spinning earth.  Occasionally, the awareness of this knowledge if
forced on us– shoved out of the shadowy corner of our mind to stand
naked in the glaring sunlight.  God help us if our hope is in anything
elemental.  Breathing or not– it is all subject to destruction– ugly
or quiet– at any given second.  This is the truest thing I know.

You might have noticed I’ve not written a lot lately.  That is, if I had been writing regularly, you would have noticed a rather silent stretch these last three weeks.  Here is why:  three weeks ago today, I witnessed a fatal accident.  In point of fact, I precipitated it.  It was absolutely horrific and terrifying, and the emotional repercussions are still…repercussing, as it were.  It turns out that my involvement legally is mostly peripheral– I might get a ticket for “failure to yield at a lane change”– and that is if, after the investigation by the traffic homicide department is complete, they find that there were not other factors involved.

I would like to tell you how God was faithful to uphold me through this time.

Besides the woman (a stranger) who stayed by my side through the whole immediate aftermath holding my hand, chatting with my (mostly oblivious) children, offering her prayers, bringing (literally) a cup of cold water, besides my beloved preacher and friend who rushed to the site to take me to my husband (as I had our only vehicle and was in no shape to drive), besides the woman who called to check on me because my insurance agent had called her and asked her to, and my friend who called to offer help because my preacher called her and told her I had had a rough day, besides my other friend who brought me junk food later that night…besides all of these tangible acts of service from the body of Christ…

I had the opportunity the next morning to spend some time with another family friend– a Dr.– a counselor.  He did a whole lot of listening and a lot of helping me organize and collect myself…but the most important thing about my meeting with him was that he helped me place the accident in the context of my whole life and what God has been teaching me and how he has been revealing himself to me.

If I had not forgotten the tortillias, or if I had taken the back way out of the parking lot, or decided to stop at the bookstore, there is a man who would be alive today, two eighteen-year-olds who would sleep a lot better at night, and a wife and daughter who would not be mourning their husband and father.  That knowledge is a heavy burden.

The bigger picture is that if it hadn’t been me and them it would have been another set of people in another set of circumstances–perhaps not as personally distressing, but equally as heartbreaking.   The truth is, of course, that random havoc plays out in a thousand places all over the planet at any given moment.  It is shocking, especially when we are confronted with it so closely that the scraping and the screaming echo in our minds, but it does not surprise us.  And here is why: this place is broken– ugly, sad, and broken.

But!  This place is not *it*.  Praise God (and I really mean PRAISE GOD!) for that!  When I considered, in the wake of this trauma, that God is unchanging and eternal, and that this life is ” the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset,” I was filled to overflowing with gratitude that I have been blessed with each moment that I have lived so far, and joy that when this life has lost itself in the sunset that God will wipe all the tears from all of the faces…