Dying, Living

More old stuff I'm posting today because I just found it back again and it still seems relevant.  This dates to Spring 2008.

It’s much easier to die than to live.

This is a fundamental truth that many people seem to overlook.  It is much easier to die than to live.  Why, you don’t even need to try in order to die. But living-- living takes effort.

Death is so simple.  It comes to all of us in the end.  Whether we die in a car accident at twenty-one, from a heart attack at fifty-four, from age itself at seventy-eight, or die in the womb, we all die.  It is inevitable.  Taxes may be avoided, but no one can escape death forever.

And we do try to escape it, don’t we?  We speak of “cheating death” and “prolonging life” and “being healthy” as if death is not a normal, healthy part of life.  We try to hide it from our children.  When we learn death is coming, we don’t rejoice; we mourn, we try to fight it.  “I shall not go quietly into that dark night!” we scream, shaking our fists at the adversary. When we finally get wise to the fact that fighting death is a losing battle, what do we do?  What should we do?

I recently saw a movie called Bucket List.  It was a good movie.  Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman hamming it up together, giving up their fight against cancer and going out to do things that people think of as really living:  They drive really nice cars as fast as they can.  They go all around the world, visit the Great Wall of China and soak up sunsets.  They enjoy the finest cuisine.  They climb the Pyramids.  They go skydiving.  They reconcile with their families and tear down the unscalable walls built around hearts.  In short, they try to cram as much pleasure into the short time they have left as they can.

But did they live?  It’s hard to say.  Certainly I would not say that that their last few months were lived to the fullest, because they wasted so much time on self-gratification.

Like I do every day.

I admit it.  I like pleasure.  I like fulfilling my own dreams and wishes and desires.  I like getting my own way.  Doing what I want.  When I walk into a Cold Stone Creamery and see the sizes are labeled “Like it,” “Love it,” and “Gotta have it,” part of me smiles and part of me screams “Gotta have it! Get the big one!  Forget the price and just get it!”  And when I see a movie I’ve wanted for a while in the five-dollar bin at Walmart, into my cart it goes.  And books, omigosh, sometimes with books I swear I act like a junkie who needs her next fix.  Finished Black Wind?  More Clive Cussler!  More Dirk Pitt required!  NOW!  What?  No other NUMA adventures in the house?  Blizzard outside and library closed!   AAAAAAAAH!  Guess I’ll just have to settle for the movie version of Sahara for now.  But tomorrow I’m definitely getting my next fix (of purer stuff!) from the library.

So don’t think I’m trying to say I’m better than you.  I’m not. 

And please don’t misinterpret me: pleasure in and of itself is not a bad thing.  But when we spend our whole lives seeking pleasure, we waste them.  Whether our pleasure comes from big-screen TVs and IPods or drugs and sex, if it is the only thing driving our lives, we will ultimately discover we have wasted them.

They say that you should live your life without regrets.  As if each moment could be your last.  And what will make such a life meaningful?

Living with purpose.

Maybe you can say, “I’m already doing that,”  “These are my life goals,” or “See what I’ve accomplished?  That’s because I’ve worked hard to achieve what I set out to do!”  Good for you!  You’ve mastered the first step: Living this life with a purpose.

But back to my original point.  Nobody lives forever.  At least not in this world.  But if there is an afterlife (and please humor me), the real trick is to live with a purpose that can continue after your death.  Because if there is an afterlife, death is nothing more than a painful transition.  Which means . . .

The real trick is to live so that your time spent in utero here on earth prepares you for death, which is the long dark tunnel and tight squeeze, and the afterlife, which is that place with the bright light that stings your eyes until they hang you upside down and smack you on the butt.  Painful, yes.  Scary, yes.  But no matter how much babies may want to protest:  “I’m scared!  I don’t wanna go!  It’s nice and warm and comfy in here!  Please let me stay!  I’m begging you!”,  moms still push them out.  And no matter how much we kick and scream and fight it, sooner or later death pushes us out into the afterlife.  Whether that afterlife is heaven or hell depends on our choices here.

And the choices here are what make living this life so difficult in the first place.

 Now, yes, I realize we are each given our own share of no-brainers to deal with, like whether or not to wear clothes to work.  But we also have our own share of gut-wrenching decisions to make, for instance, whether or not to run in front of a truck to push a child out of harm’s way.

Some people might argue that my second example isn’t really that much of a decision, either.  You risk your life or the kid dies.  Who’d want that on their head?  Of course you’d run into the street.  Ask someone, anyone, if there’s something or someone they’d die for, and they’ll probably respond yes.  Might be a spouse, a child, a country, or a religion, but almost everyone says they’d die for something.  Some of them have even imagined what it would be like.  Cops imagine taking a bullet in the line of duty.  Religious fanatics imagine their martyrdom and subsequent glory.  Mothers imagine pushing their child out of the street to safety.  How much do you love someone?  I’d die for them!

But would you live for them? 

The same husband who says he’d die for his wife can’t find the time to take out the trash or clean the toilet.  The same mother who says she’d die for her kids is too busy to take them to the park and play with them.  The same religious fanatic that dreams of martyrdom can’t find time to read their holy books and pray.

Now, some of this may be due to the fact that the fatal decisions are so much more in your face.  It’s now or never.  There is no procrastinating or prioritizing.

Not so the business of living:  those choices are hard because people always think that they’ll have time to do the other thing later.  For instance, taking out the trash.  Oh, the trash is full, says the husband to himself.  But it’s eleven o clock.  It’ll still be there in the morning.  The next morning, he thinks, I’m running late, don’t have time to do it now.  I’ll do it when I get home.  And so on.  Sometimes we make the big choices (like whether or not to go back to college) just by procrastinating too long on the seemingly little choices (should I fill out the application tonight?).  Sometimes we make choices without even realizing it, such as whether or not to stay in touch with college chums (Man, has it been that many years?  I can’t believe it’s time for the reunion already!). 

Taken as a whole, this might be seen as proof that our entire culture has commitment issues.  “Sure, I love that person enough to die for them, but get married?  Are you nuts!  I can’t commit to loving that same person day in and day out for the rest of my life.”  Or “I love Jesus with all my heart.  I would die for him.  But I just haven’t got time for a Bible study!  I’m overbooked as it is!  And no, I don’t have time to sing in the Easter cantata, either.”  We are a culture unable to commit even to being in a volleyball league at the Y every Friday night at the same time, so we have open games where you can jump in anytime you want between five and nine.  Every day or every week, no-sirree-bob, can’t handle that, but give me a one-time thing, that I can manage.

You only die once.

Which is why dying for someone is so much easier than living for them.

So what-- or more importantly who-- will you choose to live for today? 

Reading

I like to read.  I read compulsively.  On the way to and from work on the bus, I devour books at the rate of two or three a week—and I’m not talking about novellas, I’m talking about Rowling and Cussler and Dekker and others that average four, five, even six or seven hundred pages a pop.

This is not a new habit.  In grade school, I spent every lunch recess in the library, reading about astronauts and the Boxcar Children and the Redwall mice while other kids played on the playground.  I mean, if I was inside reading during lunch, then it was I who was shunning their company, not them refusing to pick me to be on one of the kickball teams like they did at morning and afternoon recess.  Junior high was much the same, although I took choir during lunch with twenty other geeks instead of hiding in the library.  But that’s what it really was: hiding.  And regardless of what I did or who I spent it with, it was really no different than what I did in High School, devouring a yogurt and a bunch of diet pills and then spending my lunch break doing homework on the school lawn and trying not to think about what was going on in The Ditch and the Hidey-Ho across the street.

I claimed to be busy.  But the truth is, if even one person who was not a geek like me had asked me to do something with them, I would have done it in a heartbeat.  It wouldn’t have mattered to me if it was stupid or cheesy.  Shoot, even if it had been another geek, one of my “friends”, I would have gladly spent more time with them.

I never realized then that I could have asked them.

I was the outsider, the Other.  Moving around a lot as a child may have given me the opportunity to do a lot of cool things and see wonderful things, to visit other countries and have conversation points for the rest of my like.  But it hamstrung my relationships.

I never became one of the In group, of any of the In groups.  Even the geeks had known each other for years and had their own clique going.  Meanwhile, I was a new kid who often spoke up in class but never said a word outside of it.  I was always waiting for someone else to make the first move, and I guess they figured I wasn’t interested.  So I hid in books.  I laughed at the humorous bits, cried with the sad characters, and even raged at my books when I thought the characters were being stupid.  “Can’t you see it coming?” I’d yell at the pages and sure enough, a few pages later, they’d get their comeuppance.

You see, that was another thing that made books better than real life.  Not only would they never reject me, I was proficient with books.  I could see plots' turns coming and often even predict the ending.  They were exciting, yes, and occasionally surprised me, but anytime I got uncomfortable, I could always put the book down.

If only real life were like that.  It would have been so nice to put my life on hold when my best friend laughed in my face at the fact that I had rewritten the words to “Danny Boy” so that it named my secret crush instead.  It would have been so nice to put the story of my life on hold when I got hit by a car crossing the street.  And when I saw Bewitched, I laughed at the part where she rewinds her life . . . but secretly I was eating my heart out with jealousy and I went home and cried because life is never that easy.

And then I cheered myself up... by rereading one of my favorite books.

The Disciples

You know, I’ve heard more than one person say that the Bible just doesn’t speak to them.  That the people in the Bible were a bunch of goodie-two-shoes and nothing like them.  And when I hear something like that, it saddens me, because I can see the sinner in the saints of the Bible.  Those biblical joes aren’t so different from us.  And one day, I just got to thinking:  If Jesus came to earth today for the first time, what would his disciples be like?

            Well, I can’t be entirely certain, but based on the Biblical descriptions; I can come up with a few possibilities.  Peter, for one, would still be a hothead who talks big but has a little trouble following through on all of his boasts.  He’d still be the guy who vowed to follow Jesus to the death . . . or at least until such time as Jesus was facing death and his own life was on the line, at which time he would declare he didn’t know the man.  Still a hothead working in a minimum wage job with his dad and his brother.  Depending on what part of the country we’re talking about, Peter might be the guy who works in the chicken factory or the mines or the mom-and-pop grocery or hardware store down the street.  He might work construction, or even be a fisherman still.  He wasn't from the rich mansion part of town, but a tough neighborhood in a large, important city.  Not the capital, but a city that's important enough to be renamed by a conquering army.  Like New York, say.  So he’d be tough as nails, and probably have a bit of a rap sheet.  This Peter is the guy you’d find in bar fights and jails doing 24 hours on a drunk and disorderly charge, just like the Bible finds him getting in trouble for cutting off people’s ears.

            James and John, the sons of Zebedee, are a pair of brothers cut from a similar cloth.  They spend their days with Peter—doing the same kind of minimum wage jobs and doing a little goofing off and hell-raising in their time off.  After all, they don’t call them the “sons of thunder” for nothing.  I can see the two of them and Peter starting a motorcycle gang.  Also, I must add that these two are ambitious and just a bit devious.  That’s why they had their mom ask if they could sit on either side of Jesus when he came into his kingdom—they wanted the power and prestige.  And John was clever enough to follow Jesus to Golgotha without being caught and killed himself.  The fact that he then cared for Jesus' mother like she was his own-- apparently for a couple decades-- shows that beneath the rough exterior, there was a caring heart.

            Peter’s brother Andrew thinks things through a little bit more.  He’s definitely more cautious and mild-mannered—even though he still gets along just fine with his brother.  He’s the guy who’s on the sidelines making the wisecracks that start the fights, or else calming Peter, James, and John because he’s the slightly more responsible one of the group.  He’s probably the foreman or assistant manager wherever it is that he and his buds work.  Who knows?  He might be the slightly geeky kid brother that the jocks let tag along with them because he’s good at thinking up excuses.

Matthew, on the other hand, reminds me of Leo Getz.  You know the one I’m talking about, the guy in Lethal Weapon who’s ripping off silk PJs from the hotel, spending as much of other people’s money as he can, and advising a cop on how to cheat on his taxes.  Matthew might also be the IRS guy from Grumpier Old Men, who’s just doing his job but is not too understanding and certainly isn’t very popular.  Matthew could be every guy who is despised for the government work he does.  Whether he’s an IRS agent, a cop on the take, or a posturing politician who reneges on his campaign promises, Matthew is the guy that makes good money and has a nice big house, but not very many friends.  He’s the guy the song’s describing when somebody sings “The Richest Man on Lonely Street”.

I see Thomas as a scientist and a confirmed skeptic.  The kind of person who doesn’t believe anything unless he has the evidence staring him in the face.  He reminds me of Temperance Brennan in Bones.  He'd be willing to take medicine just in case he might have been exposed to a microscopic bug that he's never seen, because science and the evidence are never wrong, but please don't ask him to put his faith in something he can't see.  Like, say, Someone rising from the dead and appearing to his pals inside a locked room.

The woman at the well is a has-been movie star who was a looker once but has been worn by the years and all her attempts at thrill-seeking.  She’s the Drew Barrymore/Lindsay Lohan type with the drug and alcohol problems in her past, the kind of star who’s been married and divorced five times and is now getting it on with someone else in her quest for adventure and acceptance.

As for Paul—well I know what kind of person Jesus would call as his Paul if he were coming for the first time this year:  A confirmed atheist and harsh critic of Christianity, who would make a sudden and drastic turnaround, such as Frank Tipler, Allan Sandage, Francis Collins, Howard Storm, Ammon Hennacy, Bernard Nathanson, Lee Strobel, Norma McCorvey, Shelley Lubben, Crissy Moran, George Price, Alister McGrath, John C. Wright, Nicko Mc Brain, or Peter Steele did.  God would pick someone who may even be considered a genius in their own right, highly successful, and powerful; somebody who stands there approving others but not getting his own hands dirty.  Paul is used to hobnobbing with bigshots—in Bible times, it was the scribes, Pharisees, and Saducees—who he’s good at manipulating; today it would be Wall Street, politicians and movie stars.  He might even be a lobbyist or a politician himself.

Philip is actually one of the leaders of the disciples, although he doesn't get much talk time today. He seems to be the organizer of the group-- even Jesus asks him logistical questions, such as "Where shall we buy bread?".  He also seems to have authority to speak for the group; on at least one occasion, you get the feeling there's a whispered conference in the background before Philip (audacious Philip!) asks Jesus to "show us the Father and that will be enough for us." (emphasis mine).  He's also one of the first disciples; it's implied that he's the one hanging out with Andrew following John the Baptist when they meet Jesus; they both immediately run off to tell their brothers.  Philip shows some of his skill in working with people in the way he handles Bartholomew; he knows it won't do any good to fight a prejudiced opinion with a reasoned argument, but if Bartholomew experiences Jesus for himself, he will change his mind that "nothing good can come out of Nazareth".  This same gift for dealing with people is shown in how he's the one approached by Greek out-of-towners who want to meet Jesus, how he later converts Samaria and then how he finds an opening for leading an Ethiopian government official to Christ through his reading material.  This also highlights something else about Philip: he's equally comfortable in the presence of the everyday joes and the people in power; and with people who are shunned because of race or religion.  So today's inner city Philip would be distinguished by his approachability and his organizational skills.

Bartholomew (aka Nathanael) reminds me a bit of my brother-in-law.  What you see is what you get.  He's a plain-speaking fellow who's not afraid to state his opinion, regardless of whether that opinion is complimentary or not.  Political correctness?  What's that?  Bartholomew doesn't really seem to have any.  But maybe because he's lacking in a verbal filter and honest to a fault, its probably not difficult for Bartholomew to see through the shams and scams of others.   He certainly knows that Jesus is the genuine article right from the very beginning.

Now, the Bible doesn't seem to have much info on James the son of Alpheus or Judas the son of James (aka Thaddeus) other than that they were disciples and apostles.  For all we know, Judas is James' son, or even Jesus' nephew, the son of His brother James who wrote the epistle.  The rest of the disciples seemed to like to bring along a family member: Andrew brought Peter, Philip brought Nathanael, James and John came together, and Thomas' Greek nickname is "Thomas the twin", indicating that he had a twin hanging around often enough for the Gospel writers to start calling him that.  But whether they were related or not, they've probably got the most "everyman" about them of any of the disciples.  Most people aren't famous, or even well-known outside their own little circle.  For all the leaders in any given group, there must be followers.  So they're not the take-charge kind of people, nor the kind who publish their memoirs-- big whoop.  I would dare say most of us aren't.  The fact that the whole world doesn't know their name just makes them a little more like you and me and the people down the street.

Judas Iscariot would likely be a politician, I think-- or at least a political aide.  Maybe a lawyer.  He likes to hang out with those in power, he likes to dip his hands into the group's funds, and he can be bought.  But despite doing all that, he's still able to put on an innocent face and exclaim in mock outrage when Jesus tells the disciples he will be betrayed by one of them.  His two-facedness, though, is not his only characteristic; he's also capable of deep remorse.  Likewise, his destructive tendencies can be focused inward as well as outward.  After setting someone up to be killed, he commits suicide because he can't live with the guilt.

And I think it is that propensity for guilt that sets him apart from the  Annaniases and Sapphiras of this world-- the 10% of all people who cheat on their taxes in any given year but don't let their consciences bother them.  Or the people who cheat on their spouses without caring about anything but being caught.  They may still go to church and give to charities, and they are visually indistinguishable from the crowd.

Now, heretofore, I’ve described a couple of characters who may have had some trouble with the law in their day.  But they are, for the most part, pretty law-abiding average joes.  Not so was Simon the Zealot.   You may not have known this before, but the Zealots were a militant faction trying to get the Romans out of Israel.  They ambushed the soldiers and rolled boulders down the mountainside at Roman convoys.  Today, we would call them terrorists, and they would be using car bombs, mines, and suicide bombers.  I mean, when you talk about the Zeal these guys had, it was an all-or-nothing, them-or-us, kill-them-if-you-get-the-shot, all-out hatred!  They firmly believed that the Romans did not belong in Israel and they were going to kick them out or die trying!  They had a cause, and it wasn’t one that everyone agreed with.  Even those who did agree with their sentiment didn’t always agree with their methods.  But they were out there in Jesus’ time and we still see them today.  Whether we're talking about Hezbollah, Hamas, the Unabomber, Al-Queda,  the IRA, ELN, the KKK, or Timothy McVeigh, Simon is the disciple who probably had the most trouble being accepted by the other disciples.  He also would likely be shunned by his former group as a sellout for hanging out with a man who preached paying taxes, carrying the occupying army's packs an extra mile for them, and letting people slap you in the face without hitting back.   Being Simon, whether in the first century or the twenty-first, would most likely be a lonely place to be.  it would require someone with great willpower, conviction, and energy.

Now, hopefully in this parade of characters you’ve seen someone enough like you (or your sibling or your friend or your neighbor) to give you something to think about.  But no matter which one of the disciples you see yourself as being most like or unlike, I hope that these descriptions have helped you to realize that the people Jesus hung out with were flawed and fallen people, just like you and me and everyone else on the planet.

THE CRASH

 So, apparently, this never got posted.  I apologize for that, I thought this was up months ago...

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, “UUUHHHHHHNH,” drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, “UUUHHNH”—roll—“UUUHHNHUHHHHNH,” oh, that’s bright!—make the stars go away—hand, hand, where you—hold my head, “UUUHHHHHHNH,” stop the red drips, they’re running down my face.

“STOP—don’t DO that—QUIT moving—Do you KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?!?” the man’s voice was loud and obnoxious from the start, hurting my already-hurting head even more as he yelled in my ears: “NO, NO, NO!—DON’T move,  lemme hold your head STILL,  I said DON’T MOVE YOUR HEAD—Do you KNOW WHERE you ARE?  DON’T YOU TRY TO SHAKE YOUR HEAD AT ME—I SAID, DON’T MOVE YOUR HEAD; YOU COULD HURT YOURSELF—YOU COULD  . . .”

Like I’m not hurting already, already?—my head hurts, and my toe hurts, and my hip hurts, and my knee hurts, and my leg is killing me—and now the blood is running in my eye—NO, you let me brush it away—come on, it’s GOing in my EYE!

“ . . . LIE STILL! . . .”

UGGHHH!  what a pain in the neck!

“ . . . HERE, I’LL TIP YOUR HEAD BACK A LITTLE . . .”

OW!! Literally a pain in the neck now.  Oh, YEAH, now that’s MUCH better, now the blood isn’t running in my eyes as much, now it’s running all over my FACE and running all through my HAIR, AND I have a CRINK in my NECK after two seconds)

“ . . . QUIT TRYING TO MOVE!!!   . . . . THAT’S RIGHT, JUST LIE STILL, TRY NOT TO SHAKE . . .”

I’m shaking?—why am I shaking?—stop shaking, Bethany, get a grip on yourself!—disobedient legs! UUUGH!!—wait a minute, where’s my sandals?

“ . . . JUST LIE STILL, TRY NOT TO SHAKE, JUST ST . . . .”

A girl broke in, “Who is that, what happened to her, is she gonna be okay?”

 “Who is that, who is that—omigosh, omigosh, omigosh—I can’t believe that happened to her—Bethany, Bethany, how old are you, what day is it, do you know what happened to you?” chattered another voice.

“NO, she doesn’t,” the obnoxious head-holder’s voice replied before I could open my mouth—“I’ve been  . . .”

Hey, wait a minute there, cowboy, just cuz you got your hands on my head don’t mean you can read my mind; I know exactly what happened to me: that stupid car hit me!

“ . . . I’m not even sure she’s conscious, I’ve been asking her over and over again but she doesn’t respond—what’s your name?”

She interrupts again (what a rude person—although, of course, they’re all being rude now, talking all over the top of each other), “Her name is Bethany.  I just can’t believe . . . .”

“I was ASKing HER.” 

“BETHAAANEEEE, CAAAN YOOOOU HEEEEAR MEEE—HOOOWWW OOOLLD ARRRE  . . .”

Yes, but you don’t need to treat me like I’m deaf or really stupid and talk in that really loud, slow voice.

“ . . . WHAAAT DAAAAYY ISSSS IIIIT? . . .” 

I open my eyes a minute to glare at the aggravating her—and I think: if I could just see your face, I’d really love to slap it right now for using that idiotic tone of voice—good thing for you I lost my glasses.    Now let me think.  “I’m 21,”—I say it out loud, but they’re not listening, so I’ll just go back to my thinking—hmmm, lemmesee, last Thursday was Gramma’s birthday, which is the 15^th, which means Friday 16, Saturday 17, Sunday 18, Monday 19, what day is it?—okay, so I taught practicum today in Sheldon, and I had classes yesterday, which means today is Wednesday, which is, ummm, where was I?--lemmesee, Thursday was the 15^th, which means Friday 16, Saturday 17, Sunday 18, Monday 19, Tuesday 20, Wednesday 21, which is today,

so . . .  “Today is Wednesday, April 21^st,”  but of course, nobody’s paying attention now that I finally have this all worked out cuz they’re busy talking, they’re SOOO busy talking they can’t even hear me when I try to answer their stupid questions.

“ . . . BETHHAAANEEEE, AAARRRE YOOOOU OOOKAY? . . .”

Do I look ok, do you think this is my idea of fun?—“I’ve been better.”

“ . . . BETHAAANEEEE, DOOON’T WOOORRRY.   THEY CAAALLLED THE AAAMMMMBUUULAAANNCE, THEEEY’RRRE COMMMING TOOO GEEETTT YOOOU.”

“Bethany, just lie still,”

I know that voice . . .

“They’re going to take you to the hospital,”

 . . . whose voice is that? . . .

“Just don’t worry, we’ll take care of you . . .”

 . . . that’s Di Murphy, that’s who that voice is!   I’m glad she sounds so calm.  Nice and calm . . . I can trust her to take care of everything . . .

“Bethany, can you open your eyes?”

I open my eyes and see the fuzzy blur of someone down closer to me, closer to the ground.  I can’t make out the features of the face, but the gray fuzz on the top would have given away Di Murphy even if I hadn’t recognized her voice.  There aren’t too many gray-haired women on campus.  She’s talking about how she’ll take care of everything . . .

Oh, rats, I’m going to miss class tonight—and I really need to go—oh, well—“I guess I have a good excuse to get out of class tonight . . .”

Di laughs a little: “that should go in campus quotes!  Only Bethany . . . she gets hit by a car and the first thing she says is that she gets out of class.”

Did I say that out loud?  Di starts talking again, but I’m not really listening.  I just can’t seem to pay attention.  My feet are starting to get very cold, and I’m getting sick of people telling me to wake up when I close my eyes.  Don’t they realize that I’m only closing my eyes because it hurts when I try to look around without my glasses on, because my eyes don’t focus as well?  Apparently not, cuz they’re all shouting at me again to wake up and open my eyes again.  I wonder . . . “Where are my glasses?”  I know it’s rude, but I interrupt anyway.

One girl answers, “I picked them up . . .”

“But they’re broken . . .” comments another.

A guy pipes in, “Bent in half is more like it . . .”

“They’re no good to her that way . . .” adds a second guy.

A third guy says, “Here, let me see them . . .”

“OOOOOOOOOOORREEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOORREEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOORREEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOORREEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOHHHHH!”  the wail of the siren drowns out everything for a few seconds.  People bustle around, shouting and putting a neck brace on me—

Ooooh, that’s tight!  AAAH, help, I’m drowning in my own spit and I can’t swallow it, they’ve got that thing on too tight—I can hardly breathe and I’m choking on all the spit collecting at the back of my throat!

They roll me onto a back board, pick me up and put me in the gurney, then put me in the ambulance.  As the doors slam shut and someone slaps them twice, I hear the voice of the guy who held my head.

They’re sending him along?  Why him?  Why not Di, or one of my friends?  I wonder if anyone’s called my mom—does she work tonight?  Let’s see, if she does, she’ll leave at 6:22—I was going to supper and it was 5:17 when I left my room—but it’s probably a little later than that because I kept stopping to talk to everybody—so probably more like 5:30 when I got hit—and even though it seemed like forever, I probably wasn’t laying there in the street more than ten or fifteen minutes—so it’s only about 5:45 and they should have plenty of time to call her.  Why’s it taking so long to get to the hospital?  If my leg didn’t hurt so bad, I could have driven myself here quicker than they’re going.  For crying out loud, if my leg didn’t hurt so bad, I could have WALKED there quicker.  Ah, at last!  It’s about time we got to the hospital—aah, beautiful silence—well, not really silence, just the absence of that awful banshee siren.  They should issue earplugs.  Funny, the ceiling lights aren’t so disorienting this time.  Guess that’s ‘cause I’m not all full of drugs this time.  Some Demerol would be nice about now, though—I could just drift off into la-la land on it again—sleep my way through a few days—oh, I better pay attention now, they’re talking to me again, not just over my body.

“The doctor will be here soon . . .”

“Can you call my mom?  Her number is 737-5109.”  They leave for a few minutes and then a nurse comes back to say that they can’t get a hold of my mom at that number and ask if there is anyone else they could call.  I rattle off my grandma’s phone number and also tell them where my mom works so that they can try to call her there.  Then a man comes in and starts to wheel me somewhere else.

“Can we loosen this thing?”  I ask, tugging at the neck brace.  “I realize that it’s in case my neck might be broken, but really—my neck doesn’t hurt at all. And I feel like it’s choking me.  Couldn’t you just take it off?”

“Not before we take x-rays,” he says as he pushes me out of the room.  When we get into radiology, he takes a few x-rays and then takes off the neck brace.  I am so glad that he’s done that, I barely notice as he walks out of the room.

I start singing.  That’s semi-normal for me: I’m one of those people that musicals are written for, who actually do just burst into song while they’re walking along.  I have been known to sit outside in the rain and make up songs, or make up songs in my room, or sing my own songs in the shower.  I also sing just about everywhere I go—even while working in the cafeteria dishroom.

Anyhow, I start singing, there in the radiology lab.  The song I choose for this occasion: Trading My Sorrows.[†]  The lyrics seem very applicable to my life as Romans 8:28 runs through my head: “In all things, God works for the good of those who love Him.”  Trust, just gotta trust, I think.  Well, God, I have no earthly idea what good You’re gonna bring me out of all this, but I’ll trust You.  Like the man said, ‘I’d rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.’*   Besides, You’ve changed bad into good before . . . that’s why “I’m trading my sorrows . . . ”

Just as I am about to repeat the song a third time, someone comes back into the room.  He wheels me out through the waiting room—which is full of people.  I can’t recognize any faces until my grandma comes to walk next to the gurney.  We go back into the ER and a doctor comes in wearing blue jeans.  He tells the nurse to clean up my forehead and flush my knee with a saline solution.  While she works on that, my mom comes in.  She says that she had just gotten to work when they told her to turn around and come back to the Orange City hospital.  She was pretty panicked when she came in, but started to calm down almost immediately when she saw that I was awake—apparently, no one had told her anything except than that I had been hit by a car.  I close my eyes and think as the nurse starts to clean up my face, which they tell me is covered in road rash—it feels like a really bad rug burn, only with bits of gravel imbedded in my skin.  As I think, I am surprised to discover that it must be around 7:40, because that’s the soonest that my mom would be able to get here if she went all the way to work and back.  What took them so long to get through to her?  They should have been able to catch her before she left for work.

The nurse puts an IV in my arm and I am thoroughly impressed by two things: that she actually listens when I tell her where the best place to stick me is, and that she gets it in the vein on the second try.  For a hard stick like me, who’s been stuck as many as 27 times in one sitting by nurses and anesthesiologists trying to get an IV in me, getting one started in two sticks is really something.

Now the doctor gives me a shot of pain medicine through the IV and looks at my head.  He shines his flashlight in my eyes and then puts a stitch in my forehead.  Then he looks at my knee and mumbles something about it.  I try to lean forward to see it, but he pushes me back on the pillows and tells me not to look at it.  He tells the nurse to get a suture kit and starts poking around in my knee, half mumbling comments all the while: “missed that artery . . . vein’s not broken . . . that ligament’s okay . . .”

I begin to wonder what I did hurt, since he seems to be saying that everything is pretty much alright.  My curiosity jumps to the fore and I ask, “How many stitches do you think I’ll have?”

“A lot,” he answers, “and several layers of them.  This gash goes all the way to the bone.  The first one will be a running stitch that just keeps going for seven or eight stitches’ worth—and the thread will just disintegrate as it heals—and then there will be more stitches on the next layer, and then maybe fifteen or so on top, which I’ll have to take out after a couple weeks.”

He goes right to work on me, putting all those stitches in my knee, and in what seems like no time at all, he says that I should be sent to a room for the night.  I am shocked to see that the clock in my room already says 9:30.  It’s been FOUR HOURS since the car hit me?  It seems to me that the actual time should have been much shorter, even if it did feel like an eternity at some points.

Seven years to the day have passed since that night.  And many times, it still seems like time is speeding along.  Where have the last seven years gone?  It feels like I snapped my fingers, and BAM! here I am.

Other times, though, it seems like those seven years are the entirety of my life.  Was there a time when I didn't get migraines?  A time with no scar on my knee and no lump on my hip?  A time when my faith in the ordinariness of my life extended to believing that no matter how fast a car was going on Albany, it WOULD stop at the crosswalk?

I barely remember that girl sometimes.  Sometimes I miss her.  For although I used to be her, she is no longer me.  She dreamed of a glorious death sometimes.  Running into the street to push a little kid out of the way of the car.  Getting shot for her faith by Columbine-ish gunmen.  Becoming a martyr overseas.

Perhaps it took a brush with death for me to realize that how I die isn't as important as how I live.  I would still like to have a meaningful death-- don't get me wrong-- but a meaningful death would not make up for a meaningless life.  Every moment counts; every second matters.  Every choice I make and action I do has the ability to impact someone.  I can choose to be jaded and neurotic, a control-freak who alienates those around her.  Or I can choose to be compassionate and encouraging, someone who does her best and helps others.  And whatever I choose to make of each day of my life will leave behind an imprint, an echo of me.  I would like that to be a good aftertaste in the mouths of others.

I made some good choices back then, when the crash happened; such as choosing to trust God rather than freak out.  But some of my choices were not so good; for instance, my faith in drivers always paying attention to what they're doing.  Now I am more deliberate about Who I place my faith in.  And even in light of the crash, I would have to say that  He's never let me down yet.  But that's another story...

Endnotes

---

[†] If you’re not familiar with this song, here are some of the lyrics:

I’m trading my sorrow;

I’m trading my shame;

I’m layin’ them down for the joy of the Lord!

I’m trading my sickness;

I’m trading my pain;

I’m layin’ them down for the joy of the Lord!

 . . . . .

I am pressed but not crushed,

Persecuted not abandoned,

Struck down but not destroyed—

I am blessed beyond the curse

For his promise will endure

And His joy’s gonna be my strength!

Though the sorrow may last for the night,

His joy comes with the morning!

* This quote is sometimes attributed to Albert Einstein.

The Heavens Proclaim God's Glory

Here's a new song based on Psalm 19:1-4. Because last night, I was thinking about how many new things scientists are learning by studying the cosmos.


The heavens proclaim God's glory
The skies show his handiwork to me
Day after day, they speak to me
Night after night, His wisdom they reveal

They have no speech,
They use no words,
Not a sound is heard from them

Yet their voice goes out
To all the world
They teach in
Universal language
They have no tongue
Yet still we hear them loud and clear