When CPR Doesn't Work...

I had a 10 AM brunch date with a good friend of mine who recently moved back to Connecticut after a couple years of living 1000+ miles away from me. I left my house a bit early, as I have the “to be on time is to be late” mentality drilled into my head from my high school choir director. I got there 10 minutes early and sat in my car, deciding to wait for my friend there. My parking spot was facing the main road, and I kind of zoned out, watching the cars fly down the street, way above the speed limit. That’s when I witnessed something that now, I would much like to erase from my mind. A car pulled out of a driveway directly across the street from me, and onto the main drag. Unfortunately, he wasn’t looking, and happened to hit a car flying down that main road. They had a T-Bone collision. At a solid 45 mph. I saw everything unfold right in front of me. RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. The car get jolted a good 4 feet in the air upon impact. Smoke rising. Noise after noise, screech after screech. I could almost feel it from my car. I immediately went into shock. What if my friend was in that car? What if my friend wouldn’t make it out of this alive? I was too traumatized to cry or scream or pray. I was frozen in shock. I watched all the surrounding store owners call 911, come out of their stores with hatchets and fire extinguishers. I watched them extricate a woman from her car and put out the smoke. I watched EMT’s perform CPR on this woman who was severely injured and clearly unconscious, for multiple minutes. They weren’t able to get her conscious again. After getting a text from my friend, I relaxed a bit, knowing it was not her. But it was still the craziest thing I’ve ever witnessed. And I’m still slightly traumatized as everything happened directly in front of me. I feel attached to this woman now. I witnessed her pain. 

Coffee (the best coffee I’ve ever had in my life....perhaps because my soul has never needed it more than at that moment) and hugs from my friend calmed me down and began to warm my heart again. But we immediately started talking about the accident. How I had witnessed the whole thing....witnessed her pain and had felt completely helpless. How witnessing anyone’s pain immediately makes me feel helpless and trapped inside, because I just want to make it go away. We started then to talk about our own pain. Physical and emotional pain and scars...some of them still wounds needing to be healed. 

If there’s anything I’ve been reminded of today, it’s that life is fragile. It’s that we live in a broken world. Which means that sometimes, CPR doesn’t work. Which means death. And pain. And brokenness. Truth is, things are not okay right now, and they won’t be until Jesus comes back. Yet at the same time, that’s our hope. Life is broken, but I’ll venture to say that it’s beautiful too. This beautiful painful confusing struggle of a thing called life only leaves us longing for more of Jesus. Longing for our true home. It leaves us cracked, but only able to let Jesus shine through those cracks. Because even though pain is here, hope is here too. There is death, but there is also life. There is pain but there is also rescue and redemption, because Jesus is still in the business of redemption. Letting Him lift you on His shoulders and walk through valleys with you suddenly becomes a less daunting task. So let’s embrace this broken life. Things are not okay right now but until then, this life leaves us looking to Hope and living in Hope, knowing that one day, things will be okay again. 

Stepping Into the Light

Earlier this week, I experienced debilitating fear about going to college in 102 days. In the course of 24 hours, I went from being excited about college, to absolutely convinced I could not go. I told people I was going to take a gap year; my brain coming up with irrational reasons why I wasn't ready. I wasn’t healthy enough yet; people wouldn’t love me in this state; people would see me at my worst and I wasn’t ready for that. 

I thank the Lord for wise people who are able to enter the chaos and shame of these moments and gently coax me out of my pain cycle. As I poured out all the reasons why I essentially wasn’t good enough for college yet, to one of these people, her simple answer shattered my perception of what I thought college would be like. “If college for you is like taking that first jump while cliff jumping, it doesn’t matter how long you wait. That cliff is still going to be there. You’re going to have to jump eventually. My fear, is that if you took this gap year, we’d be having this exact same conversation next year.” Her words were a piercing arrow of truth. I had this built up perception of college. I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted to be proud of who I was. I didn’t ever want to be seen at my worst. And then I realized how impossible that was. We’re human. We’re never going to be perfect. And I can guarantee you as sure as I’m sitting here (drinking an almond flat white coffee and eating gluten free cake outside my favorite hipster coffee shop...ultimate white girl status here...the sun and shadows creating awkward tan lines on my arms), if I’d taken the gap year, I’d just keep on coming up with reasons why I shouldn’t ever go to college. 

As the reality of college hit me this week, it dug up some of the fears and lies I’d buried months ago. I was putting the fear of what others would think of me before the way Jesus already thinks of me. I was seeing myself through the eyes of my past, through the lens of shame. I assumed that as soon as people discovered who I’d been and the things I’d struggled with, that they’d hate me. That they’d refuse to be around me. That was shame. Shame says I am my mistakes. Shame says that I am my past. It says that my past is my whole story. Shame keeps me running away from the dark (who I used to be) instead of stepping into the light (my present; who God made me to be). God has been making these things increasingly clear. If I keep running from the past and hiding from the inevitable, people will see me through the lens of my past. If I give shame the power to define me, it will. And others will define me by that too. But if I step into the light, the present that God has for me: it is there where I will experience abundance, nurturing relationships, and grace. It is in stepping into the light that we find we are loved for who we are at our core. Children of God. It is there where people long to be around us because of our compassion. Our laughter. Our hobbies. Our personality. Is it there where we find LOVE because the mistakes we’ve made in the past have nothing to do with what’s in store for us in the future. What we’ve done has nothing to do with our identity, with who we are. 

So let’s quit hiding and running away from the dark. Let’s start stepping into the light (which looks different for all of us). For me, it’s deciding to define myself as Natalie. A Jesus follower. A Child of God. Fully known. Fully loved. Clothed in grace. Sensitive. Tender Hearted. Slow to complain. Alive. Worshipper. Lover of Jesus, worship, coffee dates, intentional conversations, chacos, Enos, bumper stickers, jam sessions, moleskins. 

Cedarville University, see you in 102 days :)