No One Said Anything About Safe

Midsummer and late afternoon, the storm was breaking the tension. I hurried around, jumping over suitcases and boxes and books, and closed the windows. They were old windows, extra sticky from the damp weather, and I struggled to shut them. It thundered and lightninged, and the power blinked. I was tired but on edge. We'd spent the past two days moving the rest of our belongings out of our house on the farm up to the barn. With barely a one-week notice we had renters moving in the next day. Renters who plan to buy.

—————

They're not the only ones to move in this weekend. In some twist of fate (God's beautiful, merciful plan? Yes. Sometimes I think he might be laughing, but I know he's not. That's not who he is.) I'm back again. Back on this dirt road in the Pennsylvania hills, the place I called home for 20 years, the place I'd spent the past two years putting to rest.

I did put it to rest. Being back, digging it up again, isn't very funny.

At first, I thought this move might be my chance to have one last, drawn out goodbye. I'd clean the house, work on little projects maybe, spend hours on the disc swing hanging from the big maple and let the motion carry my thoughts to things above.

But now there's voices coming from our blue house, there's two boys in the yard, and a chocolate lab runs to meet me when I walk past. I'm happy for them; happy the house will be filled with family and friends again.

—————

All I'm left with are memories. They are beautiful memories, but as I relive again while I live here, they are being colored by the person I am now, the present I am currently living, and it tarnishes them. The beautiful memories ache. The memories of sin and sickness fester. Now I'm making new memories here. Memories of quiet, of solitude, of...death.

The memories are all chaff. Smoke in my mirror. I'm closer to death—the death of my childhood, my expectations, of relationships, and the death of a person—but I'm also closer to eternity. That is why I am here. If I live with my grandmother as her companion, help her around the house, sing a little so it's not so quiet, maybe her eternity-centered faith will rub off on me.

I heard her talk on the phone to a very old friend. "Gene was such a blessing to me. I miss him. But if God wants me here on earth still, I will wake up every morning with joy. And I do."

She longs for heaven, for her final homecoming, where she will be with Jesus and Gene, her best friends, forever. But she won't "let the longing slay her living." That's how strong her faith is.

—————

I know my wish for a permanent home is not unnatural, and that is comforting. I was created to have a stable home to come home to every night. I was created to have a permanent home, family, father. But I was also created with a measure of freedom. Adam freely(-ish?) ate the fruit and humanity fell, lost the permanency. We are doomed to wander as refugees, questioning ourselves and all of life to death; or, we ignore the questions by turning up the music, paper-chasing, drinking a 7th beer, sharing the sheets with someone different every year or month or day.

Whichever way you do it, it's hard and unfulfilling and the questions remain unanswered. We are living God's Plan B for the world (thanks for sharing your wisdom there in the driveway, Nick).

Yet, O happy day, Plan B is better than Plan A. Somehow. Someway. It takes faith to see.

I lack faith.

—————

Grandma does not. She may be physically blind (it's a good thing because it means she can't see how often I tear up and my face gets hot from the emotion) but her spiritual vision is less smokey than mine. The past few years, I'm not sure I've stopped grieving. I'm starting to think I will grieve my whole life.

—————

I want to blame it on my culture. The information revolution has waged war on orthodoxy. Christianity gets branded and mass marketed. Our heroes fall not because they were cut down with swords or burned at the stake for their refusal to deny Christ, but because they didn't do a good enough job of covering the tracks they left behind when coming home from their latest sin.

I despise how American culture influences me. I despise how my genetics influence me. When challenged by my peers, I despise how my upbringing influenced me. (They say I'm this way because it's how I was raised. I tell them I can think for myself, but they don't necessarily listen. I blame their not listening on how they were raised.)

Pretty soon, am I not despising the way God made me? He is sovereign over which nucleotides wound into my strands of DNA. He placed me in this American culture, knew I'd make the jump from the 90's to the double aughts and knew what affect my iPhone would have on me....and He planned accordingly. He was and is sovereign over my family, over my childhood on the lane, and now over this time on the lane when I'm 22.

When I compare the life I've been sovereignly given to the lives of others, who He is also sovereign over, I say, it's not fair!

I say that. And I cry. Faith does not say that. Faith trusts, faith rejoices.

I do rejoice. If I didn't, I'd have ended this long ago.

—————

As a teen, I spent a lot of time lying on my back on the hardwood floor of my loft bedroom, staring up at where the rafters meet, forming an upside down "V" above me. Saturday I laid there again for a while, for the last time. It was a long day. The moment we finished is when it started to rain, when I walked down the lane to finish unpacking, just after we'd finished packing (confused yet?).

That wasn't the first time this summer it had rained on cue. July 14, we all stood in the cemetery, forming a crowded half-circle around a casket draped with the glorious Stars and Stripes. We disbanded after the gun salute and a prayer. The notes of "Taps," trumpeted into the humid air, still hung there as the half-globe sky mourned the loss of a captain, a father, a friend, a husband.

—————

When my two living grandparents—my maternal Papa T and my paternal Gramma—sit side-by-side on the sofa and visit it is strange. Two mourning halves that don't make a whole.

————— 

In the past, I've tended to spend too much time alone. It's why I've tried to make future plans around groups of people, whether SBI or, like I'd been hoping to, moving to EDH this fall. I turned my back on the latter to come live with my grandmother. I couldn't bear the thought of her being alone in this sprawling country house. She has the South Wing, I have the North Wing. But I chose the bedroom on the southernmost end so I'd get sunlight all day. It filters through the locust trees. It dances on the hundreds of flowers out in the garden. The neighbor girls take care of the garden. Another friend cleans the house, and another did some repair work. One set of cousins does the mowing. Aunts and uncles take care of countless other important things, from groceries to bills to "did you take your pills?" — Everything not only to the power of ten, but the power of love.

It takes a village.*

I'm just here to make some noise. Once I turn 25, on a cellular level my body will start the dying process. For now, at 22 years old, I am a body my Grandma can use when her's doesn't do what it used to.

Mostly, I am here to just be.

*In no form whatsoever is that statement an endorsement of H. R. Clinton. I just like the way the words go together.

—————

A couple years ago, when the questions were burning (they never stop), my mother wrote me a note on a torn-out page of a magazine (she's hipster that way). Of course I saved it.

"Perhaps (forse) your responsibility is not to change the world in a Big Way. Maybe it's to just be. Be in the all-encompassing love of God. To "find yourself" different there. Whether the things you do - big or small - change the world is not the objective. All you need to do is this: Abide in His amazing (grace - love) presence and let it fill you and spill out of you so when you come across an orphan, a widow, Cindy Boohoo [family joke], a neighbor, a brother - an enemy - you have something to give to them. It's all God's love - you in Him - He in you - spilling over from your heart. That will be the change that changes the world in Big and small ways."

—————

God is big and I am small. August 11, Maryah and I drove south to visit our long-time comrades. We four hiked up, up, up a leafy trail until we reached the rocky outcropping. A Virginia valley spread out before us; earth and sky met hazily in the distance. The breeze was lovely. The moment did not feel real. Partly, it was surreal being with Hannah in person. We are very close friends, but living far apart means we have seen each other about once every year or two, and the past few times the average length of any visit has been a pathetic hour. Also, I was sleep deprived, which messed with my head. But, again also, I have trouble grasping reality in general. Life is so strange. It is a mystery.

—————

Job was the first written account inspired by God. And it's a mystery. It's a book that sets the tone for the rest of Scripture.

"If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against God? If you are righteous, what do you give to him?"

We all multiply words without knowledge.

 —————

The infinite Creator God can be known. He's also a mystery I fear. This strange mixture of fear and love is what keeps me having faith.

"When I am afraid I will trust in You."

My first night sleeping here, during one of my wakeful spells, I heard noises and yes, they scared me. I realized it was all women and children on this end of the lane that night. I am very glad the people moved into our blue house and that the head of the family is a big strong man-at-arms. It's lonely out here, so far from everything, and I want to feel safe.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king, I tell you."

—————

God is the King.

Safety Third

Safety, protecting yourself, is an interesting thing. There are so many moments when you think you are safe, and really aren't, and then there are the times when you think your are flirting with danger and nothing happens. Then, there is also the instance where being too safe, not daring, results in missed opportunities to help someone, to maybe cause a brief spark of light as quick as a smile.

Twice in the past week I've engaged in "questionable activities" that didn't take place in the safety zone. Though first, go ahead and get that laugh out of your system because, I know, the soon-to-be-mentioned activities are quite normal and didn't require much...or any...courage on my part. It's actually entirely a case of living under the authority of overprotective parents (but really I can't complain because I'll do the exact same thing to my kids one day :). Anyhow, the first was when I decided to exit the trails and hop on the main road for the rest of my run. Big no-no, technically, because I'm generally not allowed on the road alone by myself, and definitely not without telling someone, ever since 75% of traffic is gas men.

Yet, it was the 25% that ending up concerning me. During the last stint, a minivan pulled to the side and stopped. The window went down, revealing that the driver and single passenger were both nice old ladies. They were lost. But they told me the town they were trying to get to, and I gave them directions to set them on the right track. Before getting on their way again, they politely apologized for interrupting my run. I said it was fine (and really meant it too. I love excuses to stop and catch my breath. Haha).

So I guess it ended up being good I was out there, otherwise they may have driven way off course, thus polluting the air with more CO2 emissions than necessary. This of course means that the destruction of our world by global warming will take place 25 hundredths of a second later than it would have had I not kept them from driving longer. That's right: the whole world will now get to live 25 hundredths of a second longer in a state of bliss.

Thanks may be sent in the form of Starbucks gift cards.

The second thing that happened was Sunday evening. On the way home from our friends' we stopped at the grocery store to stock up for a few days. Not wanting to walk around in the store in the midst of bunches of people, I informed the parental unit that I would wait on the dike that overlooks the river. Mom's lips pursed and she said, "Well, OK. But be careful." (she later informed me that she then spent the time in the store while she shopped praying for me. Gotta love moms, right?).

Anyhow, I meander up to the dike and am promptly driven back down by the swarms of mosquitoes. So I take a seat in the back corner of the outdoor eating area instead, and get some music playing on my ipod. After being there no more than a minute or two, I get some company. He has earbuds in too, and sits down at the opposite end, turning his chair away from me so he's looking towards the parking lot. Waiting for a ride, I presume.

I go back to staring into space, sucking on a lollipop from the bank that I found in my bag. But suddenly he fidgets and looks over his shoulder at me. He turns back around just as quickly, but the pivot causes his cell phone to drop out of his pocket and onto the cement, partially beneath his chair. He doesn't hear it for the music in his ears. I decide walking up to a strange man and bending around him to retrieve his phone when I'm alone may not be a good idea. Besides, "drop your cell phone for girl to pick up and then start a conversation with her" seems like one of those tricks in one of those books. Though I conclude that that is probably not so since he's listening to music and being as antisocial as I am; so I decide to wait.

Sure enough, within a few minutes a car pulls up and he jumps up and walks around the corner of the building. I shout after him, but he doesn't hear. So I jump up too, grab his cell from beneath the chair, and run around the corner just as he's stooping to get in the car. I get his attention and hand him the phone. He smiles, says thanks, hops in the car, and they drive away. Just like that. As normal as can be.

Sometimes the world is a less threatening place than we make it out to be.

But then of course it has to go and be threatening in other ways, in places you wouldn't think. Like your own home. Wednesday night we were moving furniture around. At one point we had the sofa tipped up on its end, and I was trying to slip between it and the wall to reposition myself. However, at that exact same moment, Isaac, who was to the front left of me, knelt down, legs across my path. I was already so near him, though, my feet tangled up in his legs and I tripped. My left leg twisted inward, there was a shockingly loud pop followed by a burst of pain in my knee, and I slammed into the floor.

I lay there for a bit, more in mental agony from the sickening sound of the pop. Within a few minutes, though, as the inflammation started, the pain in my knee became pretty bad, despite almost instant ice and ibuprofen. Then it swelled up.

Initially we thought it might be my ACL. Which I strongly hoped against because I'd treated people at physical therapy for ACL tears, and it's a long hard road for the injured. By morning, however, though my knee was still all swollen and felt like an elephant had stepped on it, I was able to isolate the main feeling of pain to the medial area. Even so, as I did research to figure out whether or not I should go to the doctors, it still seemed like I may have torn my meniscus, because of the twisting motion I went through and the pop I heard. Granted, I realized that wouldn't be as bad as an ACL tear, but it still required surgery. And it still meant I'd be laid up for the duration of the summer. At the very least, I knew I wasn't running the Bob Bridgeman Memorial Day race like tradition. The thought of that was very un-enthusing.

So I decided I definitely wanted to make the trip to the doctors. Before I went, Sanna asked what he would do. I said, "First he'll look at my knee. Then he'll gently touch it. Then he'll grab my leg with both hands and contort it in all these weird positions." And that's exactly what he did, with surprisingly minimal "ouching" on my part, and with the diagnoses of an incompletely torn medial collateral ligament. Treatment: ibuprofen for a week, rest, and no 5k unless I was pain free for 3 days before it. Since I'm still in pain today, no race. Bummer. I guess I'll be cheering on the side-lines this year.

However, I am exceedingly thankful it is not my ACL or meniscus. Either of those could have impacted my lifestyle for the next couple decades, so a slightly torn MCL, with downtime of a couple weeks at most, is an answer to prayer. Besides, if I am ever going to tear my ACL, I want to do it while participating in something epic, not tripping over my brother in the apparent safety of my own home!

Though I must say this whole experience has been rather interesting (note that interesting is not synonymous with fun) because, despite years of karate, running, and ultimate frisbee with Mr. P,  I've never before been hurt to an extent that requires more than 24 hours of downtime.

So perhaps the moral of the story is it's good to climb over the guard rails on occasion 1) because you can help people and 2) because you can get hurt anywhere, and the same sovereign grace that lets you sit here reading this post is the same sovereign grace that steers you through an intersection or walks with you down those dark back alleys. Not saying we shouldn't be wise and prudent, but maybe Dave Stotts of "Drive Through History" got it right when he made his motto "safety third."