The Unexpected

For the most part we are all just floating through life. Although we never are, we feel that we are in control. We have ownership over decisions and we are inside our comfort zones unless the odds are good to go outside of them. For certain periods of time, each day will seem just like the last. Slightly different obstacles, conflicts, and different reasons to laugh. Maybe you will say something funny and people will laugh harder than you expected but other than that everything is mundane, hence, the reason why you can't always remember what you did last Thursday...because last Thursday was...nothing extraordinary or any different than...today. Sometimes though, life will twist or turn and something will catch your attention, consume your thoughts, re-focus your life. For me, decisions about the "real world" have laid heavy on my mind. My friend Rob said that the reality is that elementary school never prepares you for middle school and middle school never prepares you for high school and high school doesn't prepare you for college and does college prepare you for the real world? Nope. You realize that one day you will be in a career but it is not until the time comes to face it that you really digest it all. You realize that for the first time in your life you may remain in the same setting, same geography, same routine for far more than a mere four years. Even though it isn't until it comes that you really think about it, it is still part of the plan and it is expected. It wasn't at all the real world though that stopped me in my tracks and spun me around hard. It was the UNexpected.

I was leaving my house to drive to Atlanta last Sunday night when I came upon the scene of an accident. I think back on it so much and it seems so surreal. I thought it was my brother, same car as his, two miles (if that) from my house. I almost stopped breathing. I called my mom frantically and was yelling for her to see if he was home, and he was but I was already involved. There was no one else at the scene when I had driven by. A car had somehow run off the road and was completely demolished. I have never seen a car wrecked so badly in my life. As I parked the car and walked up, my heart felt like it was having fun with a punching bag. A man had already walked up since I drove by and was on the phone with 911. I heard him answering questions. I got a little closer to the car and a man was laid over in the front seat. His head was bleeding and there was no response to us, no movement from him. I watched him as if I were waiting for something miraculous...and I was. I thought he was dead, if not dying very quickly. I wondered who he loved and who loved him. He had what looked like a butterfly tatoo on the back of his neck and for some reason I do not think I will ever forget that tatoo as long as I live. He moved. He was sort of convulsing and I said to the guy on the phone, "he is moving, do you know he is alive?" The man kept up with his phone conversation, pacing. Another man had come up and was pacing. My biggest regret looking back on it now was that I did not go closer to him. I did not say anything comforting to him. I did not give him any company at all. I then left the scene, I was pretty sure I was going to throw up and I have no special skill so I thought I would get me and my car out of the way as other people were arriving. I prayed for about 24 hours straight from that point on and cried the whole way to Atlanta. He was alive the next day and just as soon as my hopes were up and my heart was back alive, he had passed away after having been flown to Erlanger in Chattanooga. The whole week I thought about it. I could not sleep. I was barely living in the present. I could not forget how bad the car looked and I could not forget that butterfly tattoo. I did find out a little about who loved him. He was not married but his parents are still alive and he appears to be tragically missed by them and everyone that he worked with. In relation to the things that had been on my mind about my own life, I then realized that all I can do is follow God's plan as little as it makes sense, as scary and undesirable as the road may seem, as sacrificing as it is. Isaiah 55:8 always reminds me that the Lord and I do not see eye to eye. His plans I cannot understand. I'm not sure why I came up on the scene of that accident or why I met John Hudson on the day before he died. I can only pray through things and ask the Lord to mold me to his thinking, his actions, and his ways. It is a really big prayer with some fairly UNexpected answers.