I Shouldn't Be Here

No seriously. I really shouldn’t be here.

To be honest, this last week has been a flood of highly unexpected emotions as I am soon going to be in Italy and I’ll soon be back in Naples with some people that I love so, so much. I'll explain.

Though I’ve had an ongoing relationship with my favorite Neopolitans for years, I haven’t been back since one of my dearest ones left this earth in 2012. (Again, I'll explain.)

And then there’s the fact that 3 weeks ago I should have died. Please forgive the rambling that’s about to ensue, but I promise it eventually has a point. Also, please forgive the raw honestly of this post. It's not really very pretty.

On May 24^th I was in Oregon with my family. I had flown in to surprise my mom for a few days and all of us sisters were in one place for a few days—a very rare thing. We went on a hike that Sunday afternoon and enjoyed some Oregon (terrain and) waterfalls and exhausted ourselves over the course of 6 miles. A dinner later we were on our way home.

Dad was driving us home and the rest of were talking while also living up to our millennial stereotype on our phones. Dad is asthmatic, though nothing too abnormal. He started coughing and asked for one of us to pass him his inhaler as usual. His beloved Jeep was happily loaded with gear and women. I think we were all just really enjoying the rare occasion to be together and the beautiful day we’d had.

But in a moment I heard my sisters yelling at my father and I looked up from the back passenger’s seat to the realization that we were on the wrong side of the road and a vehicle was coming toward us. Providentially, we didn’t hit them but then apparently in the next few moments we hit about 5 mailboxes, nose dove into a ditch which caused us to flip, hitting a telephone pole so hard it was irreparably splintered and then we landed sideways into a ditch. (In the interest of full disclosure, the events happened so fast that I can’t say definitively that what I just described was really what happened. No one knows, we've just tried to put it all together.)

The pictures are really hard to look at. I remember sitting in the back passenger’s seat and wondering if my mother had just died sitting right next to me. I’ll never forget hearing my sister’s voice—the first to break through the deafening split second of silence and watching her pull my dad out of his daze and shouting at us all to “get out of the car!” And then I heard my other sister and then my mom and watched my dad crawl out the mysteriously broken (none of us got cut) and available sunroof and then followed suit. We then struggle to get my mom out because she had been injured (we later found out it was her clavicle). Thank God, there were so many people that stopped to help. One man checked my ashen mother over to for injuries and called an ambulance. Somehow I had enough consciousness to call my brothers. It’s all kind of hazy, but we rode the he hospital in an ambulance. Seeing my mom in a stretcher wasn’t something I’d ever really imagined before. You just don’t think about that kind of thing until it happens. I hope it never does again.

But replaying this whole thing over and over again grows in me an increasing sense of recognition that there’s no way I should be here right now. Much less all five of us walked away from the scene. I was not only spared my life, but 4 of the most important people to me are also still in my life. There's no non-Divine explanation. None.

Dad's doctor said that what probably happened was that when he took his inhaler, due to the big meal he had just eaten his blood pressure probably dropped drastically after his medication dosed and he blacked out. My Dad has no memory of what happened, and the circumstances that brought about the accident were in no way a result of negligence on anyone's part. This was the definition of a freak accident.

A couple of days later my dad when to retrieve our belongings from the vehicle. He brought back pictures and there a couple of them I can’t get out of my head.

First, my sister Jami who was in the front seat was clearly protected by the airbag, because the windshield was caved in on her side, though not completely broken through. Thank God that windshield didn't go any further.

Then there’s this picture of my seat. I remember leaning forward and the flash of a story went through my mind. I remembered hearing a boy tell a story once of a car crash he’d been in and how it stuck in his mind that the last word he heard his mother say was “Jesus.” I remember thinking that I wanted that to be my last word but also I remember—almost against my will—uttering further…”Jesus save us” and my mother right next to me responding “Yes, Lord, protect us.”

I had curled up into a ball while praying, leaning toward the front seat when the car finally stopped flipping. It turns out it was that fetal position that made the moment not fatal. It seems that the telephone pole impact was right above my head, and it caved in the body of the Jeep. Literally inches from the back of my head.

I think until now I didn’t really understand what people meant when they described things they experienced as “chilling.” Now I get it. It was (and still is, kind of) really hard to look at that picture. I actually got cold when I first saw it.

I guess the hardest part is: the acceptance of grace in the fact that I’m still here. That God has some reason for that. Or is it grace? A part of me would have been really glad to go Home. A huge part of me, actually. But, WHY? 

And here's the hardest question right now: Why am I still here and Marco isn’t???

Marco Gemma was one of those people that grabbed you. There was something about him that saw to the core of who you were and still loved you. He was an incredible, extraordinarily special individual. To this day I cannot put my finger on any other solid reason for this but his immense and lifestyle permeating love for God. I spent a solid summer with him in 2005 at the Mulino camp in Caserta, Italy, where I stayed with the Pund family, my aunt, uncle and a few cousins for about 3 months to help renovate a normally bustling summer camp that had been flooded the winter before. Marco came to help because he wanted to “serve God” with his summer. For as much as I love and use words, I don’t really have any to describe the unique little spot that Marco carved for himself in my American heart. It’s really hard to write this. It was Marco that helped my Italian get off the ground. It was Marco that made me think about my dreams and what I really wanted in my life—according to how God made me—and it was really probably Marco that made me consider that the gifting God gave me would not permanently keep me in the States. (Which, I guess, still remains to be seen.)

I was in Italy a couple of times after that summer, and was always missed each other by moments, it seemed. I never got to hear his English, apparently it was impressive.

It was 3 years ago in May. A car accident. I remember getting the news while I was at work and they sent me home—I was a mess. Frankly, I don’t usually have a problem expressing emotions and I really thought that I had properly grieved this terrible thing. But it sure comes in waves, doesn’t it?

I find it interesting that this car accident at home happened right before I’m about to go back to Italy.

I promised all of this has a point. So here it is, though it’s not a very satisfying one: 

I’m struggling with the reasoning behind the fact that I’m still here and Marco isn’t. Facially, it makes exactly no sense at all. I don't get.

Futhermore, in yet another moment of rawness (please bear with this vulnerable confession), to be honest a lot of the answers that my faith brings to the situation just feel shallow and cliché at the moment, though I know they’re true.

God is good.

God knows why but He doesn’t always tell us.

God sees the whole picture and we don’t.

The list goes on.

A part of me feels guilty that I’m here—even though I have exactly nothing to do with that fact.

It’s funny how you can know all of the things you’re supposed to in your head but still have a terrible war going on in your heart over these questions of fact. It’s astonishing how the heart is so often a much more difficult conquest than the mind.

I get it. In the sense that I get these things in my head. But I’m not gonna lie, I’ve had a lot of tears and trouble sleeping this week. 

I’ll get there. But I’m not there yet. I don't get it yet. I still hear the sound of the car hitting the ground, the mailboxes, the pole…and I can still see Marco sitting in front of me asking what my dream was for my life someday.

It will be good to be back in Italy. I guess I need to go more than I realized.

La pioggia

Some days yes, it may look like torrential rain. But it's all about context. In the Fall, that kind of storm is indicative of a colder, more difficult time coming. But in the Spring, the storm is cleansing--it means things are warming up and getting washed away.

The Firm (well, half of it) Goes to Rome

So...I'm studying abroad in Rome this summer. I'm resurrecting my old France blog to write about it (hopefully) so here's the link for the few of you that read this and the even fewer that care! ;)

lafolielogique.blogspot.com

Tickets were purchased yesterday and I'm ridiculously excited!

Things I Don't Want to Do

Things I don’t want to do: Second semester of law school.

A part of me feels adolescent again given all of the emotional ups and owns that I’ve undergone in the last two weeks.

And then being flat on my back sick the last two days has given me ample time to think about this. I seriously don’t remember the last time I was too sick to go to school for more than a day….So I’ve been thinking. I’ve had plenty of time to think about how hard it is to be here right now. And if I’m honest with myself it’s for more reasons than just law school.

Twice in my life that I’ve considered not getting on an airplane. Coming back here after a (glorious) month repose from school of law was one of them.

I sat in the airport and January 15^th, 2015 and thought about all the reasons I didn’t want to come back. In short? This is hard. Just kidding, but half of me wants to jump ship and move back to Paris and study literature again…at least I am good at language and I think living there would be a lot less difficult this time around, right? My law school friends have a theory that I’m a Russian spy. That also sounds good right about now. (Too bad my Russian knowledge is limited to the Cyrillic alphabet and the phrase “I’m not Russian, I’m American”—which, by the way, I think I’m going to retire because I’m not sure that phrase will do me any intercultural good right now.)

The other half of me is so completely convinced I’m supposed to be here and am committed to seeing this through. I’m not going to quit, but I’m not going to hold back on being honest either. Right now I hate this and I just don’t mind saying it.

So, Thursday, January 15^th, I almost didn’t get on another airplane. While I was considering this, I actually walked by the gate at the Portland International Airport where I last wrestled with the issue. Gate C1. It was right before I moved to Alaska indefinitely:

It was the Fall of 2009 and I had just spent another summer working on the train in Alaska felt a strong direction to move there year round and substitute teach. At that point I thought my career was going to take the teaching direction. Alaska had more opportunity for me than Oregon and I was feeling the need to stay one spot for more than 4 months. I was emotionally exhausted from all the traveling I had done at the time and just needed a winter’s respite. God seemed to think Alaska was the place. I had flown home after the train season for my brother’s wedding and now I was dreading going back.

Part of the dread was some drama I had inadvertently been involved in over the summer that I didn’t want to return to, but much more of it was, frankly: fear. Fear because I really didn’t know many people there and I didn’t know how much I really cared to be in Alaska. My dad and my sister had driven me to the airport after 3 wonderful weeks home in Oregon and with tears in his eyes Dad hugged me and said “you know you don’t have to go.” Gut wrenching. As I sat at the gate his words replayed in my head. He was right. I was going to live month to month at a furnished place and there was no signed lease. Substitute teaching was entirely by my initiative. I was going to be driving my best friend's car that she would otherwise just store there for the winter. I actually had no commitments taking me back to Anchorage.

But then I sat there and contemplated all of the conversations I had had with others where I had challenged them to not settle for good, but to aim for best. That is, God’s best. All of those times I had counseled them to not fear and to listen to Him and DO IT. That fear is no way to live.  And I hated the realization that I had to get on that plane if I wanted my life to back up all of that advice that a part of me (at the moment) regretted shelling out. So I, not unreluntantly, boarded the aircraft. I remember that internal wrestling very clearly, a wrestling match that actually continued well into that winter in Alaska.

Then I remembered not just that fight with God in the airport, but also another fight when I met some girls at my new church in Anchorage, acquaintances that were very clearly divinely orchestrated. I cried and banged on my steering wheel on the way home that day and yelled at God that I didn’t want to get to know anybody new. That I was relationally exhausted. That I was going to obey and do it but, since He wanted my candor, I was letting Him know once again how I felt about the whole ordeal and how I just didn’t understand “what the hell He was doing.”

It’s funny to think back on those moments and fill in all of the life that has happened between those raw moments of “candor” and now.

Alaska’s now home. It has become so much a part of me that it’s actually a part of what makes being here so hard now. Funny how that works. And those girls that I didn’t want to get to know—but did? They are indisputably the biggest reasons that place has such a hold on me now, mountains aside. My life is there now. And actually, I had the utter privilege of being in one of those girls’ wedding over break.

All of this kind of flashed to the forefront of my mind and I sort of chuckled to myself while gazing at Gate C1 in PDX. “If you’d only known, Traci, how much you had waiting for you.”

Yeah, it’s true. If I had only known, that fight with God probably never would have happened and I wouldn’t have looked back or second guessed whether or not I should use my boarding pass. But then I never would have known what it meant to truly follow, either. I got on that plane in sheer trust that God knew what He was doing. And I was right.

Perhaps it was a Divine nudge that I had to walk by that gate to get to my flight this time. As much as I still didn’t really want to, I couldn’t help but see and feel the parallel with where I’m at now.

In many ways I find myself with a lot of the same questions that I did in that Fall of 2009: “God, what are you doing? Are you sure I’m supposed to be here? WHY? How long?” But added this time is “are you sure about this law thing? Because so far I’m not good at it. At all.”

I guess this is one advantage of getting older, you have past experience to draw upon. It almost doesn’t even need to be said that both this thing I’m doing now and Alaska were and are obviously new and game changing chapters in my life that were both clearly directed by Someone besides me. The problem is that there’s almost nothing “obvious” about it when you’re walking through it. “Obvious” in this case comes only in that annoyingly perfect hindsight.

I was articulating some of these thoughts to a friend, and telling her the story about how I almost didn’t get on that plane to Alaska and then almost didn’t again this time. She looked at me with a raised eyebrow and said “looks like you’ve got some of your answers, there.” She’s right. I may not like the answer to the slew of questions that I listed above because the answer sounds more like a non-answer, but it’s the right one nonetheless: “JUST TRUST ME.”

It only really takes but a fleeting moment of painful self-honesty to know to the core of me that if He knew what He was doing last time He knows what He’s doing this time, but it’s okay if it doesn’t hurt any less this time around.

So, there we go. There I go. I can choose to trust and know that God is going to blow me away with all he has in store for me here and in the field of law, or I can keep asking questions that He has already addressed (repeatedly) and live miserably daily. He will provide community, He will weave all this crazy together to make sense—there’s nothing about what’s going on here that Him “improvising” in my life. He’s hammering stuff out of me and working in me all the while He’s carrying out His promised design for my little, crazy, wild, amazing but humble life. Because He’s good. And thank GOD I don’t have to question that. Miserable is no way to live. Fear is no way to live either. But it strikes me how both of those things are often deliberate choices.

So, this time, I’m not going to be mad about who I meet or what I have to do, I want to just have eyes wide open and my heart too. God forgive me when I don’t, just know I want to. (And can I please stop being sick?) Let’s do this thing. 

Tertullian

If only the church--in the most broad (read: Biblical) sense of the word truly lived up to this:

I shall at once go on, then, to exhibit the peculiarities of the Christian society, that, as I have refuted the evil charged against it, I may point out its positive good. We are a body knit together as such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by the bond of a common hope. We meet together as an assembly and congregation, that, offering up prayer to God as with united force, we may wrestle with Him in our supplications. This violence God delights in. We pray, too, for the emperors, for their ministers and for all in authority, for the welfare of the world, for the prevalence of peace, for the delay of the final consummation. We assemble to read our sacred writings, if any peculiarity of the times makes either forewarning or reminiscence needful.

However it be in that respect, with the sacred words we nourish our faith, we animate our hope, we make our confidence more stedfast; and no less by inculcations of God’s precepts we confirm good habits. In the same place also exhortations are made, rebukes and sacred censures are administered. For with a great gravity is the work of judging carried on among us, as befits those who feel assured that they are in the sight of God; and you have the most notable example of judgment to come when any one has sinned so grievously as to require his severance from us in prayer, in the congregation and in all sacred intercourse.

The tried men of our elders preside over us, obtaining that honour not by purchase, but by established character. There is no buying and selling of any sort in the things of God. Though we have our treasure-chest, it is not made up of purchase-money, as of a religion that has its price. On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able: for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary. These gifts are, as it were, piety’s deposit fund.

For they are not taken thence and spent on feasts, and drinking-bouts, and eating-houses, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines, or banished to the islands, or shut up in the prisons, for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s Church, they become the nurslings of their confession.

But it is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love one another, for themselves are animated by mutual hatred; how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will sooner put to death. And they are wroth with us, too, because we call each other brethren; for no other reason, as I think, than because among themselves names of consanguinity are assumed in mere pretence of affection.  But we are your brethren as well, by the law of our common mother nature, though you are hardly men, because brothers so unkind.

At the same time, how much more fittingly they are called and counted brothers who have been led to the knowledge of God as their common Father, who have drunk in one spirit of holiness, who from the same womb of a common ignorance have agonized into the same light of truth! But on this very account, perhaps, we are regarded as having less claim to be held true brothers, that no tragedy makes a noise about our brotherhood, or that the family possessions, which generally destroy brotherhood among you, create fraternal bonds among us.

One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives.

Our feast explains itself by its name.  The Greeks call it agapè, i.e., affection. Whatever it costs, our outlay in the name of piety is gain, since with the good things of the feast we benefit the needy; not as it is with you, do parasites aspire to the glory of satisfying their licentious propensities, selling themselves for a belly-feast to all disgraceful treatment,—but as it is with God himself, a peculiar respect is shown to the lowly.

If the object of our feast be good, in the light of that consider its further regulations. As it is an act of religious service, it permits no vileness or immodesty. The participants, before reclining, taste first of prayer to God. As much is eaten as satisfies the cravings of hunger; as much is drunk as befits the chaste.

They say it is enough, as those who remember that even during the night they have to worship God; they talk as those who know that the Lord is one of their auditors. After manual ablution, and the bringing in of lights, each is asked to stand forth and sing, as he can, a hymn to God, either one from the holy Scriptures or one of his own composing,—a proof of the measure of our drinking. As the feast commenced with prayer, so with prayer it is closed.

We go from it, not like troops of mischief-doers, nor bands of vagabonds, nor to break out into licentious acts, but to have as much care of our modesty and chastity as if we had been at a school of virtue rather than a banquet. Give the congregation of the Christians its due, and hold it unlawful, if it is like assemblies of the illicit sort: by all means let it be condemned, if any complaint can be validly laid against it, such as lies against secret factions.

But who has ever suffered harm from our assemblies? We are in our congregations just what we are when separated from each other; we are as a community what we are individuals; we injure nobody, we trouble nobody. When the upright, when the virtuous meet together, when the pious, when the pure assemble in congregation, you ought not to call that a faction, but a curia—[i.e., the court of God.]

Tertullian--Carthage, North Africa c. A.D. 200

Healing

Been thinking about "healing" since it's my word for next year. Been thinking about how undergoing healing is often far, far more painful in the onset than just suffering the thing that needs healing. It's excruciating. But it's this thing, that onset you have to get through and out of that pain God makes something more amazing than it could have ever been had that injury never existed. It's fact. And then you come out on the other side and wonder why you ever thought it would truly be easier to just hurt and never heal.I've also been thinking about how healing doesn't just happen to us, usually. We have to want it, and we have to go get it. This is the harder part of the equation for me, because so many people don't want it bad enough. Makes me lose faith in humanity a bit. Anyway, it's almost 6am and I've been awake since 2am. Words happen.

A difficult day’s made of difficult hours
Of a minute to minute fight not to cower.
The difficult knows its place in time
The difficult knows when it’s meant to chime.

“Count it all joy” is easily spoken
But harder to know in the midst of broken.
Healing can come, it does occasion
But inflicts itself not without pervasion.

Healing is often as painful as pain--
But worth the journey of eventual gain.
So healing is truer for the hurt and harrow
Of suffering its slings and terrible arrows,

Never fully grasped the joy of dawn’s break

If we know not black night’s gaping ache.

-T. Emerson