It was supposed to be just an ordinary day. Fun, to be certain. An opportunity to bond with my little brother, certainly. But really, I didn’t expect anything abnormal to happen.
I was going to take my youngest brother to Nordstrom’s to get him the pair of TOMS I promised him for his birthday, followed by lunch at Whole Foods (read: free samples at Whole Foods), and then a leisurely trip back home.
You know something’s bound to happen when I start expecting my day to go exactly as planned.
It was drizzling this morning when we left home – not the downpour of Biblical proportions that had been predicted. My mom still cautioned me to drive safely. So I did. I really was focusing on being a defensive driver. You know, checking my mirrors, going a bit below the speed limit. My 1988 Volvo was chugging right along.
We were about halfway to our destination when everything went haywire.
I was sitting at a red light, preparing to make a left turn. The turn is pretty tight, and people tend to fly through this particular intersection like nobody’s business. So I told myself, “take it slow, Lauren. Be extra careful.”
I inched out into the intersection, took the turn and then straightened out my car. Perfect. I gave myself a little pat on the back, and slowly eased onto the gas.
Then it happened.
My car suddenly slid into the right-hand lane, narrowly avoiding crashing into the cars in front and in back of me.
“We’re hydroplaning!” my brother exclaimed fearfully.
I turned the steering wheel to the left. Somehow we made it back into the left-hand lane. But I hadn’t gained full control of the vehicle.
We continued to hydroplane – no brakes, no steering – oh, God.
My brother gasped. A sustained cry transpired from his lungs. Something between a wailing fire engine siren and an elongated sob. This was a cry coming from deep within him that shouted, “Help us! Emergency!” and screamed, “I’m scared!”
I pumped the brakes.
Boom!
I whipped my head around – had we been hit by the driver behind us?
No, that wasn’t it. But what…
Bah-bah-BOOM!
Panic.
We were on the other side of median, facing oncoming traffic.
The thudding noise I had heard was that of my own tires as they hit the median and rolled over the river rocks that covered it.
I slammed on my brakes and was relieved to find that they worked, as I pulled the car as close to the median as I could.
We were sitting in a left turn lane, facing the wrong direction, staring at cars coming down the busy boulevard toward us.
But we were OK.
For a moment we lingered there, my brother and I, parking break engaged, emergency lights flashing. Completely shocked into silence at what had just happened. And then came the hysterics.
My brother was shaking and whimpering softly. “Oh my gosh… Oh my gosh…”
I finally let out a quick sob of relief, as I turned to my brother.
“It’s OK. We’re OK… What the crap, I can’t believe that just happened…Thank God you’re OK.”
A sigh of relief. An embrace. And a prayer.
“Thank you, Jesus. We’re OK.”
What now? We were stuck in the middle of a busy thoroughfare. And I had no cell phone. Awesome.
Suddenly, two UPS guys appeared on the sidewalk, waving at me. I motioned them over.
“Put your car in neutral,” they told me. “We’ll push you.”
I pulled into a nearly-empty parking lot and stopped to examine the damage inflicted on my car. The shifter was knocked slightly out of place by the sudden jolt. Otherwise, my car wasn’t noticeably damaged.
A gas station attendant lent me a phone.
“That’s a bad spot,” she told us, gesturing toward the intersection. “There’s oil and it’s slick.”
Yeah. I noticed.
Apparently, she saw an $80,000 car do the same thing last week. Except, if I heard her right, that car rolled over.
As I called my mom, I started replaying the entire incident in my head.
I couldn’t have been going more than 10 miles per hour! How in the world could this have happened?!
At no other moment in my life have I felt so completely out of control.
I won’t lie. I was scared. And yet in that moment, I believe God was in control.
How we avoided getting hit by another car makes very little sense to me. That we walked away without a scratch, I consider miraculous.
I’m alive. And I thank God for that.
Over the course of the day, I saw at least three accidents. I don’t know why my brother and I walked away intact while other people in similar circumstances were taken away from the scene in ambulances.
But this I do know: God never promised us safety. A life with Jesus is a life of incredible risk. But he is in control. And he promises to be with us every step of the way.
When I was a freshman in high school, I traveled with my youth group to Costa Rica to serve with a group of teens as they served their community. My parents were pretty freaked out. (In retrospect, I don’t blame them. A 15-year-old among a bunch of teenagers in another country? Hey, with all those raging hormones anything can happen, right?)
But I’ll never forget what my youth pastor shared with me, my team and our parents at 4 o’clock the morning our adventure began.
He knew the parents would be praying for our safety, he said, but he wasn’t going to pray for safety that morning.
Instead, he asked God to sweep us up in his story. To help us to love with reckless abandon, like Jesus did. And to have an adventure getting to know God, each other and our neighbors in Costa Rica.
And that is exactly what happened. Yeah, one girl got really sick and another kid took a rusty nail to the foot. Those things sucked. But the bigger story that was told – the friendships that were formed, the lessons that were learned and the love that was experienced – that story was far more important than any that could have been told if safety had been priority number one.
I’m not fighting a battle to be safer – financially, morally (as in, “am I good enough?”), or even physically.
I’ve already been brought from death to life. And I’m fighting to bring life, light and beauty to the world.
Ravi Zacharias puts it this way: “Jesus did not come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live.”
You see, love changes everything.
2000 years ago, a couple of guys came to Jesus because they had been told he was the savior who had been promised. They wanted to learn from this new teacher, and then go back to their lives.
But Jesus invited them into his story with these words: “Come and see.”
These guys spent the day with Jesus – and they ended up following him for the rest of their lives.
They saw him have a conversation with a woman who was an outsider that would change her life and her community.
They heard him criticize the religious leaders of his day without mincing any words.
They saw him bring a dear friend who had died back to life.
In the midst of all of this, Jesus gave his friends the freedom to mess up, to say stupid things and to make fools of themselves. He loved them extravagantly. He taught them to love.
Love isn’t safe.
Jesus was the essence of love; he was killed because of it.
But love is stronger than death: death was swallowed up by life.
When Jesus’ friends first met him, they probably had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Nevertheless, they took a risk. They invited their friends into the story Jesus had invited them into.
“Come and see,” they said.
People came. They experienced Jesus’ love. And they were transformed.
Sitting in my car today, facing oncoming traffic, I was reminded that I am not promised safety. Nor do I control my circumstances as much as I would usually like to think I do.
My cage was rattled. I felt compelled to ask myself the question that so often I am able to avoid: Am I living like I believe that God’s love really is enough for me?
The answer, of course, is that most of the time, I’m not.
But his love is enough.
Call me an idealist if you’d like; intellectually-challenged, if you prefer; or a hopeless romantic if that makes you feel better.
I hold dear these lines from the book of Jeremiah as God’s words to me:
“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.”
I cling to this promise as to a lifeline.
I hope this post doesn’t come across as preachy or didactic. This is my story and I’ve tried to articulate it to the best of my ability. Do with it what you will.
All I know is that Jesus said to me, “Come and see.”
I did. And his love changed everything.
And that’s the last thing I ever expected.
Oh, and check out this great song by Mumford and Sons. It makes my heart want to burst out of my chest and do a maniacal dance of joyful abandon. Seriously, give it a listen. And then go listen to all their other music.
