It's been a while since I've had the urge to stick my thought-vomit on my blog. It's been about a month and a half since my life started running circles around my own head. It's been about a month and a half since I realized how little I know and how excited I am for the rest of my life. It's been about a month and a half since I should have died in a car crash.
2 am. October 11, 2001. Mile marker 126 on I-68, somewhere in western Maryland.
Behind the steering wheel, cruise control at 73, completely awake and alert.
My front right tire brushes the rumble strip on the side of the road. I don't know if the sound startled me because I was "in the zone" or what, but as I tried to correct the wheels, we started to fishtail. At 73mph on a dry, curving highway. It all happened so fast, it just feels like a violent blur. We fishtail violently, wheels tipping in the air from the speed and jerking. Then we were flying. flipping. tumbling. It's like my mind took snapshots of it. All I can remember is the feeling of glass and dirt exploding in my face simultaneously from the windows blowing in. Then the eerie stillness when we finally landed rightside up. The only sound was the engine seizing and spinning unevenly. Then Michael asking, "Are you alive?"
Our car flipped [from what we can gather] about 4 times. Across the entire median, to the other side of the interstate, landing miraculously rightside up.
I'm still finding glass in my purse, in a pair of shoes, on my floor. I can't get away from the experience... but I've discovered that maybe I don't want to let it go all the way.
This experience made my life stand still. Time didn't make sense, nothing was normal, I didn't even know how to have a normal conversation. But as time has slowly but steadily returned to its normal pace, my world is completely different. I feel like someone tied a rope around my torso and pulled me around in a sharp 180 degree turn. So many things that I thought mattered just stopped mattering, and the important stuff that I shoved in the background of my life suddenly became priority. It's not a "in the moment" kind of revelation, this is real, this is God, this is my life taking a huge leap in the best possible direction. I'm peaceful, for the first time in forever. I'm finally, truly, relinquishing the steering wheel to God. I found out in the most literal way possible that, as much as it feels like you're in control, you never fully have it. You are not a free agent. Your life is absolutely not your own. One second you may think that you've got the world wrapped around your pinky, but in a split second, you better believe that feeling can be shot to hell. After my accident, I was the smallest, most vulnerable I have ever felt. The obvious yet somehow earth shattering realization that I'm not the one to call the shots completely overtook me. I understand now and forever that this experience was a valiant act of God. I should have either died or been severely hurt in this car accident. Yet, everything that should have gone wrong didn't.
In the week leading up to the accident, I decided to go underway in the People of Praise, a decision that earlier in my life would have seemed absurd. But I've been given the grace to see the beauty of this body of people who love me as a sister and who are willing to lay their lives down for me every single day. I don't even know a lot of them either. Satan was so active while I made the decision to go underway. He put every single possible reason in my head as to why i SHOULDN'T go underway. It's a leap. It's uncertainty. It's unknown territory. It's away from the comfort of a college lifestyle. It's against the grain, no one here at school will understand. But amidst all of these scary thoughts in my head, God had an overwhelming presence. The word in my head that has been constantly present since the day I went underway is TRUST. I've been doing a lot of trusting lately. it's been the best decision of my life.
Someone told me a few days after the accident that when Satan wants to discourage you or when he gets angry, his immediate reaction is desperation. Satan makes desperate moves when he's desperate. His desperate and dramatic move in my life was making my car do acrobatics across an interstate. God deliberately counteracted this by completely preserving me. That alone for me is enough. I witnessed the awesome power of God. I was a receptacle for the outpouring of his grace and mercy. My eyes are wide open with anticipation of the great plans he has for me. I'm listening actively and completely willingly for the first time.
I've decided, based on tons of prayer and conversation that I will not be returning to school next semester. In other words, in t-minus two weeks, Mary Christeta will no longer be a college student. I don't quite know where I'll be living or what I'll be doing, but I do know that this is absolutely the right decision. I'm trusting God with this, foolishly and blindly. It's one of the hardest things I've ever decided, it's a blind step off of a cliff into the dark. I have no idea how long the fall will be, or if I'll fall at all. I do know that the right decisions do not always present themselves as the most comfortable or conventional options. Sometimes things don't make sense until you do them. So right now, I've stopped being solely a thinker and started being a doer. It's not a trip to Disney World, it's not warm and fuzzy. But it is good, and it is peaceful. For me, it is enough.
"Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act." -Psalm 37:5
