So Mer and I decided to drive up to Seattle to spend this year’s Thanksgiving with my (Paul’s) family. I spent Wednesday morning working while Mer spent the morning doing the same, packing up the whole family and trying to get the kids ready to go and in the car. My morning was filled with a few difficult meetings while hers was filled with a few difficult moments with a 5 year old and a 3 year old. Our goal was to pick up Noah from school at 2:30 and get out of town before the traffic picked up. Being that Wednesday is the most traveled day of the year in America I had hoped that I would be the one guy with the good idea to leave work a little early and beat the holiday traffic. But locking my keys in my truck didn’t help that too much at all. After solving that problem we ended up getting out of town at about 3:30, finding out that the rest of Portland had the same idea we had of leaving town at that time.
A highlight of our trip up to the Seattle was a colorful round of a game we like to play in our family called “the favorite game,” while the low point of the trip had to be the grissel they call meat at Taco Bell as well as the 5 hours it took to get there. Every time I eat any kind of fast food with any kind of meat in it, I fear for my life! I don’t need to sit in a shrink’s couch to figure out why I have this terrible fear. I can very easily trace it back to the day before my youngest son, Jonah, was born. We were scheduled to be induced on 12 midnight of March 16th, 2001, so Mer had me stop by Carl’s Junior on the way home from work and get what was, at the time, my favorite…the western bacon cheeseburger. I swiftly devoured my burger and onion rings and washed it down with a coke. But as the hours passed, the after taste just got worse and worse until the burps were unbearable. Soon, the toilet and I became best buddies and we developed a very intimate relationship. Eleven thirty rolled around and Mer came down to the bathroom, both of us already very disillusioned with this whole process. We decided that the best thing to do would be to have her drive herself to the hospital and I would be right behind her as soon as my stomach calmed down. At two thirty in the morning, Mer had been checked in and my stomach showed no signs of mercy. So I picked my heap of a mess and drove myself to the hospital, stopping quite often to…well…you know. I arrived at the hospital and barely found myself to the maternity ward where the nurses doubted very seriously that I had a wife that was giving birth. They, instead, pointed me to the emergency room and said that if I didn’t go myself, they were going to forcibly take me. The next thing I knew, it was 7:00 AM and I was laying in the emergency doped up on anti-nausea medication and pain medication for my back…which I had violently thrown out while throwing up. I felt a little better and told them in a drunken stupor that I had a wife upstairs giving birth and just might have already. After they laughed a few times, I persisted and, after looking, they finally believed me. I raced upstairs, if you could call it racing. I looked much like Igor running the 100 meter. Thankfully, I made it in time for Jonah to be born, but was half baked on all the pain stuff they gave me. I don’t remember too much of it, except for the part when Dr. Stewart said, “Hey, wake up! Your son is here! Do you wanna take some pictures, errr help her count, errr do something except for sleep?” I grabbed the camera, took a few shots of the wall, counted to ten and collapsed back on the day bed. That was at 8:30 AM. We didn’t name Jonah until 10:30 that night, when I finally woke up and realized that my wife had just gone through all of that by herself! She even let me name him, since she felt so bad for me – and because we couldn’t agree on a name.
So we had a great time at my parent’s house for Thanksgiving. Everyone was there! Mom and dad, the nephews and nieces and cousins and brothers and sist…actually…not my sister. She ended up having the flu and spent the whole weekend in bed. The rest of us had a good time, but it just wan’t the same without Christina. We ate, shared what we were thankful for, watched movies, sat in the hot tub. My brother Scott’s wife began to weep when it was her turn and she barely able to say through the tears how thankful she was that Scott has been sober for nearly two years, and that she couldn’t be more proud of him…especially since their second child, Hunter, was due to be born the next week. It was great…until my mom came out to the living room and said, “You guys, dad needs you in the room. He wants you all to pray for him. He’s in the most pain he’s ever been in and it’s not going away.” We walked into dad’s room and there he was, writhing in pain, holding the shoulder that was just operated on a few days beforehand. I’ve only seen my dad cry or writhe in pain a few times, and every time it has been a sobering experience…there’s something about it that just shakes me to the core. It was a pretty emotional experience. We all prayed, and then decided directly after the prayer that it would be best to take him to the emergency room. So we did.
What a rollercoaster, huh! Great times of celebration surrounded by hurt, pain, depression, and suffering. What’s up with that?! But as we were driving back down to Portland I began to reflect on this seaming rollercoaster of a trip and I think God began to talk to me as I sat there driving. I thought about the many times that Paul mentioned in many of his letters to the early church that we should approach suffering with joy. I thought about the many other situations of suffering in my life, including a broken neck, time of separation from my wife when we were first married, tough years through high school, and more. And through it all, I know that Christ was with me…even allowing these things to take place to develop me and mature my character. I realized that THIS IS LIFE, and that it doesn’t mean that God is mad at me, or that he is not in control. Life is full of good times and bad times…it’s just the way it is.
Have you ever seen the movie “Eternal Sunshine For The Spotless Mind” with Jim Carrey? It the end of this bizarre movie, after trying to erase all the hurtful memories in his past (especially those memories that revolved around painful experiences in relationships) through a medical procedure where they would put a metal bowl on his head and somehow track down all the negative memories, there’s a quote that says something to the effect of: Life wouldn’t be life without good AND BAD. It’s what makes us who we are. We can’t just take out all the bad experiences in our life, because it is those experiences that make us who we are.
So am I embracing all the bad stuff that comes into my life now? Heck no! I wish. But I can at least know that God is control, that Christ loves me, and that his purposes are being accomplished in my life and in the world.
