Something Really Important

Something really bad happened. I know that I don't usually get too deep or serious on this blog but today I just have to get it out because every time my mind stills for a minute I start thinking and getting angry and all that stuff.

Friday a friend and co-worker had an accident. As nearly as I can figure it really was just an accident. A mis-step. I don't know why or exactly how, I only know the outcome. And it was bad.

When I told my sister what had happened and what the first responders said she told me that it wasn't likely that he would live and if he did it probably would be a very different life that he had been living.

Shock and confusion-- not so much anger until I had to report this incident to a bureaucrat just doing his job much the same as I was just doing mine. But describing what had happened and hearing his nonchalance about it just made me mad. "Is this a fatality? Or is it just very likely to be a fatality?" "What was he doing? What parts of the body? How far, how tall, how this, how that" My anger came then. I tried to feign the same professional attitude but it irritated me. "This person is a friend as well as a co-worker" I said "give me a minute to think." It wasn't Mr Bureaucrat's fault, it was his job, he had to ask. My job describing this on various reports over and over. Clicking on 'fatality' for the first time in my whole career. Thinking of how to help his widow with benefits. Putting processes into motion. Making mundane the obscene. This is my job. I do not care much for my job just now. And I am just at the very beginning.

Let me tell you a little about this friend. I met him a few years back when he came to work with the company where I work. I do the HR and the payroll and usually this means words on applications and copies of SS cards-- but he came into the office a lot. At first I was startled by his tattoos--- he had some scary ones. Souvenirs of a phase of his life he had put behind him. Sometimes I would joke with him that his tats were staring at me and it was freaking me out. He was one of those people who found strength in his faith in God to get sober and straighten out his life. And he was joyful in this and not afraid to talk about it because he remembered where he had come from. In the past couple of years I saw him meet a woman he loved and get married, buy a home. He was happy. The last time I spoke to him was the Tuesday before he died. He had called into the office because there was a problem with payroll and he hadn't gotten paid on time. We talked about what was going on and his last words to me were "It is okay, sweetie. I know you will get it worked out, don't worry about it". He could have been angry- he had every right to be upset with me, but he wasn't.

So I am angry and I don't know what to do with it. I am not angry with him-- it truly was an accident. I am not angry with God for taking him because my understanding of 'how things work' tells me that were it not for his relationship with God I probably would never have known him and the happy life that he left probably would never have happened. Besides this I am thankful that God set up some physical laws that we can count on; like gravity. Aren't you glad that gravity always works? That we don't have to figure out how to keep our feet stuck on the ground and our stuff from floating around all over the place? But sometimes those same laws aren't quite so benign; like when you step out into space you fall. Or the fact that two things cannot occupy the same exact space. One or both will succumb to the other. Two cars crashing into each other suffer damage. It is the natural state of things that sometimes #@^% happens.
And if everything that I have built my entire life and thought structures around is true and this life is a transitory phase then we must all, at some point, move along to the next step.
I think my anger comes with that transition. If it just were not so painful for everyone involved. If living a long life barring a run in with physics did not end with a slow crawl away from the 'me' you have been all your life toward pain and confusion and loss of who you have always been. If only our bodies were not always slowly moving from birth toward death. It feels wrong. It hurts. It makes me angry at how unfair it is.
But it doesn't make me angry at God. Not to say I have never been angry with God, mind you. Immediately coming to mind is a very bad stretch after my husband left me and I sought answers to all the 'whys': Why did God let me marry him to start with? Why did God let him cheat on me? Why did I deserve my life to be shattered? Why did my children have to be brought up in a broken home by a broken mother? Why can't anyone love me? Why? I screamed out to God "I cannot trust You with my life if you do not explain this to me in a way that makes sense. I do not believe you have a good plan for my life. I do not believe You really love me." And after a long time of being broken and needing to find strength from somewhere outside of myself I finally learned that trust and love is a choice. You do not have to understand everything to trust- you either choose to have it or not. You choose that you are either better off with it or without it. I also learned a lot about free will (and physics) and I found that I could choose to trust and accept the strength and support and love that I could not live without any more. And my security within that trust allows me to be angry sometimes and question sometimes and not understand a lot of what happens--- and be secure knowing that God is okay with that. He promised me that in the Bible.
I am really really glad that the very last conversation I will ever have with my friend has left me with a good feeling. I am relieved that there is no regret. It made me think of the last words I might have with all of you--- because no one really knows when that might happen. So just in case this is it there are a few things I want to say to you.
I love you all. You are good friends and family and even acquaintances with excellent taste because you read my blog. I know that some of you politely read through my spiritual thoughts with the same sort of bemused affection that you might have if I were talking about something cute my cats did as if it were just some other hobby that has piqued my interest. I want you to all know how important it is to me that you know that my relationship with God is the best part of my life. This is where my 'me' comes from. Yes, He made me just a little quirkey. This relationship is where my strength comes from. This relationship is where my security comes from. And I want to know that, should I be moving along any time soon, that you won't have to wonder why I never told you all of this.
Because I know with all my heart and with my very intelligent brain (that thinks for itself lest you think I am just easily led)--- that when my friend left this world and moved along to the next that he woke up in the arms of the Jesus that he knew loved him because the Bible promises that too.
And I so badly want to know the same about every one of you reading this right now. So with all my LOVE and no regrets I pass along my very best hope and prayer for you tonight,

LeAnn