The Crash That Killed

Ten years ago today I woke up at the normal time to start the day, but my emotions were out of sorts. Indescribable and awkward.

Not before or since, do I remember having such an uneasy anxiety inside of me.  I crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up over my face, leaving only my eyes peering out (obviously to watch out for monsters).

I was almost 40.  My marriage was almost non-existent in my heart. I had given that up years before.  My life was a searching, complicated mess; self-induced mania and control.

Any number of factors could have been erupting inside my soul at that moment; but I now believe it was a premonition of a great disruption about to happen.

For the previous ten years, as an adult parent daughter, my relationship with my father had been on my own private roller coaster of unmet expectations.  (uh, Very similar to my approach to my first marriage, but that’s for another day.)

This would be the day that every part of my life would crash into a new scene.

Think:

…an explosion of light that makes you squint and blink for a long time until your eyes adjust.

…Lucy stepping through the wardrobe, pushing through coats and darkness and finding a world that she didn’t know existed on the other side. 

… Dorothy opening the door to a full-color world of discovery.

On a westbound Metra train with my best friend and six kids, I would receive the cell phone call from my step mom.  She was near hysterical.  An out of control tractor-trailer truck crushed my father in his car on his way home from work.

Ten years ago today. When my control over perfection and every thing I sought in every wrong place had to find a new course.

When I crumbled into a hundred million tiny pieces, able to make sense of nothing.  Brokenness. Completely lost and unable to remember how I kept it straight before. The maze locked up.

The living lie was crumbling.

Only one was able to step in and take over.  Only One Amazing God.

It’s a strange humility and gratitude and deep-sigh amazing grace that overwhelms me today.  I didn’t deserve for Him to save me.

Simply and miraculously, God rescued me.

The funeral director said about my father’s body: “we don’t know if we can make him presentable.”

I wonder if I looked the same to God.

But He scooped up all my pieces and made me new.

All new.