john

There are sounds that wake you up, even when your eyes are open. Your heart, the depth of your life, is pulled to the surface. Anything stagnant is stirred at once. These moments happen often, though we don’t realize them. They happen despite our paying attention. Directing our eyes with fierce conviction that this event should not be missed. I steer clear of any notion that God would use another’s pain for my revelatory experience, though for some reason this is the case here. In the midst of this man’s suffering I glimpsed shalom. Paradox beyond comprehension. God can teach me without another’s pain. But, whether in a month or a year, my pain and grief and suffering will somehow possibly be the catalyst leading to someone’s tired soul being all-at-once revived anew. Hopefully inspiring them to kindness, generosity, love and greater awareness of the connectedness of all things.

I stared aimlessly at the car in front of me waiting to turn left. The sound of metal-on-metal abruptly followed Kirsten’s breathless scream. A motorcycle rider collided with a sedan turning left on a blinking yellow light.

As I rushed to John, another man came to help as well. Then another. Then a woman.

We comforted him as shaking hands attempted multiple times,, after mistyping, to dial ‘911’

“Is anyone a medical professional?!”

“What’s your name?”

Brushing the glass shards away from where I was kneeling, my mind started to race as the rhythm of the leaking fuel dripped onto the pavement from the splintered bike.

There was a terrifying wholeness in the midst of this situation.

Not one person asked the political affiliation, religious background or sexual orientation. Our brother, John, was dying.

I held his legs down and straight, at the advice of the RN on the scene, waiting for the ambulance, wondering why the hell it felt like I could hear it from so far away and yet it was taking so long.

His shirt ripped off, chest exposed. Vulnerable and broken. John was a baby once. Did you know that?

“Stay with us…”

His body was still warm as I continued to shake him with my praying hands, not breaking eye contact virtually the entire time. I had hoped that if he was able to see clearly, he would see someone looking back at him with a life-affirming gaze that valued and loved him, though I did not know him.

In and out of consciousness we begged him to stay awake those eternal 7 minutes before the ambulance carried his limp body away. He took his spirit into that truck, along with his frail and fractured frame. As I stood up I caught a glimpse of the woman. With fingers pointed by bystanders, in unison, there she stood, an elderly woman with her hands on her head in shock at what she had just done.

She was suffering, too. Did you know that?

Waves of love. Waves of pain.

I had not expected such an event to bring to the surface so many feelings. After Kirsten and I got home, we both could feel the renewed gratitude and love that was harbored in our home. For one another, for our health, for our lives. But it also resuscitated something deeper in me. For nearly two years I’ve been out of full time church work and in the business world doing sales. At different times and in various seasons during this two years I’ve had time to grow and heal and slow down to think about what I feel most called to — in the biggest sense of that phrase. It has also allowed me to be distracted by much. Knowing in my bones the deep yearning for some type of deep soul-work to be my life-long craft and pursuit. I’ve thought differently about what that could possibly mean. Perhaps working again at a church, though this time I certainly would need to weigh the decision with greater discernment. Maybe chaplaincy or spiritual direction. Whatever it is will most likely lead me back to graduate education and seminary studies. I’ve been so uncertain for so long how to dive in. Reluctant to fail and honestly scared to misstep. But if I’ve learned anything this last two years it’s this:
life is not linear. It’s not a straight path. It’s not always up and to the right on the graph.

There’s a weightiness to life that draws some people towards the pain of others. I feel this at a spiritual and bodily level. That the “stuff” of life, the Juice, is in the trenches with the dying, those in pain, those celebrating new life, and going on a journey, as a journeyer myself, with others. Courage is difficult and I often request that all the certain pieces fall into place before making a step to mitigate my looking like an idiot or wasting time or money. But there’s a wider and more energizing wave of life that, like a strong current, can pull us into what we’re truly built for if we can trust more.

I searched the internet for some type of story or article on the accident to check up on John. To see if he had lived, like I prayed he would.

I do know that John reminded me of something deeply important that night I met him. Something difficult to fully articulate here, and I’m okay with that. I’ll choose to honor his life and that encounter with him by choosing to live fully into my own life.