all things

Up all night with our little one who couldn't stop throwing up in her crib, changing sheets again and again, running a 3 AM bath, I texted my husband to let him know that we missed him, that we needed him, that I was now most certainly having another miscarriage.  D, who had silently rented a car and begun the six-hour drive home a few hours earlier, called me right back from the side of the road as he looked up directions.

A minute or so later, an eighteen wheeler going 80 miles an hour slammed into the driver's side of my husband's rental car.  I heard the gush of wind, the shriek of metal shearing metal, and a thud as the phone dropped.

And just like that, perspective entered my situation.

He's fine.  His computer screen shattered, but there's not a scratch on the man of my dreams.  He was a bit dazed, and he took his sweet time picking up the phone again while I had a few moments of sheer panic, but he's absolutely okay.  What ensued was a ridiculous ordeal of figuring out how to get him home from the Super 8 in a small town called Hancock, Maryland, where the police officer left him a few hours later. He finally got home late last night, almost 24 hours later, exhausted in every possible way but still in one piece.  

This weekend, I had the distinct feeling that I was being pushed off of a ledge by a very careful and loving Hand. Over the years I've spent getting to know my own inner workings, I've written a lot about being a do-er, a control-er, a make-er of situations.  I know that it's a strength in many ways to be motivated and driven and tireless in pursuit of a goal.  But the hard reality is that our best efforts don't matter in the end.  That is not to say that they don't matter at all, but in the end, I can chart and plan and get pregnant, but I can't orchestrate the right chromosomes to sustain a life.  I can nurture and love my husband, but I can't fix his depression or his anxiety.  I can nag him to drive safely, but I can't keep a semi from sideswiping him at 3 AM.  We have some control, but we are not IN control.

And that, at this moment, is God's grace to me.  Little things happen and I can maintain the illusion that I'm still the make-er, the do-er.  I can be pretty self-absorbed that way.  But a little more, a little more, and then I'm suddenly launched into a gracious free fall into the hand of God, my hands finally pried away from any semblance of control or responsibility.  There, finally, I can rest.  If it's not up to me, if I can't make it happen, when I am finally in a place where I actually believe that with my heart and soul, well, okay then.  I can...stop.  Rest.  Be.

Romans says that God works all things for the good of those who love Him, and today, I believe it.  Even miscarriages and sick babies and life-threatening accidents.  Sometimes, it's the only way He can get us to stop, to park it for a while.  God knows that all the healthy children and scratch-free cars in the world would leave me micromanaging their little lives and screaming at careless drivers and not being able to revel in the goodness of what I have if I weren't taught, again and again, that I can't do a damn thing to make life happen, to keep myself safe.  My efforts are always in vain.  And in the end, it's not about what kind of family I create or what kind of marriage I have or what kind of people we have the reputation of being; in the end, it's me, and God, and an adventure, and some day, I'll go Home.