The Accident, Part 3
This is the much belated third installment of the story of the car accident I was in in 1995. If you’d like to refresh your memory, here are Part 1 and Part 2.
10th grade went by mostly without any problems. I’d started driving the previous summer, but I wasn’t confident enough to drive by myself yet. The day of the homecoming dance, October 1996, my dad drove me to the salon and the mall to get my hair, makeup, and nails done. On the way home we stopped by the oil change place to pick up my sister’s Toyota Corolla. I would follow Dad home in Jenny’s car, my first time behind the wheel completely alone. As I pulled out onto Beltline Road, another car changed lanes. They didn’t see me and rear-ended the Corolla, throwing me onto the grass. I had no idea what had happened. I think I thought I’d hit the curb really hard exiting the parking lot. But looking in the rearview mirror, I noticed a car following me. The cops showed up; we exchanged insurance information. I went to the homecoming dance that night with a bunch of friends. The insurance said it was my fault. I didn’t want to drive anymore.
Charitable Giving
The phrase “give back” has never resonated with me. In fact, it kinda makes me angry. Give back what? To whom? Did I take something? Especially that I shouldn’t have?
Mostly I don’t like being asked to “give back” or donate money to rich people. My high school, my university, some amorphous conglomerate of haves challenging me to give money to them to help the have-nots.* They do an incredibly poor job of telling the stories of the people who are being helped.
Lately SMU has been sending emails challenging me to donate so that we can get more donors than TCU. Really?? I’m supposed to give in order to boost my pride that we beat the other rich university who has a less inspiring mascot than our fierce ponies? Giving is about humility, serving. They have totally missed the point.
Entice me to give. Don’t guilt me into it.** Don’t appeal to my selfishness.***
God does it best. I have never regretted tithing or giving to the Church. God’s Word tells me to give, so my action is obedience to His command. There are a host of life-giving promises and rewards associated with godly obedience, and I gladly accept them. And, at least at NewSpring, we do a great job (and we’re getting better) of telling the stories of people who are helped by my giving.
Everyone, rich and poor, needs the Gospel. Every day. I have no problem giving to an institution, rather Body, that employs people who spread the Gospel to more and more places in the world. Here in the U.S. and abroad. Young and old. There is no one who changes lives for good like Jesus Christ. He educates, employs, gives hope, feeds, clothes, gives rest, encourages, and gives purpose to our every moment. He is not limited in any way. He is omni-present and omnicient. He knows all things for all time, and He forgives sin. There is no greater person or cause. He can have all my money. It’s His in the first place–I just steward it.
*The fact that I both went to a private high school & university and benefited from financial aid to both institutions qualifies me as a have AND have-not. Going into a significant amount of debt at the university makes me feel more the latter.
**Every day I realize more and more what a gift my high school was. I might actually give money to them at some point. God used my teachers, friends, and the culture of TCA in my life, and He still does.
***I’d be more likely to donate to specific teachers who impacted me than the whole of SMU.
OCD Packing Protocol, or How Not to Forget Things When Leaving Town
My mom retired with American Airlines in 2003 after twenty-two years of faithful service. Needless to say, we traveled A LOT when I was growing up. I’ve been to 41 of the United States, 22 countries, and moved houses 27 times. I’d definitely say I have some packing credentials.
Yet despite all this practice, I still forget things when leaving on a trip. Different trips to different locales at different times of year using different types of transportation require different packing strategies. For example: The TSA won’t let you take more than 3 oz. containers of liquids or gels in a carry-on, but when traveling by car or train, I can take all the liquids I want! Like wine. And if I bring or buy a bottle of wine, I need to open it. Therefore, pack a wine bottle opener. And a plastic wine glass.
So sometime last year I wrote out an official packing to-do list in an effort to remember it all, no matter the circumstances. Here it is. Obviously, if you don’t need it, don’t pack it. Like a swimsuit if you’re going skiing. I mean, but maybe you do need a swimsuit.*
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How to Buy Grassfed Beef from the Farm
Today we picked up our year’s supply of grassfed beef from a local farmer. This is the fourth year we’ve done it, and I can’t say enough good things about the experience. Buying local is good for the farmer, good for your health, and good for the economy. And it sure beats paying $18 a pound for a steak.
However, you have to do a bit of research to navigate the farm-to-table world. Here’s an overview of our process.
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The Accident, Part 2
As the doctors loaded me into an ambulance headed for Dallas, I remember being given a morphine pill to start tapering down the strength of my drugs. At Brook Army Medical Center I was on a morphine drip with “the button”. I could press the button any time I felt pain, and mostly I just pressed it because I was afraid of the idea of pain. The ride back home to North Texas was uneventful. I slept most of the time, Mom holding my hand as she rode alongside my stretcher.
Home for the foreseeable future was Plano Rehabilitation Hospital. Nurses wheeled me into a big white room with two white hospital beds and a big window overlooking the parking lot. Everyone was very nice, seemingly excited to see a young person for once. As I started my regimen of occupational therapy, speech therapy, and physical therapy, I noticed I was the youngest patient there. Plano Rehab was full of heart-attack and stroke victims, and a fifteen-year-old was an anomaly.
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The Accident, Part 1
Sixteen years ago I almost died.
In late October 1995 my uncle Ron died suddenly of a heart attack, so my mom, dad, eighteen-year-old sister, and I (then fifteen) went to San Antonio for the funeral. The morning after the funeral, on Halloween, my family headed back to Dallas in our Nissan Altima. It was a drizzly morning, and I remember waving to my mom’s mom, Grandmacita, as we pulled out of her driveway. She always stood out in her front yard when we’d leave, holding one arm up with the other as she waved a long goodbye.
When we got on the highway, the rain started coming down harder, and soon it pummeled the car in sheets. We were near the Walzem Road exit on I-35 when we hit the truck. There was a big patch of standing water on the highway because of a stopped-up drain. A woman in a pick-up truck had almost gotten hit by an 18-wheeler that was jack-knifing, so she pulled over to the left-hand emergency lane. When we ran over the water, our Altima hydroplaned too, and we slammed into the back of the woman’s pick-up truck. The airbags deployed, and the car filled with smoke and powder. We’d never had a car with airbags before, so Mom & Dad thought it was on fire. They told my sister, Jenny, and me to get out of the car immediately. I got out on the left near the median, and Jenny exited on the right near traffic. Mom & Dad’s doors wouldn’t open in the front, so they climbed into the back to get out.
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So Long, Old Friend
Pepe
August 1998-July 2011
We sold Pepe on Sunday. He died in February of this year, but we had him in our driveway till yesterday afternoon. I’m sad. I’m really sad. And a little confused. It seems over-reactionary or shallow to have such deep attachment to a car. But he was my friend.
He was my first car—a beautiful, black 1995 Toyota 4Runner with tan leather interior and a sunroof. I remember driving to the dealer’s with my dad in 1998 to test drive him. It was just a month before I started my senior year of high school, and I had all the money to buy my dream car. It was some of the first official paperwork I ever signed, and I still have every page.
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Idealism or Compromise?
I’m currently listening to a This American Life episode about harvesting natural gas as an alternative energy source. According to some scientists, it’s not as “clean” as natural gas proponents would have us believe. But for a small town in Pennsylvania that is learning to live alongside this new industry, natural gas means prosperity not just for moguls, but for them, the little guys.
It reminds me of a scene in Sabrina, the 1954 movie with Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, & William Holden. Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart) is explaining to his brother David (William Holden) the virtue of moving their plastics industry into the Caribbean: “So a new industry goes up in an underdeveloped area and once barefooted kids have shoes, washed faces, and their teeth fixed.”
I would certainly consider myself an idealist. It doesn’t matter how much something costs in the moment if long term the benefit outweighs momentary outlay. I say let’s invest in research for the best green energy possible (solar, wind) rather than settle for another fossil fuel source that will carry us for the next 20-50 years. Cradle to Cradle innovation is far and away better for everyone and everything than recycling plastic, for example, and merely postponing its eventual death in a landfill.
But there are those times when a 90% or even 70% solution is the best right now. Compromise is better than stagnation. How do you decide if idealism or compromise is the win?
How Is Christianity Different From Other Religions?
Other religions explain how we can work to find God, but Christianity is the only faith that tells of God’s desire to find us, to reveal Himself to us. God wants to have relationship with humans because He made us. But because of sin—our inability to be perfect as God is perfect—God can have nothing to do with us. For “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” (1 John 1:5-6). We are completely unable to do what it takes to have unhindered relationship with the perfect, holy God of the universe. So He, in his incredible grace and love toward us, made a solution.
God’s Son, Jesus Christ, came to earth and lived among us, died to pay the penalty for our sin, and rose from death. The Bible says that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Death is the penalty for all human sin. In our sin nature, we are under the wrath of God and will spend eternity apart from Him in Hell. But through belief in Jesus Christ—believing that He is the Son of God and paid for our sins, for my sin, and rose to conquer death—I am no longer under God’s wrath but under His grace. I can have direct relationship with God through Jesus Christ. God is so kind, and so wonderful, that He met the requirement for His holy law when I couldn’t. He paid the debt that I owe and could never pay back. This is the ultimate gift. And I want it with my whole heart.
Is God Separate from Religion? If Not, Which Religion Is True?
Religions all over the world seek to explain who or what God is and why we exist. But many say conflicting things about God. One religion says that God is holy; another says he is good and evil. But really, He can’t be both. So which is right? One religion says there is one God; another says there are many gods. But which belief is true? All things can’t be true at the same time (however adamant post-modernism may be that they are). Truth is true. Lies are false. And we have to choose what to believe.
