It was finally 5:00, and I couldn’t have gotten out of work fast enough. I was on my way to get TJ, and traffic is always bad that time of day. Traffic stopped suddenly, and I had to brake more quickly than normal, but not like I was slamming on the brakes. I came to a stop and looked in my rear view mirror. The car behind me had slammed on their brakes and came to a stop. Whew. Then I saw the van behind that car flying into it. I braced myself and closed my eyes. I felt the first crash then the second crash of my car being pushed into the car in front of me.
“God? Are You serious? I can’t. This is too much. I can’t do this. You’ve got to be kidding me.” I laid back in my seat and closed my eyes. This couldn’t be happening. “TJ! Oh no! I’m going to be late picking TJ up!” (Kids. You get in an accident. They still need you to pick them up.) I called my mom. “Mom, I just got in an accident! I’m fine, everything is fine. But I need someone to pick TJ up.”
“Okay! I’m leaving right now. Text me the address to his school,” my mom said. God bless her. She never gets a break. You’d think by the time your kids are grown ups they wouldn’t need you as much. But we need our mom possibly even more now than ever.
Then I called Thomas. He was still out of town, but was on his way to the airport. “Heyyyy I was on my way to pick TJ up from school and I got in an accident. It wasn’t my fault. The car two cars back hit the car behind me which hit my car which hit the car in front of me. It was a hard hit, but the car actually looks surprisingly good. Just a little dent in the front bumper from the trailer hitch on the car in front of me. And a few other minor scratches and dents. I can’t believe it. It was such a hard hit I thought for sure the car was totaled,” I spoke quickly, hoping Thomas wouldn’t have a chance to get mad if I just kept talking.
Then Thomas remembered, “Wait, why are you picking TJ up? Aren’t you supposed to be at work? Wasn’t your mom supposed to be picking him up?”
“Yeah…that’s a whole different story,” I muttered. Please don’t ask right now, I thought.
“What? What’s going on?” he asked.
“Well, William got in an accident yesterday. We don’t really know what’s going on, but it was bad,” I said, hoping there would be no more questions.
“Oh wow…I leave town for 2 days. I had a bad feeling when I was leaving too. I thought maybe my plane was going to crash or something. But I guess it was this,” Thomas said. He always has such a way with words in moments like this.
“Thomas can you not do this right now? Please? I’m hanging on by a thread here. Can we talk about this later?”
“Ok. I’m at the airport anyways. I’ll talk to you later.” We hung up.
He called me back a few minutes later. “Two people were killed??? Oh my gosh. We never should have moved back close to your family. We’re moving. We can’t be involved in this. This is bad. This is really bad,” Thomas said. Again with the words. Being kind and understanding in moments like this has never been his strength.
“Thomas, just stop. I can’t do this right now. I’ll talk to you later.” I hung up the phone and prayed, “God, I thought You were supposed to be bringing Thomas and my family closer together. This is, like, the complete opposite of what I have been praying for. I really hope You know what You’re doing. I mean, I know You do, I know You have a plan. I trust You, God. But, God, this is a mess. I have no idea what You’re doing. Please, please, please, fix this. Fix everything. I can’t do this, God. I need You. I need You so badly right now. I need You. Please God. I can’t do this on my own. This is so much bigger than me. This is…this is all You, God. You’ve got this. You’ve got this, right? Because I can’t do this. I can’t do anything. Take this. Please take this, God. Take this mess and turn it into something beautiful. Everything is so messed up. I hate this. I hate this God.”
I somehow made it through the rest of the day. I was supposed to work the following day, but I just couldn’t. I was drained, and I needed a break. I texted my boss. “Hey! So I was actually in an accident today. Crazy, I know, since my brother was in one yesterday. I’m fine! It was just a fender bender sort of thing. But I think I just need to take the day off tomorrow. I’m really really sorry! I promise I’ll be back on Monday well rested and ready to work!”
I think the following day, Thursday, was when my mom and dad were finally able to bail William out. I kept asking how he was, and my mom kept telling me he were in shock. “Please tell him I love him. And to call me if he wants to talk.”
It was either that night or the following night that William called me. I was so happy to see his name on my phone. William is a person of very few words. This was probably only the 5th time he had ever called me personally. “Hey!” I answered. I didn’t really know what to say. What do you say to someone who was just involved in a terrible accident that would likely change the course of his life? “How are you?” I genuinely wanted to know.
“Man, my anxiety’s through the roof,” he said.
“I’m sure. How could it not be?” I replied,
Then he said, “I’ve just been praying. That’s all I can do.”
“William, that makes me SO happy to hear that.” I couldn’t have heard better words. I knew in that moment that if he were praying, he was going to be okay.
I asked him if he thought he was an alcoholic. “I KNOW I’m an alcoholic,” he said without hesitation.
“William! I wish I had known!” I felt terrible. I was a recovering alcoholic, and I had absolutely no clue. I asked if he’d want to come with me to an AA meeting. He said he’d be open to it. “When do you want to go? There’s a meeting tonight. Do you want to go tonight? Let’s go tonight. It starts soon. Go get mom and tell her you guys need to leave.”
My mom called me back a couple minutes later. “William’s not ready to go tonight. We’ll try tomorrow.”
I was kind of happy that William said he was an alcoholic at first. I figured I had been through it all, and I thought I could help him figure out what to do. But then I realized that alcoholism is scary. If he wasn’t an alcoholic, then this whole thing would be just a very unfortunate accident; he’d face the consequences, and he’d move forward. But if he was an alcoholic, I knew there was a much longer, more complicated road he’d have to travel. Prison would be the easy part. Getting and staying sober would be a lifelong journey. It would require a lot of work and determination. And, what if he didn’t want to do that? What if he just kept drinking, or what if he relapsed? Then what? Would this same thing happen again? Or worse, would he get hurt next time? “God, I don’t know if William is an alcoholic or not. He said he was, so I think that means he probably is. But, that scares me. It was easier when it was me getting sober because I knew what I was thinking and I was in control of my actions. Now, I have no idea what William is thinking, and I have no control over his actions. I’m scared God. I know You have a plan and I’m really trying to trust You, but what if something bad happens, again? I don’t like this God. I wish this wasn’t real. I need You God. I’m scared, and I’m not sure that my faith will get me through this time. This is way worse than anything I’ve ever been through, and I’ve been through a lot. I just really need You.”
The next few weeks or months I was destroyed. I decided to sit down and organize my thoughts. What did I know? I knew that God existed. I knew that He wouldn’t allow or cause something like this to happen if He didn’t have a plan to make it better. I didn’t know if He allowed it to happen or if He caused it to happen, but I knew there must be a reason those 2 people died and William lived. And I knew William needed to get help to stop drinking and smoking and to also deal with the trauma from what happened. I didn’t know what kind of help he needed, just that he needed it. And I felt like it was my responsibility to help him get the help he needed. So that became my mission: help William get help. This wasn’t easy though. He had decided he wasn’t actually an alcoholic and that he didn’t need help. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to get help after what happened. I knew how amazing it was to be sober, and I wanted him to experience that happiness too. I wanted him to break free from the chains of addiction. I wanted him to have a better life. I kept pushing my mom to do something. I thought it was her job to make him go to AA meetings. I thought we needed to stage an intervention. I thought we needed to take drastic measures. But my mom and dad kept saying “he’s not ready,” or “I don’t want to push him over the edge.” Or “if we push him away he’s just going to go live with his birth mother.”
I was frustrated beyond belief. I blamed my mom and dad for not doing something. Anything. And I kept giving advice after advice after advice and they would never listen to me. The more I tried to control the situation, the more I felt out of control. And nothing seemed to be changing. Why would God allow 2 people to die if He wasn’t going to change William? What was the point of William going to prison and going through all of this if he wasn’t going to turn his life around? I was struggling. I was questioning God and didn’t know what to believe.
Then I found out I was pregnant. I was so incredibly happy. This was one of the things I’d been praying for. After William’s accident, I had kind of given up on having another child, at least at the moment, because I didn’t think I could handle it. But there I was with a positive pregnancy test. It wasn’t exactly the timing I would have hoped for (ideally, I would have liked to had another child 2 years earlier, but apparently being an actively drinking alcoholic got in the way of that). But God’s timing isn’t always what we plan on.
One night, I was folding laundry, and I usually pray while I’m doing that. I kept thinking about how, even though I wanted another child so badly, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I drank heavily for the first two years of TJ’s life. Then I spent the next 6 months getting sober and focusing on myself. I hadn’t exactly been the perfect mom, not even close. I prayed, “God, I have no idea why You would choose to give me another child. I’m so unqualified. But I’m so so so grateful. Please help me be the best mom to TJ and this new baby. I know I’m not perfect, but please help me be as close to perfect as I can be.” And this is one of the 3 or 4 times I believe I actually heard God talk to me. I was standing there with a shirt in my hand, and I heard God say, “Grace, don’t you understand? I didn’t CREATE you to be a perfect mom.”
I want to pause here and say that I do not say I heard God talk to me in a frivolous way. Claiming to hear God’s voice is serious. So when I say I heard God talk to me, I wholeheartedly believe that God actually spoke to me. The best way I can explain it is a thought popped in my head that was definitely not my own. This has only happened to me 3 or 4 times. There have been plenty of other times when I have “felt” like God was telling me something or when something has been “weighing on my heart,” but those things are different than what I am describing here. I also want to say that just because God said something to me, it does not necessarily mean that it applies to everyone else. Okay, back to the story.
That was all I heard, but I knew immediately what it meant. Not only am I not SUPPOSED to be perfect, that’s not even supposed to be my GOAL. I will never be even close to perfect. God was saying, “being perfect is My job. My strength is made perfect in your weakness. Be weak. Be what I created you to be. So that I can be strong and perfect THROUGH you.” I’ve found that sometimes we can hear the same things over and over again and not get anything from it. But just changing one simple word or rearranging the sentence or saying the exact same thing in a different way is enough to change your whole perspective. I had known my whole life that I wasn’t perfect, even though I tried my best. But I always thought that that’s what I was supposed to do – try my best to be perfect. But suddenly, it clicked. I’m not even supposed to TRY. And this is the important part: God doesn’t want me to even THINK that I can be perfect. He wants me to know that I will NEVER be good enough. Even my very best efforts will fail.
To a non-believer, that would be absolutely devastating. But to Christians, this is amazing. It’s absolutely freeing. I don’t even have to TRY anymore. I can just go to sleep at night and let God be God. I can rest in knowing that HE is the perfect parent for TJ and this unborn baby. And me. HE is all they need. And HE is all I need.
To God be ALL the Glory!
Love, Grace
P.S. Please do not take this to mean that we can just sit back and be lazy and do whatever we want. I will definitely talk more about this later. But for now, I just want to focus on the mindset. I want to highlight that we truly, truly do not have to worry about anything we say or do. And I want everyone to think about how freeing that is. That, I believe, is what brings about a peace beyond all understanding. Just let that sink in, and I’ll come back to what we “should” say and do another time.
