So as promised, here is the story of my semester. It's a long story; if you don't want to read it all, or simply don't care, that's fine by me.
Many of you have heard that this has been a hard semester for me. However, up to this point, I can count on one hand the people who have heard all the details of it. It's been rather traumatic, and I am only just beginning now to feel that I can look it in the eye and recount it.
For I feel that I must recount it; it's not a tale of woe, or a passive plea for pity. It's a story of God working in spite of circumstances; a story of pain, power, messiness, and miracles. I do not want anyone to read this and feel sorry for me; if I wanted your sympathy, I'd simply ask for it. Either way, I don't feel sorry for myself. Instead, I hope that you would read this and see God's hand at work and be encouraged to look inside your own situation to find his grace there in ways that you haven't seen before; I would also encourage you to expect grace in times when you feel it the least. This is why my story must be told.
The semester began in January with a girl. She's a great girl and I fell for her. It's not necessary to go into all the details; suffice it to say that it didn't work out. I will also say that she is a wonderful person and that I do not bear her any ill will. Feelings get involved in relationships, and that makes things hard. It's not anybody's fault, though.
So that was something emotional to grapple with; and somewhere in processing that, I took a drive in the beautiful countryside of Kentucky. I hoped to get some clear direction from God on how to handle this situation; and while I did not receive any direction, I did receive a hug from my Creator and the assurance that whatever happened that it would turn out okay. I thought that word was for this specific situation; I was wrong.
Also in this time, I began to develop chest pains. My chest would feel tight and I would experience shortness of breath on occasion. I knew something was wrong, but not being the brightest star in the sky, I didn't do anything about it. This will come into play later.
After the situation with the girl came to some resolution, I began to experience some trouble with school. Due to an upcoming trip to Israel, I had to take online classes; unfortunately, I didn't get that figured out until two days before drop/add closed. I couldn't order books for my classes until the first week was over. So coming off of a tough relational issue, I found myself three weeks behind in my classes. My books came in and I made everything up; 1500 pages to read, 20 pages to write, and 20 hours of work outside of that. 4 hours of sleep a night, and I was caught up in a week. However, I was exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally.
This was about a week before I headed to Israel. One night, I got a call from my boss at work informing me that a co-worker had been murdered. Even though he and I were not close, I was in no shape at this time to deal with something like that. He was a good guy; very nice spirit. He had been raised in the church, but had abandoned it and was searching other avenues of faith and belief. I had the opportunity to speak with him about spiritual matters on occasion, and I always found those discussions uplifting and challenging.
He had become involved in a romantic relationship with another man (whom we found out later had violent tendencies) and over time became impressed with the need to break the relationship off. He went to a public place in broad daylight to break up with him; the other man pulled a gun and shot him twice in the middle of a crowded parking lot at three in the afternoon.
Stuff like that doesn't happen. Never have I prayed before that God would have mercy on someone's soul; never ever would I have thought that such a prayer could be genuine or heartfelt. And yet, such was my prayer.
This same weekend, my car broke down to the tune of $2300. I could give you a laundry list of what was wrong with it, but that's not important. It was just another thing that had gone wrong in 2009. So I was leaving for Israel early next week; fortunately, my warranty provided for a rental while my car was in the shop and my car was ready the day before I left for Israel.
And here, things started to get better. I had received an unexpected scholarship this semester that gave me another $1000 to play with; I hadn't spent it and was kinda pondering how to. I got the bill for my car and found that after the warranty I had to pay about $950. Kapow! God is good. I also got a rental for the time that my car was in the shop. Not bad.
So the next day I went to Israel for two weeks, which was great. At this point I just needed to get out of town for a while. My dad (a doctor) looked me over regarding the pains and said there was nothing wrong. In Israel I got to take a small break from schoolwork; however, this was not a stress free time by any stretch of the imagination. I was still a basket case, just somewhat removed from the basket.
I returned to Wilville feeling somewhat better, but utterly disgusted at the fact that I had to return at all. I did not want to be back at all. At this point, I was associating bad things with the place where I lived, and I just wanted to be somewhere else. Nothing bad happened to me in Israel; I just wanted to be someplace that I knew bad things didn’t happen all the time.
About a week after I returned, my chest pains started to get worse and worse. Couple that with making up time in class (again) and my stress levels went up. One evening, my neck locked up, I got lightheaded, my left side started to tingle, and I started feeling nauseous; so I flipped out and went to a local urgent care center because I thought I was having a stroke or a heart attack.
Turns out that I wasn’t; the doctor basically said that it was an allergy/stress attack and sent me home with a prescription for an albuterol inhaler. But it got me thinking…
I just had a panic attack. I’d heard stories of people who had panic attacks. I was not one of those people. Until now. What’s wrong with me? What’s going on? I took the rest of the weekend off from homework and began to take a solid, hard look at my life and what I was doing to ensure that I wasn’t overworked. Certainly a step in the right direction.
Then I went home the following weekend; my sister’s high school play was that weekend, and I wanted to see it. Home was so good; it seemed like every interaction I had there was sent by God. There was peace in Tulsa. You could have told me that it was God’s will for me to stay here, forget my education and settle, and I would have believed you and done it. But some great conversations with friends convinced me otherwise. Dad also worked on me again; he discovered some stuff that he had missed the first time around and spent a couple of hours working on my chest wall. Turns out that I had some trauma that had caused my chest to lock up and my ribcage to tighten; thus the pain and shortness of breath. He unlocked all the tightness and I felt GREAT for the first time in 2009.
I had ceased to care about class; I just wanted to finish the semester and call it done. I was a C student for the first time in my life; and also for the first time in my life, I didn’t care about the grades that I got. I just wanted to be done. And yet God showed his grace here as well; I have received one final grade back already, and I know for a fact there is no way that I earned the grade that I got. On the assignments that I turned in for other classes, it seemed that God took my shoddy work and multiplied the quality of it so that I got better grades than I deserved. Not bad for someone who has ceased to care.
I finished the semester two days ago; the past week involved 30 hours of work, 10 pages of research, 500 pages to read, and two tests to take, but God saw me through.
I also got the statement from my insurance company regarding the visit to the ER. It cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000 for it all; insurance paid about $1200 and was able to negotiate away another $250, so I’m currently liable for about $550. That’s still a lot for a student, but not bad.
And now the story gets really cool. I sometimes forget which weeks I get paid at my job, so I just pick up a check whenever I remember to. And so, from time to time, I have checks left over. Before I came to Tulsa for my little sister’s graduation, I stopped in at work to pick up my tips and see if I had any checks that I could deposit before I left town. As it turns out, I did. Two checks. Totaling…
$550.
Wow.
So that brings us up to the present. As I said at the beginning, this story is not to ask for pity. I don’t need pity, nor do I want it. Instead, this story is a testament to God working in my life in spite of overwhelming circumstances. It is a tale of restoration and redemption. It is also a story to encourage.
I have always been overwhelmed by the power of grace. When we least expect it, it shows up; and sometimes when we don’t think it’s there, it is actually there more than we realize. That is my story.
