Confessions of a Seminarian

Lessons of Life

While we’re a few weeks into April now, I am still recovering from March:

3/2: Massive car wreck that totaled my car (see pic).
3/8-9: Painted new apartment and began packing.
3/10: Found out my spine is jacked up from the accident, and I’ll need six months of physical therapy.
3/12: Two massive papers due.
3/15: We moved to St. Louis City.
3/18: Worship Band Rehearsal.
3/19: Special midweek service for Holy Week.
3/21: First chance to breathe in four weeks.

Now that I am getting a chance to breathe, I am starting to reflect on all this, and am starting to realize some difficult lessons God has been teaching me throughout the month of March.

Lesson #1: God is in control.
First, the car wreck. I have never taken that particular route home before, and would not have if I had not listened to a friend giving me directions from his house. While I was driving, an 80-year-old man coming the opposite direction blacked out at the wheel, swerved into my lane, and hit my driver-side door. I got smashed two lanes over onto the shoulder, doing a 180-degree spin on the way. Amazingly, there were no serious injuries.

That itself was a not-so-minor minor miracle. But what really astounded me was that the car just 15 feet behind me had 2 moms and 2 children riding in the back seat. If that driver had not hit me in the side, he would have hit them head on at 50 MPH. I can’t imagine how traumatizing or painful that collision would have been for two toddlers.

Lesson #2: God is a Father who uses His church to provide for His children.
A number of items inside my car were also damaged, including my laptop, which I use every day for school and my work in the National Guard. The other driver’s insurance company was going to give me the cost to repair or total it out and give me its value, neither of which would provide for a new laptop. A few long days later, my pastor called and said that an “anonymous donor” wanted to pay for the difference to get me a new Macbook Pro. Amazing.

Leading up to the move, we asked friends to pray for furniture. The place we were going to has considerably more space than our last apartment, and our old hand-me-downs were… well… old, and too few to make the place look anything like a home. Within a week we were given (yes, given) a nice hutch, a solid-wood dining room table that seats 7, a barely used couch with a hideaway bed, 2 nightstands, and an armoire. The crazy thing is that they thanked us for taking it off their hands. Seriously, who does that?

During the move, no less than a dozen people helped us move, make us lunch and dinner, and even set up furniture and unpack. My mom also helped us, could not understand why these people showed us so much love and worked so hard to help us. My wife and I could only shrug our shoulders and say, “That’s the church doing what it is designed to do.”

A friend of a friend hooked us up with a very nice car that is over $2,500 less than what our insurance company gave us for our old car, allowing us to put that money towards student loans.

All this happened in two weeks. I’ve realized that I really don’t trust God to provide day-to-day, and while I did trust Him in the wake of these crises, He blew away the small expectations I had of Him. I wish I had time to go into all the other aspects of His providence that I just don’t have room for here… In the aftermath of it all, I feel exhausted but overwhelmingly blessed. To start at the top of a mountain, descend into a deep valley, and then be brought up back into the light… is an amazing experience. The valleys have truly given height to the peaks.

Micah 7:8-9
Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
the LORD will be a light to me.

I will bear the indignation of the LORD
because I have sinned against him,
until he pleads my cause
and executes judgment for me.
He will bring me out to the light;
I shall look upon his vindication.