Beneath or Above the Surface – Struggles or Blessings

People refer to exploring what lies beneath the surface. A duck seems to glide across the water, but if you look beneath the calm surface his webbed feet are paddling like crazy. What lies beneath is often unseen effort or even struggle. He works harder than we think to move forward and to make it appear seamless. It is the same for a dancer who spends years at the barre torturing and injuring herself so that when she alights the stage, she appears to float across its surface so gracefully. The orchestral music covers the sound of her hard, stiff toe slippers pounding the wooden surface each time she lands. It is the same for that musician in the pit who spent years practicing his scales, his fingering, his tonguing or bowing on his instrument when he could have been outside climbing trees with his friends or gaming online. Unending toil beneath the surface creates the appearance of ease and grace.

What if instead of looking beneath, at the struggle, we look above at the hope, the greater plan? Isn’t that what feeds the hidden struggle, after all?

What lies above are blessings, although sometimes they are hard to recognize. Sometimes they rain down on us, feeling more like curses and mishaps out of the blue, things happening to us that we did not and would not consciously ask for. Sometimes they leave scars, physical or otherwise. And we are left asking, “Why?”

My life, so far, has been marked by abundant blessings. Let’s start with lightning strikes.

The first one happened when I was seven years old. As I sat alone watching TV in the basement rec-room, an afternoon storm blew in. Mother, my brother, and sister were upstairs. I was breaking the rules, sitting with my feet up in Mother’s newly slip-covered armchair. I’d recently unclamped the heavy roller skates from my old saddle shoes which resulted in the front soles hanging open like wagging tongues.

“Get your feet out of the chair!” Mother would have yelled at me if she’d seen. But she didn’t see, and it was more comfortable and natural sitting this way.

Then the world exploded in the loudest noise I had ever heard, even including the unbearable roar standing next to Niagara Falls as a four-year-old.

In an actual flash, the lights and the TV all blew out. Thousands of glowing golden balls of electricity, the size of shooter marbles, streamed out of the TV, the overhead lights, and the electrical outlets. They swarmed across the tile floor, bouncing off each other like super-speed carnival bumper cars, racing under the sofa, my chair, all the furniture in the room and reappearing. I watched in horror for what seemed an eternity but was probably less than a minute. As their numbers began to dwindle, I watched the last of them disappear under the skirt of the sofa. I was afraid to move when Mother called to me. They might re-emerge from their hiding place. I imagined them all huddled together there, waiting to attack!

This was not a tragedy, but a blessing. Because I had been disobedient, was not sitting on the floor, and had my feet in the chair, I was unharmed. But I’d witnessed the mighty and unforgettable power of God and nature. True, the TV was fried, the antenna on the roof was melted into a bizarre form, there was some charring around the receptacles, and an electrician had to be called in, but it was a miracle, nevertheless.

The second strike occurred when I was 22 as I stood on the second story balcony of my garden apartment and witnessed the direct strike on the amazingly tall tree not 15 yards from where I stood. Thankfully, I was not touching the metal railing as all the bark was blown off the tree and flew at me like shrapnel in the Ardennes Forest. The tree stood naked and white, its life fluid glistening as it literally steamed out from its core. The third strike was a similarly close tree in my neighbor’s yard a few years back, again as I watched from a balcony. I’d almost gotten used to such things by then.

Forty-nine years ago today, on August 27, 1974, the same summer as the second lightning strike, I survived another close call. This was the first traffic-related miracle. It happened as I was returning to my office, having picked up lunch from McDonald’s across Lee Highway in downtown Falls Church. The common, and probably stupid, practice for crossing that 4-lane road was to successfully cross two lanes, then wait on the double yellow line for the opposite traffic to clear before completing the cross. I was standing on the double yellow, waiting for a single car and a Mack truck (in the far lane) to pass.

I was not aware of the panel truck trying to make a left turn out of a parking lot opposite me. The 19-year-old driver did not notice me standing there as he attempted to beat that Mack Truck and execute his turn. His left front tire was on my foot when the rear-view mirror (or something else) caught my elbow as he raced desperately across the two lanes of oncoming traffic.

I was thrown into the air, feet over head, spinning and twirling in slow motion. I recall saying, “Oh, shit!” as I flew upward and outward. My inner voice said, “I’m going up. I’m going up. I’m upside down. I’m going down. I’m going down. This is it.” I hit the pavement, butt first. “I’m going down again,” I thought as I rolled backward. “I’m bouncing up, again!” was my last inner thought. I landed legs crossed sitting straight up Indian style.

Where did that crowd of people surrounding me come from? The Mack Truck was at a dead stop three or four feet in front of me, its driver standing before me, visibly shaking. I didn’t check for skid marks, but I bet he’d laid some serious rubber when he frantically stopped. Apparently, my “Oh shit” comment had been heard by everyone within a block and a half as a blood-curdling scream. Everyone was asking if I were alright. But I had two things on my mind. I’d been a Girl Scout and had read a lot about people being in shock and not realizing they were missing body parts as they tended to other victims. So, before I would answer, I checked to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Something was missing; my purse.

It had been thrown onto the sidewalk, as was my ruined lunch. I got up to retrieve my purse. Mother had drilled into me never to leave my purse behind under any circumstances.

Cutting to the chase, the young driver of the panel truck, Ian, had another young friend with him. They were working for his father during the summer, making deliveries in the company van. They walked me to my office where I collected my things. Then they drove me to Fairfax Hospital to be checked out, waiting with me and making all the appropriate calls.

Miraculously, I was basically uninjured. Although the tire had rolled over my foot (clad in a stacked heel sandal), my foot was only bruised, ostensibly because it was a radial tire. Because I had landed and rolled in a limp, curled-up position, I had a bit of a bump, but no concussion on the back of my head. I had one or two minor abrasions, so they gave me a tetanus shot just to be sure. Then, Ian drove me back to my car, and I went home, never to return to that place of employment.

My brother said I should sue. “Why?” I asked. “Everyone was shaken up, but no one was hurt. Ian took care of everything. We reported the incident. No charges were filed. Life is a miracle!”

Years later, God was speaking to me again at about 2:00 pm on Saturday, February 11, 1989. This one was a doozy which really set in motion some major internal questions and life changing decisions for me, which I will not go into, here.

It was unseasonably warm for February. NPR radio was playing as I sweated inside my fluffy winter parka.  I was headed home on the Lynchburg Expressway, driving my then husband’s Horizon hatchback. We had traded cars so that I could pick up some building materials and he could take the children somewhere in my Plymouth Grand Voyager. The hatchback was full of stacks and folders of his sheet music for Band. On the back seat were newly purchased cans of wall paint and two large plastic canisters of joint compound for a kitchen project I was working on in our large historic Federal Style house. After I hit a pothole at 55 mph, I found the steering wheel had become stiff and unresponsive. Alarmed, I tapped the brakes and found them also not working. The road was curved and I knew I’d have to find a way to pull off and stop before I caused a high-speed accident on this busy bypass.

After a series of quick and futile attempts, I forced the wheel to the right and onto a narrow grassy stretch. It got me off the road, but didn’t solve the problem of speed or control and at close to a 45-degree angle I plowed into a line of slender trees that lined a drop-off into a ravine.

Once again life was in slow motion as the car smashed through the trees and tumbled upside down in its descent to the ravine. I thought it made a couple of revolutions, but it might have been only one. I was busy preparing for my sudden and unexpected death. “Oh! This is it! God forgive me, please!” was about all I could muster.

The car came to an abrupt full-splash stop right side up in the middle of a creek that I’d not known was there. “Oh! I’m not dead!” I thought to myself. “But I must be a quadriplegic!” I lifted my arms. “Yay! I’m only a paraplegic!” When I found I could move my legs I thought, “I’d better get out of here before the engine blows up!” Although the motor was dead, the radio continued playing classical music. Dutifully, I turned off the radio, so as not to drain the battery, I guess.

The front doors had both been torn off, possibly one or both of the rear doors, too. The entire car was smashed all around me except for where I was sitting. I couldn’t see outside of the car. Everything inside was coated with thick, white joint compound. After I’d undone my seatbelt and leaned outside, I could see that one of the canisters had been ejected and was resting in branches halfway up the 12-14’ ravine. The cold water was only halfway up my shins and rushing downhill when I slithered from the car. I looked around and saw showers of sheet music fluttering down, getting caught on the winter branches and floating in the creek.

“Oh, no! I thought, “I’m going to be cited for littering and my husband will be so mad at me for ruining thousands of dollars of music!” I fretted, as I started wading through the water and collecting the music.

Then I heard a disembodied voice from above. “Oh my God! Is anyone alive down there?” a woman’s voice cried.

“I am!” I answered. “I seem to be alive. How am I going to get out of this ravine?”

Her face peeked over the edge and she admitted she’d been afraid to look. I crawled up the ravine (after first retrieving my purse from wherever it had landed), and she helped pull me up the last few feet.

“I was so scared,” she began. “I saw you swerving so I raced past you to get out of the way. But I was watching you in my rear-view mirror. Suddenly, you disappeared, and in a great silence I saw this huge mushroom cloud of papers rise out of the abyss! It was so eerie!”

It might have seemed silent to her in her soundproof car, but for me, there was plenty of noise. I don’t know how, but rescue vehicles soon appeared and my husband and children arrived in the minivan. I declined a ride to the hospital, telling them I’d check in with my doctor later. I was covered, head to toe in joint compound and my husband made sure he covered the car interior with towels or papers or something to make sure I wouldn’t mess up the car.

On the way home he said, “This probably isn’t the right time to bring this up, but we got a letter from the IRS today and they said there’s something wrong with our return and they’re going to audit us.”

I was the tax preparer and I agreed with him that this wasn’t the time to bring this up. Once home I could barely raise my arms and he had to help peel off all of my clothing and bag it up before I could get into the shower.

“I guess you don’t feel too much like cooking dinner tonight, do you?” he queried.

He got the eye roll, made a quick phone call, and took off to Little Caesar’s for pizza.

Stiffness had set in pretty well by the time I climbed into my double pedestal waterbed. I was on the phone, long distance, telling my mother in Louisiana how lucky she was to still have her baby girl alive, considering the car and the IRS and all, when my oldest daughter Shannon (in the 5^th grade) came tearing into my room yelling, “The refrigerator’s on fire!”

Up to that moment, I could barely roll over in bed, much less dive out of the double high waterbed, sprint down the 21 stairs, round the hall corner, and plunge into the kitchen where smoke was billowing from my 25 cubic foot refrigerator. I told Shannon to call 911 and get her brother and sister over to the neighbor’s house pronto. Then, I sidled up to the fridge, maneuvered it to the center of the room, and unplugged it so that the wall wouldn’t catch fire. My neighbors showed up with armloads of coolers and started offloading the contents of the fridge into them just about the same time that three large hook and ladder trucks pulled up to the house and scary looking firemen rushed in wearing their masks.

Only the top freezer compartment was involved in an electric overheating which began cooling off as soon as I’d unplugged it. Nevertheless, the firemen set up fans to blow out the smoke just about the time that my husband showed up with the pizza and a gob-smacked look on his face.

I started crying and my neighbor said, “Ah, Babs! It’s okay! It’s just a refrigerator and everything is okay!”

“Oh, you don’t understand! I just totaled the car, the IRS is coming, and now the refrigerator also has to be replaced!”

Not long after, the crowd was gone. We had eaten the pizza, and I hobbled back to bed. Shannon came in and in her most serious and scared voice said, “Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom, but I’m afraid if I do the toilet will explode!”

Well now, that was a day of blessings to be sure! A few days later I’d been checked out by the doctor who said I was understandably sore and my stiff neck would eventually go away. I might have cracked a rib or two, but as long as nothing was displaced there was little the hospital could have done about that. We’d heard back from the IRS that they’d made a mistake and they weren’t going to audit us, and Shannon got recognized by her teacher and classmates as a genuine hero for saving the day, the house, and her brother and sister. Although the car was crushed, I wasn’t killed, paralyzed, or seriously injured. The mechanic determined that the car failure was caused by a cracked ball joint which took out both the steering and the brakes when I’d hit the pothole. We’d planned on being away that afternoon, but because of my accident, we were home which is why we didn’t lose our house and all of our possessions to a fire. It turned out to be a pretty darn good day, after all.

Now, each of these things that happened, and there have been others, believe me, had miraculously good outcomes. I figured God wants me to do something, and I haven’t done it yet, but He needed to make sure He had my attention. Whatever it is I’m supposed to do, I’m still here, so I guess I’ve not accidentally or intentionally done it yet.

But there is one final difficult episode that hasn’t finished playing out. It started with the unexpected death of my soulmate, my second husband (not the guy with the pizza).

We’ll skip over the hospital’s culpability for now and jump right over to the mess that was left me. He’d let his insurance lapse. The only will he’d made was holographic and although I know he’s never thrown a document away in his life, a year and a half later I still haven’t found it, which means I MUST begin the painful process of probate. Without producing the will, he died intestate and everything is at risk.

The personal loss and the impending impersonal legal processes are bad enough. Add to that, beneath the surface is an unbelievable dystopian family matter. Yet God is calling me to keep a bright spirit, to love and somehow honor an individual who, lacking compassion or empathy, continues to grind salt into the wound. I need to find a way to turn all of this going on beneath the surface into a blessing above the surface. This is much more difficult for me than the other events.