Katie V. GPS

Usually battles of Katie Vs. GPS are victorious. Common sense trumps machine, right?

Yesterday I tried to outsmart my five year old GPS yet again. I lost. Something about having never been to that town before should have clued me in to the fact that it was not a good idea. The "seven hours to destination" didn't turn off my creative mind either. Since I needed to go east (seven hours east), I decided to turn on the east-bound side of the highway rather than the west-bound like Eunice (my GPS) was telling me.

Well, Eunice is persistent and after a few miles of "Make a U-turn" and "Turn around when possible," I decided to pull over in the parking lot of a country Baptist church and check the rest of her directions.

Going west to get east made no sense. Going west one mile to pick up a straight-shot east-bound freeway did make more sense. Eunice was right. Although the logic seemed backwards, the directions were correct. Going west was a short jog out of the way that would lead directly to my destination... in seven hours. I made a U-turn when possible.

Sometimes God and I argue like I do with my GPS. For some reason I have this tendency to think I'm smarter, my common sense more sound, and my ideas better. So I turn east to get east. Surely God's directions to go west were a detour but the road isn't closed anymore.

Except, unlike me, God sees the full set of instructions. He knows about the freeway one mile west and the direct shot, 70mph, it'll take me to my destination.

Sorry, Lord. I did it again. I deliberately ignored Your directions and followed my own. I thought I knew a better way. I was wrong and lost. Thank You for being persistent and not giving up on me.

<>< Katie

Spring Break-ing

You know you're an out-of-state college student when you're hardly off the plane before being handed a list of appointments and interviews that fill your spring break. That's ok because once you wrestle with your two sisters for the one car you know these roads and can get to your destination without the GPS (named Goopus... it's "GPS" and "Doofus" combined). In fact, you know where the lanes end, the speed limit changes, and where the police officers hide.

One thing my family does together is watch House, MD. Dad and I started it, but my sisters have jumped on the bandwagon. I don't have time to watch during the semester, so I hadn't seen any episodes since I was home at Christmastime. One of the episodes we watched this week involved a woman who blogged literally everything. Even I'm not that bad! See, look. This is me sparing you every intricate detail of my spring break and summarizing it in ten highlights. (I'd also like to note that I don't actually post my blogs at 6:48am or whatever. I schedule their publication, so don't tell me my sleeping habits have changed so I can blog at 6am or something crazy like that...)

1. First and foremost, the term "spring break" is not at all what I have experienced. It's not a "break" when the first day you get to sleep in is the day before you go back.  It's not "spring" when you wake up that day to find three inches of snow on the ground. Don't get me wrong, we had some nice warm days, but silly me, I thought in spring the warm days were supposed to follow the snow not precede it.

2. Seeing my sister's college and eating the only pancakes and pasta for four days. The only person brave enough to venture from this strict diet found herself at urgent care with food poisoning. Oops.

3. Drinking ancient champagne with Christian in the church copy room. Don't worry, April was there, too.*

4. Some of our windows need to be replaced, so we're restaining the hardwood floor first... "if you give a mouse a cookie" style.

5. My first trip to the dentist in five years. It's really not that I have dentist-phobia but rather my mother has phone-call-making-phobia. I think it's a genetic condition.

6.Driving through the morning rush hour traffic for an internship interview at a downtown coffee shop.  However, it was an incredibly interesting, informative interview. The first of three that day.

7.My first pedicure ever. Enough said.

8. Translating at the food pantry and soup kitchen. A hard of hearing Hispanic woman told me (in English) that the first time she heard her family speaking Spanish she told them they sounded like a bunch of chickens. Love it!

9. Remembering that I live in a house where refrigerated black olives are guarded by rotten tomatoes and sometimes the toilet paper pukes cat food. Don't ask unless you really want to know!

10. Last but definitely not least was having the opportunity to read for fun! Gasp! What's that? Book review coming soon.

How was your break?
<>< Katie

* Christian's the pastor of an ancient inner-city church; April is his wife. No one knows where this champagne came from nor how old it is, so, no, we didn't actually drink it.

Bus Ride Prayer

On the long bus ride back from the ski trip, we took a Prayer Break where all distractions were put away. Or at least that was the intent. My distractions are often in my head (aka mentally writing), so eliminating those are hard but I really tried. No iPod, no cell phones, no movie, no talking; only talking to God.

I folded my hands but opted against closing my eyes. If I closed my eyes, I probably would have fallen asleep. Besides, who wants to close their eyes while riding through the beautiful mountains?

Katie: Hey, God, I absolutely love these mountains You've created. I'm willing to risk motion-sickness and take my eyes off the road to enjoy this beautiful creation You've made. Every tree perfectly formed and every mountain hump meticulously placed. The effort and precision amazes me!
God: You know, Katie, I put the same amount of effort and precision into creating you.

My prayer time could have been over right then and there. I was content; I was filled. But it wasn't. There was still eighteen minutes to go, and God had more things He wanted to teach me. He often teaches me through the things I see (another reason I didn't want to close my eyes).

We passed a sign that said, "Rest Area. No facilities."
I began to think to myself about how dumb that is: a rest area with no facilities. As we drew closer there was another sign stating it's a look-out point without facilities. Ok, beautiful but not practical.

We all, women especially, want to be considered beautiful. Most of us enjoy feeling pretty. In fact, sometimes when we're getting gussied up we don't pay attention to the practical. We're too concerned with "Does this look good" than "Will I be able to walk in these shoes?" We much rather have lovely long eye lashes than realize we can't see because mascara is making lines down our glasses every time we blink. I prayed that God make my life practical rather than beautiful.

Maybe He doesn't have fame and glory in my future. Maybe my blog will never have more than eleven readers. Maybe the words He's given me have a deep impact on those eleven readers and draw them closer to Him. Maybe that type of intimacy isn't available in a community with a larger reading audience. Maybe one day I'll be ok with that. I prayed that day would be soon. Make my life practical rather than beautiful.

Not five minutes later, the Garmin fell. Sitting in the front seat of the bus, I crawled forward, rescued it off the dash board, stuck it back together, and re-suctioned it to the windshield.

"Good in theory; poor in design," the bus driver said to me with a smile.

I am a firm believer that things should be designed by the people who are going to use them. College students should design dorm rooms. Teachers and students should design classrooms. Doctors and nurses should design hospitals. Bus drivers should design Garmins.

However, there is one exception to this rule. One time when the "thing" being used should not be designed by the user. Life. My life should not be designed by me, the liver (aka the person living it). Instead, I believe life should be designed by God. After all, the life we create is good in theory but poor in design. The life we make is beautiful but not practical.

Travel with me through the mountains of life and into this dangerous prayer:
Abba Father, make my life practical rather than beautiful. Wipe away my good theories and replace them with Your great designs. Let me be ok with it.

Let me know how I can pray for you and have a wonderful week!
<>< Katie

Crash Boom Bash

"I'll give you a ride back to your apartment," Jessica offered as we walked out of practice tonight. Then she added only half-jokingly, "If you don't mind riding with me."

I could have walked back to my apartment, in fact I seriously considered it. However, the dangers of riding with Jess seemed less than the dangers of walking across campus alone in the dark.

As I got in her new car, I thought back to that warm October day. I remember getting in her car that morning and thinking, If we crash, these color guard flags are going to cause some serious internal damage. We did and they didn't.

This past October, Jessica and I were headed to an academic event when we blew a tire by running off the road to avoid getting hit head-on by a line of Dodge Rams. God sent us some of our classmates to change the tire. We were going to get to our destination and get a new tire since we were in the middle of nowhere and were headed towards a bigger city.

In this brouhaha our GPS got messed up. It was telling us to get on the freeway, get off at the next exit, get back on the freeway going the other direction, get off at the next exit and on and on and on. Since we were driving on a spare tire, we didn't think it was wise to be on the freeway at all but neither of us knew an alternative route. Well, it wasn't long before we needed more than just a new tire.

We pulled over in a vacant parking lot to adjust the GPS. Destination reset, directions make sense, knew where we're going, put the GPS down, and continued our journey. Not a mile later we t-boned a Dodge Ram.

Afterwards I didn't talk about the accident much because, well, there's no nice way to say, "Jess and I totaled her car yesterday." Besides, the conversation was always more or less the same.

"Oh my gosh, are you ok?"

I'm fine. Yes, I'm a bit sore, we totaled a car for heaven sake, but I've been more sore from tennis practice. No ambulance ride. No ER. No nothing. No, that answer isn't going to change if you call back in two hours.

"Were you scared?"

First off, what kind of question is that? Who crashes a car and isn't scared? Me apparently. I watched the truck stop at the stop sign, cross oncoming traffic, cross the left lane, appear directly in front of our car. The only few seconds I cannot physically see were us making contact, the airbag deploying, and the trunk spinning. It would have been logical for me to close my eyes, after all there was an airbag colliding with my face (not to mention the truck colliding with our car). Even though I can't see those few seconds, I can hear the crunching of mental. With confidence I could tell EMS that my head was not responsible for the cracked windshield on the passenger side.

"Does the other driver have insurance?"

Can you drive a car without insurance? He admitted it was his fault and apologized. He said he never saw us but did stop at the stop sign. I know this to be true. I watched him do it.

Although it's not something I'm happy we experienced, we've both learned a lot from this day.

First off, we are thankful for flat tires. Since we were driving with the spare tire, we were driving slowly, ten to fifteen miles under the speed limit. It's not hard to notice that if we had been driving the speed limit, the hood of our car could have easily gotten stuck under the truck. That's would have made for an entirely different outcome.

Secondly, it is a miracle that we had no injuries. The car took the brunt of the impact. Besides the dashboard, the only thing inside that was broken was Jess's GPS. (Which was already not in proper working order). Both of us were offered medical care. Jess opted for on-site evaluation, and I turned it down. For days I wondered if this was something I was going to regret, but I don't because I was not injured. In all honesty, I'm kind of disappointed we totaled a car and the only bruise on my body was from where I'd gotten body-slammed into the counter the week before. We are incredibly thankful for God's arms of protection surrounding us.

God provided us with compassionate people all the way through the day. From the other students who helped us change the tire to the woman who stopped to make sure we had a phone to call 911 to the bikers who waited with us until emergency personnel arrived to the emergency personnel themselves. Even the other driver was nice. There's no way I can ever thank everyone that helped us. I thought to thank some on the scene but some I didn't and that is one thing I regret from that day.

The other thing I regret is not being more of a backseat driver. I had been watching the truck the whole time. Jessica said she'd never heard me, "Jess, are you watching that truck? He doesn't see us. Jess! Truck!" I'd already been a backseat driver that day (as always), so I was trying not to be obnoxious. I was not screaming. Except for the millisecond as we were about to make contact when I doubted myself, I knew the whole time that he was not going to make it across the road before we both tried to be in the same place at the same time. I've resolved myself to forever be a backseat driver because I'd rather be annoying than be in a crushed car.

There are a zillion reasons why this accident didn't make sense:

- Periodically throughout our journey, Jess had been texting or talking on her cell phone. Texting/talking and driving has always bothered me. The irony is that she was not messing with her phone when we crashed.

- We should have never been on that road at all in our journey. If the GPS hadn't been messed up we would not have gotten off the freeway. If we would not have done the safe thing and pulled over in the parking lot, we would not have had to travel back down the road to get back to the freeway.

- If those first trucks and their ATVs had not made Jessica so nervous, we would not have swerved so far off the road that we hit the curb and popped her tire, so we could have been to our destination on time.

- If...

If, ands, and buts aside, we had an accident. That's exactly what this is: an accident. Except not to God. God doesn't have accidents; He may be the only one to know why it happened. But it did happen, and God is good. All the time.

Just because God is good doesn't mean our day was good. I mean, we got up on a Saturday to leave campus at 8am on what should have been a 55 minute drive only to return to campus at noon (the time I normally wake up on Saturdays) having never made it to our destination.

No, we did not get credit for the academic event we tried to attend. When I told the professor we tried to go and got into a car accident she looked me in the eye and essentially said, "Bummer." That irked me. If someone tells you they totaled a car trying to go to your event: do NOT under any circumstances say, "Bummer!" Even an, "I'm sorry" would have been nice... and necessary.

I've really struggled with this blog. Writing about the accident isn't hard; telling people about it is. However, I've really felt God's give me a story to tell, and I've been disobedient by keeping it to myself. I wrote this post a week ago and have revised/ rewritten it several times since then. Except I haven't posted it. I put it in my "next time I don't have something to say" collection of blogs. Face it, I always have something to say. I couldn't figure out why I was being so selfish and keeping this story silent.

Last night, I figured it out. Worshipping three rows in front of me was Jessica, my driver. Whether we like it or not, she and I will always have a bond because we crashed a car together.

Sitting in front of her was a different girl, also named Jessica. This other Jessica was in a car accident when she was in high school. A horrific accident where people died. She almost did, too. I'd known this for years but never really knew her story. Seeing her today helped me realize why I was being shy about sharing my story. The night before we crashed, Jessica told me about her car accident. She should not have lived! We talked about how God has healed her, physically and emotionally.

It clicked tonight seeing her for the first time in months. She was in a car accident and almost died, and God has used her story. I was in a car accident and walked away without a scratch; God can and will use my story, too.

I will not be silent any more!

<><>

PS. If you read this all the way through you deserve a hug because it's the Microsoft Word equivalent of three pages (without the photo). I'm sorry. Honestly, I tried to keep the details minimal. If I included everything I wanted to this post could have easily been fifteen pages. Ask me if you want more information because I'll freely give it. :-) Thanks for reading!