Story Time: The Window

Tonight my son Sam slipped and cut his leg on the stump of a tree.  He completely over-exaggerated his fall, begging for sympathy over anything else.  As has been our tradition since the start of public school: we tell stories.  A story about their day in school warrants a story from my school days; tonight it was a story of pain.  Although intended to take my son's mind off of his scratch, it turned into much more.  It's a story that needs to be told, and tonight, I'll stay up late to tell you the tale.

Almost 14 years ago exactly (we're probably about a week out from the actual date) I found myself laying on the concrete, 25 feet under a broken window in Seattle, WA.  I had managed to fall out of that window, sailing through the air from the second story before the ground met my body.

I had been goofing around… which for anyone who knows me is not shocking.  I'm a graceful klutz; back in my gymnast days I'd be the type to finish a floor routine and trip on my way back to my seat.  In high school, I actually fell down an entire flight of stairs at my senior prom, while holding flowers, cookies (too many… I'll explain why in another post…) and wearing gigantic heels.  By the time I got to the bottom, my toe was sliced and bleeding, my dress was up to my waist and my cookies were in someone else's hair.  I'm not kidding this really happened.  But, back to the window…

Hillary, me, Emily (Tweedledee)

I had been goofing around after enjoying a glass of cheap wine with my goofy college friends I had met the year before, my first year at Seattle Pacific University.  To this day I still say this event would have taken place without the wine… since the goofiness was inevitable.  But, I'm quite certain the wine didn't help…

My super-cute boyfriend in College

My two friends and I decided to leave my boyfriends apartment and take a walk back to campus.  My boyfriend and I were just getting reacquainted after a long summer apart, and traveling in groups still felt like a must.  Maybe we were giddy about being back in Seattle and starting our sophomore year of college, maybe I was extra giddy about being in the presence of the boy I knew I'd marry… I don't know, but merely walking down the apartment complex stairs must have seemed too boring.

My friend, Tweedledee, had the idea first, "Hey, slide down the banister and I'll catch you!"
"Ok sounds fun!"  Tweedledum replied.

I slid, she caught me like a momma bear would her cub, and we laughed.

"That was fun do it again!" said Tweedledee.

Tweedledum hopped on the banister again and slid down.  Tweedledee thought it would be funnier to switch things up this time.  She stood with her arms out and then just as I began my decent announced, "Just kidding!" expecting me to fall on the ground and we'd laugh even harder this time.

But instead, she moved and I exited the end of the banister, took two headlong steps on the landing, stuck my right arm out to brace myself, and the next thing I knew I was weightless.

My hand had broken the thin, non-tempered glass of the old 1970's apartment like it was made of paper  mache.  I was falling and there was enough time for me to realize that the ground was not coming soon enough.  In a matter of seconds, I remember having the complete thought, "just open your eyes once you hit ground."  It's wild to think that in 2 seconds I went from goofing around with my friend to attempting to prevent my own death.

Somehow, it worked.  I couldn't believe it but when I finally stopped falling, and the broken glass from the window stopped breaking and landing all around me, I opened my eyes.  I saw my arm, blood soaked already, but at least my eyes were open.  I peeled myself up off the ground and began wondering around aimlessly looking for my friends.  I knew I must have been injured badly, but I was still in survival mode and I felt if I kept moving I'd be ok.

I had fallen out of that two story window into an area that was an access to the basement.  It was built into a hill and there were concrete walls on two sides meeting the ground.  My friends found me wondering up the stairs towards the parking lot, both Hillary and Emily were flipping out, saying "She's not ok.  There's no way she's ok.  She's not ok…"  I almost made it to the car before I passed out the first time and awoke to Jeremy leaning over my gently shaking my head back and forth, "Emma… wake up baby please wake up."

I came to, and my friends were crying, frantic again.  She's not ok, I know she's not ok.

Despite the chaos and trauma I managed to feel humiliated somehow.  Why was I always hurting myself?  During my Freshman year on the SPU gymnastics team, I had managed to break my hand, my ankle, my foot and had stress fractures in my shins on top of it all (the reason for this will also be told in another post… and it's definitely related to the cookies…).  Anyone else would have quit a sport that provided me with so many casts in one year… but not ol' Emma.  She was determined to compete on that dang collegiate gymnastics team no matter what.

Now, things weren't looking so good.

We made it to the hospital and once the doctors cleaned and uncovered my wound, I was able to see that the major injury was my right wrist.  The glass had gouged it open.  I thought I would need a skin graph to repair it.  The wound was huge, white tendons were exposed, and I couldn't move or feel any of my fingers.  It was deemed a miracle that my main artery wasn't sliced along with the tendons.  The hospital staff began to wonder how this (besides a few additional stitches here and there) was the only injury despite a 25 ft fall to my head.

The next morning, after waking up from a surgery that re-attached the 8 tendons I sliced, Jeremy and his roommate and my roommates all filed into my hospital room.  Jeremy moved forward, and I could tell he had something to say.

"I went back to the apartment last night, and I looked around where you fell.  There was a lady who heard you fall, and she came out too, asking if you were ok.  We began looking at the window and the glass on the ground.  She noticed the lid to the trash can was dented in entirely.  We realized that you landed on the trash can first before you hit the concrete.  So... that's why your ok."

I felt amazed, happy that something was making sense.  Everyone was baffled that I didn't have a head injury, or a neck injury, or worse.

But then, he told me something that would give me goosebumps each time I would think of it in the coming years and even now brings tears as I write this.

He said, "The lady was telling me… she said the trash can you landed on didn't belong there.  She said that someone put it there by mistake yesterday.  There were no other trash cans around.  Just that one."

Jeremy was 20 and I was 19.  We had fallen in love our freshman year, but our relationship was still in its infancy stages, and processing miracles and trauma together felt like too much.  I didn't know what to do with this news, so I tucked it away until I was alone.

The next day at my apartment.

Alone came soon enough.  I was discharged from the hospital, given a ride home and my friends carried on with their busy schedules and classes.  I sat in a dark apartment, contemplating my blood-stained pajama pants and the events of the past 24 hours.

The feeling was one I had never had before.  Gratitude mixed with anger.  "I was being a goofball…I wasn't doing anything wrong… yet I have this injury that will cause me to quit the sport I love…"  and then "but I was being an idiot!  Why am I here?  Why didn't I end up paralyzed or dead?"  I couldn't figure it out.  I flipped back and forth, I was so thankful and yet so mad.

Eventually I landed on mad.  My beloved sport was gone, and I couldn't write or even type to keep up with my classes.  I had been having a deep internal conversation with God, and had been pointing out all of the reasons that he must have picked the wrong girl to give a "wake up call" to.  I really truly believed this lesson was not one that I needed.  In September of the year 2000, I had every single day of the rest of the school year planned out already.  Plus, as a bonus, I had been praying at night and sometimes before meals.  This was a serious upgrade from my freshman year.  I was sure that God was putting extra stickers on my chart for all my dedication to school, sports, and my efforts to give him 5 minutes of my day.   I failed to see that through this wild and unplanned event, God had allowed me to be stripped entirely of the things I depended on to keep me feeling satisfied with who I was.  Sometimes we call these things idols, and mine were huge.  Sitting on that couch in my apartment, I actually said to myself, "If I can't do gymnastics ever again… I don't know why I'm here."

Me and some teammates @ SPU Sept 2000

I know that sounds dumb, but I really did feel that way at the time.  Gymnastics was my life and breath and had been since age 6.  I loved it and wanted desperately to compete in college.  It truly was my only goal in life and one that felt good and honorable and pure and I couldn't fathom why God would allow such a good thing to be taken from me.

But to exist on the earth only for the sport of gymnastics?  Even for a die-hard like me that seemed a bit overboard.

Still… I couldn't make sense of what happened.  Did He put that trashcan there just for me?  I didn't know.  I couldn't say that God had caused these events to take place.  He certainly didn't cause me to drink a glass of wine and then encourage my antics with Tweedledee.  But in my senseless and carefree 19 year old spirit, I had somehow naively chucked myself toward certain death.  I couldn't blame Emily who had moved.  Had she not, we both may have fallen out together.

I began to move away from wondering why and simply considered the fact that I was given the opportunity to contemplate it all with a fully functioning brain.  It felt like I was being given an inappropriate gift; and I sheepishly accepted.  God had given me an extraordinary amount of grace despite my senseless choices… and a second chance.  Despite the pain-pill haze I was in, I formulated a clear thought.  After all this, after being shown such grace in my senselessness, how can I go back to my idols and shove God back into the upper right hand corner of my life again?

I couldn't.  Deep down I felt this yearning to move toward God.  He wanted more of me.  Having the sense of receiving undeserved grace, the space between me and God felt wide open.  Like the waters of chaos had been parted and all I had to do was say Yes.  He was paving a way for me and asking me to surrender everything…. my plans for the future, my idol of gymnastics, my fear of the unknown.

I knew it.  So I gave it to Him.  This was the first, of many times, I turned over a big chunk of who I thought I was and handed it to my maker.  I likened the transaction between God and I as if He had kindly tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I was ready to get out of the driver seat yet.  I was.