It has been awhile since I last posted to this blog and I will start with my excuses as to why I haven't written. 1.) I am now the proud mother of TWO sweet boys and life with two toddlers, is, well, busy. I don't even know my own name most days. 2.) I now have a new position in my company where I am either on the road or in front of a computer. When I do have some down time, the last place I want to be is on my computer. However, I am a smart phone junkie so that excuse doesn't hold a lot of water. I'm pretty sure this site has a mobile app, so I will be taking care of that one. 3.) I stopped writing because I started becoming too much of a perfectionist. My grammar and punctuation and sentence structure, and all those things we geeks worry about, were not up to my standards anymore and I quit, rather than taking the time to improve myself. There you have it, my excuses in a nutshell.
That said, this blog started with a traumatic event, losing my son, Keller, and it is being revived due to a traumatic event. It's funny how trauma does different things to different people. Some people want to hide, some want to escape, some want to expose it. For some reason, I look to the written word for comfort during times of crisis. It's like I want to capture the emotions of the moment, so I can make sense of them in some geeky way. Words have always given me comfort in the past, whether it was quotes, song lyrics, the bible, books, etc. Traumas can also make a person feel very isolated. Deep down, I hope that someone who needs them will read my words, feel less alone in the world, and be comforted.
Today I witnessed a pretty horrible accident on my way home from work. A woman, about my age, must have been distracted on her drive home from work and crashed near me. She was headed in the opposite direction in the freeway, flew over my lanes of traffic, through a fence, and stopped on a frontage road next to the highway. She obviously had a lot of internal injuries and wasn't conscious during the time I spent with her. Some people were able to help her breathe, but she was very badly hurt. I heard chatter on the police scanner, while I was filling out my statement in the patrol car, that she wouldn't likely survive. She was not wearing a seatbelt.
My heart breaks for this unknown woman and her family. My prayer is that she overcomes the odds that are now stacked against her and recovers from her injuries. There are a lot of people walking around today who weren't given a lot of chance to live. God is strong and powerful and He can heal her broken body. I pray that that is His will and that everyone involved will learn something from today's chaotic events.
Unfortunately, I seem to be a magnet for such traumas. Earlier in this blog, I mentioned that I was in a severe car accident when I was in college. A motorcyclist crashed in front of, and into, me on a mountain road. He and I crashed into the side of a mountain. My body was injured, but so was my spirit. At the time of that accident, I wondered, "Is this IT? Is this what finally BREAKS me and crushes my spirit?" It took a long time for my body to heal and even longer for my spirit to recover. Slowly I came back. With the help of countless doctors, mentors, friends, and family members, I found my way back to myself. I regained my natural "Jami-ness," only with a few more bumps and bruises.
All of us have trauma in our lives. That motorcycle accident is just one of my many chaotic and confusing experiences. While I don't necessarily believe that "everything happens for a reason," I do believe that God allows us to heal and overcome, hopefully learning and growing along the way. I can't believe in a God who is up there pushing buttons to give us down here more character, but I can believe in a God that gave us free will, thus allowing us to make idiotic decisions. Sometimes, our idiotic decisions affect other people, thus allowing the traumatic and often bewildering events to occur.
I have a lot more to say on this topic, but I will end this post with a few thoughts. If you have experienced trauma, you are not alone. Unfortunately, you have a lot of company in that club. Reach out to someone. You will likely find that you can offer and receive comfort in a shared experience. And wear your seatbelt. Please.
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