Blender Accidents and Other Thoughts for a New Year

I’m an unusually happy person. I’m an optimist by nature, so it might surprise you when I say in regard to the new year with new beginnings and new possibilities, “Don’t get your hopes up.”

                This is coming from a person who nearly always has her hopes up.  I’m married to a pessimist, who constantly worries about me being let down, in everything from life’s big dreams to my new casserole recipe.  In the midst of all that goes wrong in life, I’m always digging for the nuggets of good.

                I was in my early thirties, however, when I began realizing there had been a slight shift in how I viewed the world.  Normally, I was on the band wagon of high hopes for a new year.  I celebrated the first day of the new year with gusto, imagining all the possibilities that were ahead, currently just out of my reach, but surely soon to be in my grasp.

                Yet in every year, there was something that caught me off guard—bad medical news, a death, an accident, a financially crushing circumstance.  The list went on.  And each year, my hopes were crushed by whatever went wrong.  I realized, slowly but surely, that something always went wrong.  Surely there would be a year when all went right!  But in my young adulthood, it was becoming readily clear that so far, I hadn’t come upon a year that was willing to deliver all good things.

                With that shift came a dread that slowly seeped into my life as well.  With each turning of the new year, I felt myself at first simply unmoved and unexcited about the things to come.  Then, without notice, I realized that in the place of hope and excitement, fear and dread had burrowed into my outlook.

                As I began to examine this, I realized that it was an unhealthy place to be.  Yet I didn’t really know how to get myself out of it.  I simply shrugged at even the thought.  “What does it matter how I look at it or don’t?  Whatever will happen will happen.”

                The older one gets in life, the more one realizes how little control we all have.  As a person of faith in Jesus, this seems to be His very point, made over and over.  He offers a lot of comfort regarding this truth, that we can cast our cares upon Him, that He has overcome the world, but the fact is, life is difficult.

                I was agreeing with all of that, yet was ignoring so much of His other commandments, namely walking by faith and not by sight.  I’d resigned myself to thinking that there was nothing I could do but accept what was unchangeable, to accept my lot in life.

                All of these things had been weighing on my mind for awhile when the new year began last year—2013.  I gave little thought to the rolling of the calendar, but in the back of my mind I wondered what would happen in this year?  Something always happens.

                It was Superbowl Sunday when I was preparing some appetizers for a party we were attending.  I was happily in my kitchen, putting to good use all those Pinterest pins I’d been acquiring over the few weeks.  I was excited to use my new immersion blender I’d gotten for Christmas.  As usual, I was running late and trying to get all my appetizers to finish at the same time.

                In the midst of not paying attention to what I was doing, I stuck my finger into my blender while it was off in order to scrape a small piece of food that had gotten stuck.

                The problem was, this blender was different. Instead of an on/off switch at the top, you squeezed the stick/handle in order to turn it on.

                It took a half a second to realize the blender had turned on and my finger was in it.  I grabbed a dishtowel and screamed for my husband, who was napping on the couch.  We drove to the ER, just a couple of miles away, as I held my hand in the dishtowel.  The pain was difficult.

                Once there, a triage nurse took me back to a room.  I guess, like all nurses, she could sense the fear in my eyes and she said, “You’re going to have to take that towel off.”

                “But I’m afraid my finger’s not there anymore.”

                “We’re just going to have to see.  I’m going to run some cold water in this sink and you’re going to put your hand under it.  And if the finger for some reason falls off, I’ve got it.”

                It was such a surreal conversation that I started laughing through the tears.  She assured me it was all going to be OK. 

                She turned the water on and I held my hand under it, unable to look.  “What’s happening?  Is it still there?”

                “It’s still there,” she said. “But it’s a mess.”

                Once the ER surgeon saw me, he said that it was pretty much amputated, hanging on by a thread, but that the bone was intact, which was the good news.  He spent at least an hour trying to deaden the thing, which was both hurting and numb.  After several nerve blocks and me still able to feel the needle, he said he didn’t know what else to do.

                “Go ahead and sew it up,” I sighed.  “Pain’s all relative, right?”

                So on one half of my finger, I could feel ever poke of the needle as he tried to sew my finger back.  “It’s so shredded,” he said. “I don’t think I have enough skin.”  But the good news, he said, was that he studied in residency under a hand surgeon so he was pretty sure he had a shot of getting it put back on.

                My poor husband has a weak stomach when it comes to blood and his wife’s kitchen injuries.  He had to sit outside.

                So the doctor and I sat in my ER room, both watching the Superbowl on the big fancy flat screen TV they’d put up in each ER room.  He’d sew for awhile, then watch the game for a couple of minutes while we both rested, and then go back to it. 

                “At least,” I thought to myself, “I got the bad thing out of the way at the first of the year.”

                Three or so hours later, I was sent home with an appointment to see the hand surgeon the next day, to find out the fate of what would happen to this finger.  It was not, unfortunately, my first kitchen accident.  I’ve only had two accidents in my life in the kitchen and they were both fairly catastrophic.  About seven years before, a knife slipped and went through my hand, severing the radial nerve to my pinky.  I was put into emergency surgery to try to save the function of my hand through microsurgery and it had thankfully worked.

(I'll spare you the other photos, but this is what my hand looked like right after coming home from the ER)

                Again, regarding my hand, I was facing an unsure future.  As a writer, my hands are like a window from my soul onto the page.  It is hard to describe, but they are my tools.  There is a flow to typing, a way I do it, sort of like playing music.  Someone suggested that I use Dragon Dictate, but it was not an option for me.  I couldn’t speak my novels. They had to be written through my hands.

                Once I got to the hand surgeon, there was good news.  The ER doctor had done a fabulous job and he didn’t feel any more surgery was needed.  However, the focus would now be on my nerves.  Their regrowth potential was uncertain and the amount of pain I would face was uncertain too.  “Absolutely no typing,” he said.  “For four weeks.”

                I felt so defeated.  It was like a bad dream.  And there was no way I could take four weeks off.  I’d fall too behind on everything I was working on.  So after the major bandages came off, I taught myself to type with nine fingers.  It was daunting at first, but I was surprised by how fast my fingers began to comply.  Within a matter of days, I was typing with nine fingers at a fairly good pace.

                Over the next several months, I battled the nerve pain.  Cold weather wreaked havoc.  Touch returned slowly, but not everywhere.  I came to the realization pretty fast that the finger would never be the same.

                I made my way through scouting locations for the film SKID, where our team visited multiple locations looking for planes and places to shoot.  It was cold and my finger constantly ached, turning dead white at the hint of any kind of frigid temperature.  No matter how much I wrapped it, it hurt.

                My spirits were lifted, though, when we began filming SKID.  The days were so busy and packed with such fun and excitement that I managed my way through without too much involvement with the finger.  On the cold days, I was reminded it was there, but mostly, it was in the back of my mind.

                After SKID wrapped, I found myself calming down a little bit about the hand.  It was what it was.  I could type with it, though it felt like a little electrical jolt went through it every time I tapped the letter “T”.   Still, I realized that perhaps the worst was past me.  I had a whole other part of the year to celebrate, including a wrapped film that had fulfilled one of my biggest dreams.

                Then May 20^th arrived.  It was an ordinary day, filled with a lot of work and too little time.  By the afternoon, my town would be turned upside down.  An F5 tornado would devastate Moore, OK and kill 24 people including 7 children, whose school was less than two miles from my own kids’ school.  How could I have even imagined that I’d step out of my front door that day and face down a killer twister?

                So every year holds surprises.  But I am learning to listen to God about these truths.  I have learned to set my expectations not low, not high, but on Him.  I’ve had friends this year diagnosed with cancer, lose parents, face financial devastation and more.  In my own life, there have been days of extreme delight followed closely by days of extreme sadness.

                The world will tell us to set our sights on all things positive, to will yourself to a better life.  But it becomes nonsense when you begin to realize how little control we really have.  We humans are so vulnerable.  What can a mere human do against an F5 tornado?

                I was faced with that question when I realized I didn’t have time to go get my children the day of the tornado.  The twister was headed straight for them and I could do nothing but pray.  I vividly remember being in the storm shelter of my neighbor, afraid I had seen my children for the last time, angry at myself for not having moved fast enough to get to the school.  And I felt the Holy Spirit say, And what are you against a tornado?  What can you do?

                It was true.  Even if I’d been there, what could I have done to save any of us?

                I’ve taken on that attitude toward my life as well.  I’m a clumsy human prone to kitchen accidents.  I’m a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things.  I’m a sinner incapable of pure motives in anything I do.

                Sounds hopeless enough.

                Yet the truth of the matter is that I rise everyday with hope.  And I realize I can get out of bed with hope because it’s not my own hope.  If I were left to my own devices, I’m not sure I could even go out the front door. I certainly can’t even make a basic appetizer for a party.

The world is so frightening.  So much can go wrong.  So much does go wrong. And even a front door can’t protect me from disease, from heartbreak. Nothing can.  Life is one big risk.

Yet the Bible reminds us, “We will be glad and rejoice in Thee.”  I ran across the following devotional by Charles Spurgeon a few days after the first of the year, and I thought it was an appropriate banner for me to carry into 2014.  They key to grasping what Spurgeon is saying is knowing the One in whom we should rejoice.  Without that relationship, mustering up joy like the kind described below is nothing more than fanfare and is virtually impossible anyway. 

Press into Jesus this year.  Get to know Him better than you know Him now.  Seek Him. Talk to Him.  Listen to Him.  Read about Him.  I hope the text below helps you renew your hope and celebrate all the good that comes with that relationship.  How often we overlook it when we’re faced with the bad, but find out what goodness the Lord offers us in this uncertain world.  Make it your resolution this year.

“We will be glad and rejoice in thee. We will not open the gates of the year to the dolorous notes of the sackbut, but to the sweet strains of the harp of joy, and the high sounding cymbals of gladness. O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise unto the rock of our salvation. We, the called and faithful and chosen, we will drive away our griefs, and set up our banners of confidence in the name of God. Let others lament over their troubles, we who have the sweetening tree to cast into Marah's bitter pool, with joy will magnify the Lord. Eternal Spirit, our effectual Comforter, we who are the temples in which thou dwellest, will never cease from adoring and blessing the name of Jesus. We WILL, we are resolved about it, Jesus must have the crown of our heart's delight; we will not dishonour our Bridegroom by mourning in his presence. We are ordained to be the minstrels of the skies, let us rehearse our everlasting anthem before we sing it in the halls of the New Jerusalem. We will BE GLAD AND REJOICE: two words with one sense, double joy, blessedness upon blessedness. Need there be any limit to our rejoicing in the Lord even now? Do not men of grace find their Lord to be camphire and spikenard, calamus and cinnamon even now, and what better fragrance have they in heaven itself? We will be glad and rejoice IN THEE. That last word is the meat in the dish, the kernel of the nut, the soul of the text. What heavens are laid up in Jesus! What rivers of infinite bliss have their source, aye, and every drop of their fulness in him! Since, O sweet Lord Jesus, thou art the present portion of thy people, favour us this year with such a sense of thy preciousness, that from its first to its last day we may be glad and rejoice in thee. Let January open with joy in the Lord, and December close with gladness in Jesus.”

 Have a happy and joyful 2014,

Rene

May 20th, 2013

In many ways I am the worst kind of survivor—the kind that does nothing to save my own life, but instead is unknowingly steered away from danger and death by no act of my own.  On April 19^th, 1995, I missed being in front of the Alfred P. Murrah building by only minutes, only because of a phone call my mom placed to me as I was walking out the door, asking me to come sign dental insurance papers.  I arrived with the first fire truck to see the chaos and devastation, thankful not to be a part of it.

                Eighteen years later, I would come face-to-face with another killer, this time in the form of not a bomber but a tornado.  This is my account of what happened on May 20^th, 2013, and more importantly, the spiritual lessons God helped me draw from the most terrifying moment in my entire life.

**

                Monday was a typical day—hectic, with too many things crammed into the span of 12 hours.  I had an appointment that morning to get my hair cut.  I chatted with Steve, my hair guy, about the minor tornado that went through Edmond the night before, and the subject moved on to other things.  By the time I left, I was already behind in my day but that was how most of my days went.

                Sean, my husband, has Mondays off, so he was home as I worked in my bedroom office.  A little after two he hollered that he was leaving.  He always picks up our son, John, from school so that I can have a little extra work time before I go get our daughter, Cate, from her school, which releases an hour later.

                I was immersed in work, trying to catch up on time lost that day, when the first weather alert went off on my phone.  I glanced at it.  It said “severe thunderstorm warning.”  Outside it was sunny and bright, but we’d been warned the night before that today was a “red alert” day, meaning there was a high probability of a tornado outbreak. 

                It was nothing new in Oklahoma.  Red alerts are rare, but we’ve had them before and we know what to do.  Storms start bubbling up in the late afternoon, and you keep your TV on and watch what’s going on for the rest of the night.

                I remember thinking that at 2:20 p.m., the storms were bubbling early.  Typically it’s 4 p.m. or after before they start “firing,” as we call it.

                I was in the middle of finishing a thought for the book I was working on, so I spent the next ten minutes tying that up, then went to our living room to turn the TV on and see where, exactly, the severe storm was.  I knew it wasn’t over me.  Bright light glowed in from every window.

                I grabbed my coffee from my desk and went to the living room to turn on the TV.  It takes about fifteen to thirty seconds for our TV to power up so I just stood there waiting, sipping my coffee.  When the picture finally came on, the head meteorologist that I always watch was talking fast and showing pictures of the radar.  I wasn’t tuned into what he was saying as much as how he was saying it.  His face was tense.  His tone was serious.  I set my coffee down and tried to figure out where this storm was.  The first word that raised a red flag for me was “Newcastle.”

                When you live in Moore, there are key towns you listen for, knowing that if it’s over this or that place then you’ll probably be next.  I still wasn’t alarmed.  Newcastle just meant we’d be next if the storm was moving Northeast, which most did.  I stood there waiting for the radar to come up again when I heard him say, “This thing is passing over I-44.  Right now.  It’s passing over I-44!”

                I remember thinking, What is passing over I-44?  Then I heard him say “tornado.”

                I stood there frozen, in total shock.  There was a tornado?  I thought it was a storm.  There was a tornado?  On the ground?

                “Folks,” he said, “this is taking the exact path of May 3^rd of 1999.”

                And that’s when utter fear struck me.  I knew I was in its path.  The neighborhood that I currently lived in had been wiped off the map on May 3^rd.  My mind raced.  If I was in its path, so was our church, John’s school and Cate’s school.  Whether Sean had stopped at the church (where he worked) on his way to get John or not, he was in the path.  My entire family was in its path and none of us were together.  I tried to call Sean but his phone rolled to voicemail over and over.

                “It’s on May Avenue!  May Avenue!”  the meteorologist shouted. May was just three miles to the west of me.  I don’t exactly know when or why I called my mom, but I was on the phone with her, panic building in me by the second. 

                “Mom, I don’t know what I should do.  Should I go get Cate?  Should I get her?  I don’t think I have enough time. Do I have enough time to get her and get home?”

                Looking at the projected path of the tornado, it was headed straight for Cate’s school, which stood right in front of our neighborhood.  “What should I do?  Mom?”

                She was watching the news with me at her house in Edmond.  “I don’t think you have time.  It’s at Penn and 134th.” Cate’s school was right in its path, one half mile away.  “You need to find shelter.”

                I ran outside briefly, but I knew…all my neighbors who had tornado shelters were at work.  The tornado sirens started blaring.  Plus, how could I go underground when everything that mattered to me in the world was right in the path of this tornado, above ground?

                “Rene,” my mom said, “it’s time.  You need to make a decision and do it.  I don’t think you have time to get to Cate.”

                “My neighbors aren’t home.”

                “Then get in your bathtub.”

                But that was one of the last things I’d heard the meteorologist say—if you’re not underground, you’re not going to make it.  “This thing is a monster,” he said.

                “OK, I’m going,” I said, and hung up with my mom.

                I first ran to my computer to send out an urgent prayer request and then ran to my son’s bedroom to get a mattress to put over me in the bathtub but I couldn’t lift it. From the living room, I could hear the meteorologist shouting, “Get underground!  You must get underground!”  Something told me to run outside, try again for a neighbor.  The sirens were screaming and to the southwest was the darkest, blackest cloud I’d ever seen. It literally swallowed up the light.

                I looked toward the DeMents two doors down and their garage door was open.  The wind was blowing and I ran, ducking because it sounded like hail had started.  Serena, the mom, waved me in.  “Hurry!”  I ran down into the cellar.  Inside were Serena’s four children, one of whom was Cate’s best friend.

                “Where’s Cate?” her daughter asked, wide-eyed.

                Grief swallowed me.  Serena had been vigilant and gone to get her girls.  She’d been watching the weather.  I’d gotten caught off guard and now Cate’s life was in danger.  My husband. My son.  They were all out there, above ground.

                The hardest thing I’ve ever done was descend into that shelter knowing the whole of my heart and life was right in the path of a tornado that they said we wouldn’t survive if we weren’t underground.

                I tried to hold it together.  It wasn’t going to help matters for me to get hysterical in front of Serena’s four children.  Her husband, Bob, was trying to track it on his computer, but we couldn’t get a signal.  Then, like that, the quiet hum of electricity was gone.  All the lights went out.  The air got very still and quiet.  Bob said it was time to close the door.

                I sat there in the dark, with one lone flashlight glowing, trying to utter silent prayers against my frantically beating heart.  I pleaded with God. “Lord, my whole life is up there!  Please keep them safe!  Please help us all!”

                There was a peace there.  I couldn’t explain it.  I just knew that I had absolutely no control now.  I was safe, yes.  But if my family died, I didn’t want to be here. Yet it was where I was and God was where they were and I knew that ultimately, they couldn’t have been in better hands.  What was I going to do to stop a tornado? I was helpless here in the cellar but just as helpless out there facing the tornado. I could do nothing but trust the God whom I knew loved me and loved my family.

                We could hear something outside now, maybe the tornado, but it was hard to know.  After a few minutes, which seemed like an hour, we emerged to absolutely no destruction.  I ran down to my house to try to call Sean, but there was no signal and there was no electricity.

                When I ran back outside, Serena was talking to a neighbor further down that I didn’t recognize.  As I approached them, there was a look on Serena’s face that I couldn’t interpret.  I looked at the man and I said, “Where did it hit?”

                “It came down 134^th,” he said.  “It hit a school.”

                I lost it.  I was distraught as I ran to my van, shaking as I peeled out of my driveway.  I drove two blocks to the path that led to the back of Cate’s school.  I ran down the path and could see the gym was standing but the gym blocked the entire school.  I couldn’t see a thing until I rounded the gym, breathing hard, my lungs on fire and my legs cramping from the run. 

There the school was, standing, totally intact.  The man, I thought, had gotten wrong information.

                I tried all the doors, hoping to get in, but they were in lockdown.  I finally found an open door and ran toward the 5^th grade hallway.  I hurried to her room.  Her teacher was standing in the hallway with the other teachers.  Their electricity was out too.

                I thanked them as Cate ran into my arms.  She didn’t seem scared but looked happy to see me.  I told her to grab her things and that we would go.  With no electricity, we had no idea if there were more storms behind this one.

                As we walked out the front of the school, I saw the first signs of tragic news.  Firetrucks, ambulances and police cars raced by, over and over and over.  As we walked to the van I heard the sirens wailing, and they didn’t stop.  I knew that wherever it hit, whatever it hit, it was bad.

                Now the question was, where was my husband and son?  We raced home in the van and to my everlasting gratefulness, they were now home.  Sean’s phone had died and he didn’t have a clue what was happening until the sirens went off.  He went into the middle school and the secretary said, “Sir!  A tornado is coming!”  Sean ran down to John’s classroom and found him, with his classmates, huddled under their desks in lockdown.  So he huddled with him and was there when the electricity went off.

                After some discussion, we decided to leave our house.  The sirens from the emergency vehicles still sounded, as if the whole world was lost.  We still didn’t know what ultimately happened because we had no TV, phone or internet.  But whatever happened, we knew we should probably just get out.

                Easier said than done. It took us almost an hour just to get out of our neighborhood and to the highway, which was only three miles away.  It was like the apocalypse. As cars fled the scene and emergency vehicles blocked the road, doctors and nurses ran by foot toward the chaos.  Dozens and dozens of them ran toward something awful.  Photographers ran too.  And then regular people were running, trying to get, I knew, to those they loved.  Along with the surreal scene, there was an odd smell in the air.

                As we headed north, toward my parents’ house, we saw emergency vehicles from all over the state coming toward Moore.  It wasn’t until I got to my parents’ house to see the television coverage did I know the full extent of the damage.  It was unimaginable.  I couldn’t fathom what I was seeing—schools gone, entire neighborhoods gone.  And the destruction was only one half mile from my house.

                Over the next few days and weeks, I contemplated all of this.  I struggled, mostly, with an unbearable guilt, for not being on top of the situation and going to get my kids out of harms’ way.  Why hadn’t I turned on the TV sooner?  Been more vigilant?

                I also had to face something else—survivor’s guilt, I guess they call it.  At the moment that the tornado was headed straight for all that I cared for in life, I sent out that quick email to my writers’ group, asking for them to pray for our safety.  Later, when I saw the map of where the tornado had gone, it clearly showed its suddenly turn east.  If it hadn’t turned, it would’ve hit us.  But how could I celebrate and praise God when the turning of that tornado left others dead?  Of course I was thankful for my family’s safety, but I also grieved for all those lives lost, most especially the little children.

                It was a private time for me of both praising and grieving and everything in between.  I recalled a scripture I’d read and meditated on a few years ago when I was developing a story idea.  It was from I Kings 19:11-13.  The Lord said to Elijah as he was hiding in a cave, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”  Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.  After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  And after the fire came a gentle whisper.  When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

                It helped me understand God was not in the tornado, but He was there nevertheless, in the gentle whispers and quiet peace that couldn’t be explained.  Around this same time, I read a devotional by John Piper where he talked about death being the final act of worship we have on this earth.  How we leave is just as important as how we arrived.  There were a lot of heroic moments on May 20^th—men and women, even children, who chose to sacrifice their life to try to save someone else.  My friend Angela, a teacher at one of the schools that was destroyed, flung herself over her students and shouted the Name of Jesus over the roar of the wind.  If she was going to go out of this life, she was going to do it shouting His name.  She lived through it, but many did not.  Another friend of mine, who recently moved to Moore from out of state, said she was amazed to watch people climbing out of the rubble and praising God, though they’d lost everything. 

                I am proud to be living in Moore, among truly heroic, truly godly, truly beautiful people.  I recently heard someone say, “Oklahoma ain’t for sissys.”  That cracked me up.  Oklahoma now holds three tornado records:  highest wind speed (May 3^rd, 1999, Moore, OK), largest tornado at 2.6 miles wide (May 31^st, 2013, El Reno, OK) and most destructive tornado (May 20^th, 2013, Moore, OK).  But I think we’re better known for the kinds of people who live here.

                So maybe I am the worst kind of survivor, the “lucky” one some might say.  But the truth is that none of us survive this world.  We’re going out of it, one way or the other.  Someday we have to say goodbye.  When it is our time, it is our time.  What will you do as your final act of worship?  I hope we all choose to live our lives well, be present in every moment we’re given, and know that even in the mighty storms of life, God is there.  You can hear Him.  He is the gentle whisper.  You are loved. Will you love Him?

 **

If you would like to help the relief efforts in Moore, OK, please see this website for suggestions: 

Moore, OK tornado relief