Hi! I’m Amber, a mom of three girls, a writer, and a teacher. I write here at One Tired Mother and at other places on the Internet, too. If you’d like to learn more about me — I know I always like to know a bit about someone whose words I’m reading — you can check out this brief post. Finally, I thank you for your time and attention; I don’t take it for granted.
Here’s an interesting truth: we don’t actually know if the events in our lives are good or bad.
We sure think we do, but we really don’t. We don’t know how something that is happening will impact other things in the future, or what part it may be playing for our good. I always think of this illustration, which I think comes from C.S. Lewis: our view of reality is like looking into a room through a keyhole. It’s so incredibly narrow. We can’t see the whole picture—not even close.
In the Christian world, today is Good Friday, the day Jesus was tortured and killed by the religious and secular authorities alike. I always think about how the disciples and followers of Jesus must have felt today (and tomorrow). I’d planned to write words on this myself, but then I woke up to beautiful ones in my inbox from two other writers, so I’ll just give you theirs:
First, from my writer friend
:Did the disciples leave Golgotha feeling crazy? After all of that time, investment, and relationship with Jesus, did they leave his crucifixion shrouded in shame and self doubt? Were all Jesus’ followers disappointed and confused? Did they blame themselves for believing so eagerly?
We’re told that the disciples locked themselves in a room, fearing for their lives. I wonder what they felt? Fear, yes, but perhaps also the foolishness of having invested themselves so deeply. Were they planning a quiet return to normal life, hoping to escape notice? Were they wondering if they would still have a livelihood after all their time following this man?
And then, from
:Imagine—take a moment to really, really imagine—how the apostles must have felt that night. The man they’d given up their lives for, who they swore they’d defend to the death, who they vowed to protect, had died. And they’d been too chickenshit to even claim him as their own. They’d slunk off like cowards to dark alleys and hidden corners, watching as everything they’d banked on came crumbling down like a house of cards. To feel defeated must have been an understatement.
That sorrow is hard to imagine—that you’d lost, not just your mission, but your very own self. You weren’t who you thought you were, and the bad guys won.
On this day so many years ago, followers of Jesus were living a nightmare. There’s no way any of them—aside from Mary—could have known that this day was anything other than the end of their world. They were surely thinking, in one way or another, this is bad.
It seems a bit silly to transition from the death of God incarnate to a story about a minor car accident, but here we go. Stick with me.
It was mid-February, the day after Valentine’s Day to be exact. It had been nice out for a while and then was suddenly icy in the morning (#Midwest), and I got rear-ended pretty good as I sat in a line of cars at a stop sign. I was driving our little Honda Fit, so not only did the back get smashed by the SUV behind me, but I got pushed into the SUV in front of me as well.
Good times.
I wasn’t hurt, but it scared the crap out of me, and it made me late for work on a day where I had a lot of time-sensitive things to do.1 And of course, now we’d be down a car in our very busy three-kid life and have to figure out how to move forward (as if we needed more to do). Ugh.
Here’s how things actually turned out.
It still drove after the accident, so we were able to make it work for a few weeks getting everyone where they needed to go. (Yes, I was driving a smashed car to work, but the school I work at is only 5 minutes away.)
Ryan and I had chatted randomly about how it would be nice to have a bigger car. Though we loved our little hatchback, it was a before-kids vehicle and not very practical anymore. However, we’d purchased it with a salvage title, and cars with salvage titles can be harder to re-sell. So we just hadn’t tried.2 We found out it was declared a total loss, and yesterday we got the check for an amount not much less than we paid for it about ten years ago.3
Ryan talked with his mom, and she offered his dad’s car to us. (He passed away about a year ago.) We were going to the Twin Cities, where Ryan grew up, in early March for a training I had, and there we bought the car from her and brought it back.4 It feels meaningful to my husband to be driving his father’s car.
All in all, it couldn’t have worked out better. What seemed obviously bad and annoying was actually, quite good.
I realize that a minor car accident is a very small thing, but we’re so quick to freak out when things go “wrong” aren’t we? (Or maybe it’s just me?) I either panic, self-blame, or wallow in my bummed-out-ness. I was talking to Ryan about this post I’m writing this morning over coffee before the kids got up—our daily routine—and he said, “Like that house you were so set on and so mad at me about when we backed out. This house is so much better.”5
(He’s right—both about me being mad and that our current house is better.)
Over the years I’ve learned that the mental labels of “good” and “bad” we so quickly give things are mostly meaningless and, to boot, not helpful. (Especially the bad.) I’ve seen time and again that, fundamentally, it’s not the events of our lives that make things hard, it’s the stories we have about them (the most common one for me being why is this happeniiiinng this is not what I had planned!!).
I read a powerful illustration in a book once. It’s not a Christian book6 at all, but it still illustrates truth:
A wise man who won an expensive car in a lottery. His family and friends were very happy for him and came to celebrate. “Isn’t it great!?” they said. “You are so lucky.” The man smiled and said, “Maybe.” For a few weeks he enjoyed driving the car. Then one day a drunken driver crashed into his new car and he ended up in the hospital with multiple injuries. His family and friends came to see him and said, “That was really unfortunate.” Again, the man smiled and said, “Maybe.” While he was still in the hospital, one night there was a landslide and his house fell into the sea. Again his friends came the next day and said, “Weren’t you lucky to have been here in the hospital.” Again he said, “Maybe.”
The author continues: “The wise man’s ‘maybe’ signifies a refusal to judge anything that happens. He knows that often it is impossible for the mind to understand what place or purpose an event has in the tapestry of the whole.”
YEP.
This illustration sticks with me. There are so many events in our lives that seem very clearly bad, but this is the truth: we don’t actually know how it will all shake out. We can’t see the big picture.
The disciples of Jesus were confused and terrified at the events of today and tomorrow. Jesus had told them what was going to happen and why, but in his Jesus-y way of stories and metaphors. They didn’t get it. Maybe they couldn’t and maybe he knew that.
But what seemed like the worst thing ever was—you guessed it—actually very much not. It wasn’t an amazing teacher who had seemed like the Messiah being unfortunately crushed and defeated. It was literally the God of the universe showing us a different way to love, to win. It was an event that would change everything.
put it this way:We have something the apostles didn’t have, besides running water and TikTok. We have the vantage point of time. We know what happened three days later. We know that this was not defeat, but good. This gruesome feat was for a greater purpose, to fulfill the will of God and save us all from our own dumb selves.
Can we remember this truth—that we never have the big picture—when we’re in the midst of a situation that feels like the end of our world? Or even one that just feels unlucky, hard, bad? Can we trust that there might be a way it will prove to be part of something… good?
One year ago tomorrow I officially became Catholic. If you’ve followed my writing for a while, you’ll know that I don’t often talk about faith, and that this mostly relates to my heart for skeptics and seekers (I used to be one; I supposed I still am). I was interviewed by our local diocese a few months ago about my faith and my conversion, and they decided to release it for Easter weekend. If you’re interested in hearing me talk briefly about how I came to be a Christian and then a Catholic, you can have a listen here.
I’m an ELL teacher and we were doing our annual testing. The testing window was coming to a close and if you’re in this world you know that all kids take four tests (listening/reading/writing/speaking). It’s a lot and I was so stressed out being late that day!
Plus it was an awesome car. We loved it—the girls called it “the buggy”—and it rarely broke down. (We try to buy American-made things, but I think it’s Japanese cars for the win?)
Cars with salvage titles are cheaper. We got a great deal from a guy we found on Craigslist who loved to fix up Honda Fits.
I’m not really into vehicles, but I love this lil car. It’s a cute black Subaru Forester. It also has a CD player, which we’re thrilled about since we’re old-school and still have tons of CDs lol.
House hunting is spiritual testing on steroids. Change my mind.
It’s Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, honestly one of my faves.
I love the idea of "maybe." It's so easy to write something off as "bad," but also fail to see the goodness in it. Also, I'd rather be rear ended than go house-hunting ever again.