when we were much younger my little brother and i were having a conversation about which Disney character we thought people were like. i went on a long ramble about why he is so much like john smith from pocahontas. blond, outdoorsy, adventurous. all kinds of good qualities! then i asked him which disney person i was. lets be honest, we girls all hope for some kind of princess...but no, he thought for a moment and then, very straightforward like he is he said. "you're definitely Dory from finding nemo!" needless to say i was a bit deflated but he made it a little better when he told me that Dory makes him laugh. i guess i can live with that.
i tell you that story because saturday i did not feel like a dory. i didn't feel encouraging and i didn't feel like laughing much either. and as a lady who loves V day very much it all kind of turned into the biggest bummer of a day.
we set out in the morning to meet up with a good friend of mine in massachusetts. i haven't seen him in so long and this was going to be such an exciting day. we left a little early so about an hour into the trip i got a text from his girlfriend telling me they had been in a car accident.
if you're anything like me your heart just split and hit the bottom of your stomach while simultaneously hitting the back of your throat. no one panic, she said they were okay but my friend hit his head and was going to the hospital to get checked out. the hitting the head part is a whole other story but i was just a little shaken up by the whole thing.
and try as i might throughout the day i just couldn't seem to get it together. i finally talked (err, cried...) to my mom and felt a little better. you know its just such a funny thing, a tiny piece of me is always going to quietly ask God why bad things happen when they do. but a much larger piece is always going to remind me that no matter what, God is good and he brings good out of bad situations. and i can praise him all day for protection and that this accident wasn't much worse. and i am reminded today that we always have a choice in how we react. we can climb into a dark hole of doubt and yuck, or we can choose to just keep swimming in the knowledge that God is indeed watching over us at all times and he is for us and he loves us with an everlasting love.
and on this cold, cold monday i am thankful for that.