Eleven Years of Gratitude

Its been eleven years.  Eleven years since I wrapped my car around a cement pole in an accident that should have ended my life.  Eleven years since I ignored a spiritual prompting that would have helped me avoid getting into that accident in the first place. Eleven years since the Lord spared me anyway from the consequences of my own dumb mistakes. 

In that time I’ve graduated from high school, undergrad and law school. I served a mission. Met and married the girl of my dreams. And had a son. 

In that time, I have lived in seventeen houses in two countries and four states. I have visited Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, the UK, Israel, Austria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas. I have worked as door-to-door salesman, a telemarketer, a librarian, a research assistant, and a law clerk.

In that time, I have been blessed with trials that have stretched me and refined me. I lost a tooth in Uruguay after being attacked by a local drunk. I had my heart broken by a couple of girls I dated. My wife and I grappled with the pain of being unable to have children for five years after we were married. I struggled to find a landing spot for after graduation. I even coped through a crisis of faith. 

Eleven years that I didn’t deserve.  Eleven years that I can never pay back. 

He has been with me each step of the way, and today as I look down at my son, I find myself overwhelmed at the Lord’s mercy and love towards me.

I am grateful that he spared my life eleven years ago, even though I did not listen to him that day.  I am grateful that that experience has made me more sensitive to the Lord’s voice, and enabled me to be protected in other sticky situations I’ve found myself in over the last decade.

I am grateful that the Lord brought Kindra into my life, and through the atonement of his Son, has provided a way for us to be sealed for eternity. I love her more today than when I married her, and we continue to discover ways in which the two of us are uniquely compatible . . . compatible in a way that I never imagined possible.

I am grateful for my son. I did not know that I could love someone as strongly and as instantaneously as I do him. The experience of fatherhood has radically altered my understanding of my relationship with my Father in Heaven.  I understand why he loves me. I am his son. That is enough.

I am grateful that the Lord protected my wife and child during delivery. Jack came suddenly, and there was about an hour and a half that I was not sure if he (or Kindra) was going to make it. I am grateful for the friends and family who prayed for me during that moment.  

I am grateful for my parents and siblings. They are right now all together in North Carolina, and I am here in Louisiana. I miss them and their goodness.  Their faith. I am grateful for the many lessons they have taught me throughout my life: the importance of listening to the Spirit, the reality of prayer, the virtue of making fun of yourself. I am grateful for the sacrifices they made to raise me—the fact that my dad was willing to get on a plane every week to prevent me from having to move while I was in high school.

I am grateful for the teachers and mentors that the Lord has sprinkled throughout my life: Nate Wheatley, my old scoutmaster and seminary teacher; Tom Gwynn, my old Sunday School teacher; Jonathan Austin, my old EFY session director; Jay Condie, my old YSA bishop and stake president member; Matt Gray, my institute teacher, TA, and college professor; Gordon Smith, my law professor who taught me a lot more than just contracts; Presidente y Hermana Peterson, my mission president and mission mom; President Hedquist and President Stamps, the temple presidency in Detroit; President Medley, our stake president in Detroit; Carlos Junca, my branch president in Detroit.   That’s an abbreviated list, and there are many more people who have deeply impacted my life, faith, and thinking.

I am grateful for my friends—old and new—and that the joy that they bring into my life.

I am grateful for Church callings and the ability to serve.

I am grateful for missions—my own as well as those of the missionaries serving here in Louisiana and in Detroit.  Their faith strengthens my own, and spending time with them reminds me of my best self.

I am grateful for temples and the fact that no matter what negative emotion I may be feeling when I arrive, it is immediately diminished the second I cross the threshold. 

I am grateful to have another year to grow as a father, as a husband, and as a disciple of Christ. Each of the last three years have been incredibly different, and I look forward to seeing what the coming year has in store.  

I am grateful for my car wreck . . .

Has it already been ten years?  I still remember the feeling of shock I experienced when my car finally came to a halt, wrapped around that cement pole.  Safety glass – the remains of my windshield and a couple of windows – was everywhere, and for one terrifying minute I was convinced I was paralyzed, certain that that shooting pain in my back was a sign that my spine was going to shatter the second I moved.  My car had fishtailed, I’m still not sure why, and after several brilliant overcorrections, I plowed through two chain link fences before coming to a stop in someone’s front yard.

I began honking the horn frantically.  After a couple of minutes a red pick up truck flew past me, stopped about a hundred yards down the road, and then slowly reversed.  The three guys inside rolled down their window as they passed me a second time and asked a question that resonates with me more today then it did then: “Are you ok?”

Are you ok?

I was terrified.  My car was totaled.  But I was alive.  I shouldn’t have been.  But I was.  Had it not been for that stupid cement pole, my car would have kept rotating straight into a telephone poll.  But it didn’t.  I was ok.

I’ve thought about that accident a lot over the last decade.  In fact, every Thanksgiving since then I’ve made it a habit of publicly posting a list of things I am grateful for.  This year is no different, but given some of the experiences Kindra and I have had over the last couple of years, I find myself grateful for the things that haven’t gone right in my life.  I find myself grateful for my trials that have helped forge me into the person I am today.

I’m grateful that I crashed my car ten years ago.  The experience has certainly made me a little more introspective . . . a little more grateful just to be alive.  But that accident has also contributed to some of the choicest blessings in my life.  I became close friends with Kindra, the love of my life, because I needed a ride to the temple in college.  Would that have ever happened if I had taken a car to college?  Would we be married today?

I am grateful that I did not get the Morehead Scholarship to UNC.  I was a finalist for it my senior year, and being rejected from the program was a huge blow to my self-esteem.  I struggled with feelings of inadequacy and depression for months after the fact.  But, I was really arrogant in high school, and that rejection letter was a real wake up call.  I don’t know what sort of person I’d have become had I been a Morehead Scholar, but I think I’d be a lot more difficult to live with.  They really try and brainwash you during the finalist weekend, and I definitely drank the kool-aid.  They convinced me that the Morehead would change my life, and if I didn’t get selected, my life probably wasn’t worth changing.  But . . . the only time I ever considered postponing my mission was during the week that I thought I was going to be selected as a Morehead.  Would I have gone a year later?  At all?  Either way, so many of the friends I have today – Lila, Jose, Fabiana, Ely, Ernesto y Gricielda, Ari, not to mention my companions – I would have never met.  My life would be completely different.

I am so grateful I was attacked while in Uruguay.  I am so grateful I lost my tooth.

I am grateful I went to law school.  It is difficult to describe just how much of an emotional roller coaster the experience is to someone who hasn’t lived it.  I was close to a nervous break down more than a few times, and I felt myself chewed up, stretched, and then spit back out.  But, I am better for the wear and tear.  My mind is sharper, my opinions more nuanced, my judgment more reserved.  It has also blessed me with the opportunity to work to promote religious liberty, both in the United States and abroad.  It really shaped me (and helped me make some great friends along the way.)

I am grateful it took me as long as it did to secure a clerkship.  I sent out hundreds of applications.  To Arkansas.  Alaska.  California.  Louisiana.  Puerto Rico.  Guam.   You name it.   But, things kept going wrong with my applications.  I had more than one emotional break down during 2L year as the rejection letters kept rolling in.  I was humiliated by my inability to secure a job.  But, had I had the success I desperately wanted when I wanted it . . . Kindra and I wouldn’t be in living in Detroit right now.  We’d be somewhere else, and not members of the Detroit River Branch.  I wouldn’t be branch mission leader.  I wouldn’t be home teaching companions with a Congolese refugee.  I wouldn’t be working in the temple.  I wouldn’t be teaching Sunday School.  And because of that . . . I suspect I wouldn’t feel as close to God or be as happy as I am right now.  I think I have felt more content, more consistently over the last three months than I have since coming home from my mission.  And that contentment has absolutely nothing to do with my job or economic stability.

I am grateful that Kindra and I don’t have kids right now.  That is a tremendously hard thing to say.  Dealing with infertility has been the hardest thing I have ever done.  It is a hell that cannot be described to people who have not endured it.  But . . . because we do not have kids right now, at this moment, we have been blessed with a greater ability to serve.  We’re able to be temple workers, and be in the House of the Lord every Saturday morning.  We’re able to work more frequently with the missionaries.  We’re able to spend more time with each other, get out of debt faster, and have adventures that, while not impossible, would be more difficult with a baby-on-board.  I still desperately want to be a father, but I recognize the serene blessings I have received because I have been asked to wait for that stage of life.  And I sense that this tour of duty in parental purgatory is going to make us into a better mom and dad.  I think we will appreciate our children more – however they come into our family – and be more grateful when they come.

In a similar vein, I am grateful for the severe trial of faith I have experienced over the last year.   This time last year (in part because of not having kids), I felt as if my faith was collapsing . . . and it only got worse as the months went on.  But, as I have slowly emerged from that darkness, I have found a great serenity in belief.  My testimony feels different . . . more grounded in the Savior and his atonement than it was before.  More secure.  More rich.  But, I also developed  a greater understanding and love for those who struggle with faith and the Church than I did before.  I feel less judgmental, and more desirous to help those who doubt.  Not to simply explain away their fears and apprehensions, but to comfort them, to cry with them, and to assure them that they belong.  To help them believe.  To help them hope . . . even if they can’t say they know.

I am grateful that God is not content with my vision of my future.  I am grateful he is not content with my vision of myself.  He is the great chess master.  The master carpenter, who sometimes cuts me, hammers me, nails me.  It hurts sometimes, but he is constructing something much bigger than I can see.  It’s all in the blueprints.  He is making me like him . . . one tiny nail at a time.  And for that, I am eternally grateful.

I’m OK.