The Blessed Exchange

​When I was very, very pregnant with Amelia, Seth and I were in Santa Rosa for my Master's graduation. We flew into San Francisco, rented a car and then drove late into the night on a dark, winding Northern Californian highway. We felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea there were such rural parts of California. On this toll road in particular, there seemed to be no speed limit and people were taking full advantage. Our standard 70 to 75mph was down right pokey compared to the cars flying past us.
 
It was pitch black out, our vision limited to the two long, luminous triangles of our headlights, so when we passed two more triangles resting in place on the right side of the road, in the ditch it seemed, it took us a minute to realize that they were upside down. A full minute passed before realizing that a car was resting, wrong side up, on the side of the road, headlights blazing. About a mile after we passed, Seth and I looked at each other, and said in unison, "That was a car, upside down!" 

​We called 911 as quickly as we could but it was difficult to explain where we were. Obviously we felt compelled to go back but there was no way to turn around. So we moved to the very outside shoulder against the advice of the dispatcher and started backing up. Cars were flying by us at 90 miles per hour, it was a thick black night, and we were backing up on a shoulder.
 
After about a minute of driving backwards with cars whizzing past, Seth stopped, put it in drive, and said, "We've done what we can, this isn't safe. You are pregnant. My responsibility is to you and our baby. We've done what we can."
 
At the time, I agreed with him. I said OK. I think I was afraid of what we'd find if we actually made it back. We prayed together and then separately and spent the next hour in the car in silence.
 
And I've always regretted that.
 
It can wake me from sleep.
 
Someone needed to be there.
 
Someone needed to be there, waiting with them.
 
While I have had to rest in the fact that I can’t change the past, I have received at least some solace in knowing that I can certainly learn from it.
 
And, six winters later, after a fun night out with my husband and my in-laws, God gave me do over.
 
It was a similarly dark night when my family and I turned into our neighborhood off of a busy road and were shocked to see a car lying on its side accompanied by a lone police car.  We were just three or four blocks from our house and there we were, our headlights illuminating the underbelly of a car.
 
We paused.
 
We speculated.
 
(What in the world?!)
 
And then we made our left turn and pulled into our driveway.
 
Well, I already knew what it felt like to leave someone in a car without a friend to hold their hand or say a prayer, and even though it had been six years, I was still regretful, so instead of going inside to my cozy house, I thought I would take a walk down my street instead.
 
God may have given me a do over.
 
But He didn’t give me a plan.
 
He knew I didn't need one.
 
I rounded the corner and in the time it took me to get out of the car and walk the three blocks, countless more emergency vehicles had shown up.
 
I stopped at the corner and said a prayer for what I might see (I am NOT tough in traumatic situations) and I stopped at the porch of the next-door neighbor’s where she paced, spectating the chaos, and said hello.
 
We introduced ourselves.
 
She explained that there had been some loud fighting earlier in the night. It quieted down for an hour or two but just a second ago the fighting started up again and she heard kids yelling from the house, "Please stop, Daddy."
 
She kept talking.
 
I registered that she said she heard a POP POP and thought it was gun shots so she called 911, but all I was thinking was that there were kids in that house. She was talking and I could hear her, but the only detail that my brain could settle on was that there were kids in there. And with all of the adults tending to whoever was in that car, they were probably alone.
 
I didn't make a decision to do it, or if I did, it was involuntary, but the next thing I knew I was walking across their yard and up their driveway to a side door that was standing ajar.
 
I was standing at the entryway, peeking in. The house seemed empty. Quiet.
 
It was only then that I got nervous-- when I had a second of quiet-- but then, suddenly, I was standing face to face with a woman in her early fifties who met me at the door.
 
Something about the way she was standing in the kitchen told me it was her kitchen. She wasn't a relative, not a neighbor-- she lived there.
 
We met eyes. Hers were terrified.
 
When she saw me, she backed up with a gesture too small to detect that said it was OK for me to come in. Something about her demeanor as I entered told me that I was in charge. She wasn’t afraid of me and it was her house, but there was something about her permission into her house, the way she backed up slowly with her hands clutched at her chest, a question in her eyes, that asked me to take over. She needed me.
 
And that was it.
 
That nagging thought that has stayed with me for the last six years.
 
The person on the side of the road that night, the car with the headlights eerily shining into the tall grass, that person in that car upside down, they needed someone, and it probably didn’t really matter who it was and they probably really didn’t need a plan. They just needed someone to show up. God would do the rest.
 
I crossed the threshold into this woman’s home without asking.
 
As I entered, we never broke eye contact.
 
My eyes searching hers, I was trying to tell her that everything was going to be OK. And somehow or another, it would.
 
Her eyes searching mine, she was trying to ask me if I was sure everything was going to be OK. And somehow or another, I was sure.
 
There were no words between us. She didn't speak English and I can only speak Spanish in situations where it is appropriate to laugh.
 
We shared nothing but our unfinished emotions as we searched one another’s faces.
 
The exchange was only seconds but eventually her worried face gave way to tears. I stepped closer to her and wrapped her up and she fell into my chest and heaved and trembled and cried the most frightened tears I have ever experienced. She clung to me. I had no idea what to say, but as I looked around, I noticed some Catholic art so I started praying the Hail Mary as one does when in the grips of a stranger in a foreign kitchen with a crime scene outside.  
 
And there we were, sharing Jesus.
 
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
 
When the prayer was over, things got awkward. Like the music stopping at a party bringing acute awareness to exactly what’s going on in the room, when I quit praying, we realized we were in an unfamiliar embrace. She backed up a little and wiped her face and gestured that she should probably go outside. Then I remembered why I walked over in the first place and asked her in Spanish if there were any kids in the house. She said yes and gestured to the bedrooms, giving me permission to do whatever I needed to do.
 
I found a pre teen in one of the bedrooms and asked her a few questions and said a few things I thought would be comforting and tried to maybe hug her too. It didn't work out. She was completely weirded out by the lady in her house and I got the eerie feeling that this chaos actually wasn't that far out of the norm. We chatted a bit. She squirmed under my gaze and my touch, so I left her alone. I told her I would pray for her every day.
 
I walked out of the house to find the woman again but met her husband instead who spoke perfect English. The house was theirs. The kids inside were their grandchildren. The young man on the sidewalk with the cops around him was their son. The woman in the car was their daughter in-law. Their son and their daughter in-law were fighting. She was angry and speeding out of the driveway. She hit an electricity pole and it sent her car sailing. She was fine inside but they needed every tool they had to get her out. The POPs were from the power lines, not a gun. They had a volatile relationship.
 
When the husband finished spouting the facts, a stillness came over him, and he asked me with all sincerity if I was the angel his wife told him found her in their kitchen. I laughed an improperly loud laugh considering our surroundings and assured him that I was just a neighbor.
 
As I was walking home, it occurred to me that none of that scene was scripted or premeditated or really even intentional. Just show up, I thought to myself. God will do the rest.
 
Just show up.
 
And pray for a blessed exchange.
 
Maybe as a giver.
 
Maybe as a receiver.
 
But it’s really of no importance because love is about what happens in between.
 
As I kicked piles of winter leaves on my way home, I wondered if I would have had the grit to weep into the chest of a stranger. My guess was that she didn’t exactly have a plan either. We just showed up and made room for God to show up, too.
 
I was reminded of an important conversation I had months earlier. I was feeling weak and needy and was explaining to my spiritual advisor how difficult it was to ask for and accept help. She beautifully explained that so often we define loving as giving. But in actuality, for love to occur, there has to be a taker, too. When there is a connection between two people, a giver and a taker, that’s when the love happens. So, the taking, she consoled me, is just as important as the giving.
 
The night in my neighbor’s kitchen confirmed what she told me to be true.
 
My neighbor and I, we experienced Jesus that night. We felt His love together. And it wasn’t because of me. And it wasn’t because of her. But together, in the giving and the receiving, we took Jesus from one side, we took Jesus from the other side, and we found Him right where He belonged—in the middle. Jesus was in the exchange.
 
If Jesus is in the exchange it is never more so than on the cross.
 
​He became poor so that I might be rich. He became weak so that I might have the power of God. He emptied Himself so that I might be filled up. He was wounded that I might be healed. He was broken so that I might be made whole.
 
We come to Him freely and borrow without scripts, without plans, and grace abounds and people are healed because the blessed exchange is the best part of the deal.
 
There is something about letting go of exactly how God shows up that allows me to experience Him more often. There’s something about settling into an exchange instead of dictating a direction that makes room for the Spirit to blow in and blow out. It’s taken all of six years, but I can more easily show up empty handed, knowing God will provide the best part, and then try to determine, once the exchange is over, who gave and who received because it usually gets pretty confusing when God settles in between.
 
I walk away an “angel” feeling immeasurably blessed.
 
And, there’s peace in knowing that whatever side I’m on, it’s Jesus I see.