A little bit of Tim

I tell her I love her about four times a day, and if you know me that isn’t normal. But it’s just that… she’s alive. She’s alive and breathing with a big smile on her face like nothing ever happened.

“Did you hear about Macey?” I hear a voice across the room casually ask another. I stopped – I only knew one Macey in ninth grade – Macey Richardson. Who was, coincidentally, one of my best friends. Confused, I looked around to notice my phone buzzing. It was a text from Riley, the third point of our friendship triangle, “Sarah, do you have Lynzi Richardson’s number?” I started scrolling through my phonebook, “Yeah,” I typed back, my fingers shaking.

All that night I got forwards on my phone “Pray for Macey”, “Pray for Macey”. She had collapsed, Coach Gardner performed CPR, the paramedics had to use an AED to start her heart again, but no one really knew what happened. All we knew was that her ride home from school that day was in an ambulance.

She’ll be fine, I told myself. So I did what I do best – I pushed the chaos to the back of my mind and chose not to deal with it. The next day came and went with distractions, but she was only getting worse. Her lungs had collapsed and filled with fluids and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong. I didn’t want to think about it, so I continued to cling tightly to my small string of vain optimism. She’ll be fine, I insisted, she’ll be fine.

Then I heard the news that broke me. “Sarah, I just talked to Coach Riggs.” A girl on Macey’s track team came up to me with a worried face, “Macey is in a coma. They don’t know what’s wrong.” A… a coma? What? No! That only happens on TV. But as she finished talking the reality sunk in. The image that ended up haunting me for the rest of the week flashed in my mind for the first time. Macey, lying in a hospital bed with tubes all around her - Tiny Macey, Fragile Macey, Shy Macey. My friend who I was always trying to protect was lying there, not alive, but hooked up to a machine with only descending mountain peaks on a screen to keep her heart beating.

I spent the rest of that week in a haze. I would barely start to care about some new story we were reading in English when I’d turn to see the empty desk where Macey should be sitting, and have to leave the room in hopes to compose myself again. Three days passed and we were all loosing hope. That image wouldn’t stop plaguing my mind. Macey in a coma, a cord filling the space between death and life. I thought of a book we read in the fourth grade by Judy Blume, the one called “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” and with tears streaming down my cheeks I thought, “Are you there God? It’s me, Sarah.” At church they always told me to say ‘let thy will be done’ when I prayed. But this time I left it out. “Are you there, God? It’s me, Sarah. Don’t let Macey die.” Please, I thought again. Don’t let Macey die.


And He must have listened. Because a few days later she woke up, then after a few tests and surgeries, the doctors figured out what was wrong and she came home. So now she’s here -

Alive.

Breathing.

With a big smile on her face like nothing ever happened.

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I tell her I love her about four times a day.

Way to be Speechy

Okay, so the title doesn't technically have anything to do with my point, but I DID go to my first official Speech & Debate tournament today and it WAS freakin' awesome. Here are some thoughts I've been thinking today...

P.S. I know I have a whole post dedicated in depth to not judging, but this is a bit lighter with a few minor examples and a bit different, so bear with me.

Mother Theresa said, "If we judge people, we do not have time to love them."

Think about that. If we judge people, we do not have time to love them. It's totally true! There's a girl on the team who I had basically written off as rude and flippant because of what I had seen in other classes, but I hadn't ever even talked to her before, so how could I have made that call? Today I got to know her a little bit better, and even just from on conversation I had with her, I could tell that my previous judgement was totally and completely wrong. Better yet, I later ended up talking at length to her mother, who was volunteering as one of the judges, and we started to talk about said girl (her daughter). It was definitely eye opening to see her through her mother's eyes and it really reinforced my realization that I had no idea what I was talking about when I judged her character before.

And what about Stapley? I hated that school with a passion. When I met friends of Hannah's who were from Stapley, I automatically had a slightly lower opinion of them simply because of where they went to school. Wow. Did that thought process hold any water? HECK NO! Every single person that I've met from there is completely awesome, not to mention that every single one of my favorite new friends went there. So why did I feel justified in making such a blanket statement? I don't know. I just know that it was dumb.

By judging those people, I ruined any chances I had of getting to know them any better so that I would be able to love them. Luckily, I realized my poor judgement in those cases and am now on my way to change my views of them. Hopefully I'll continue to be able to notice and fix my prejudices in the rest of my life along the way, too.

(Okay, so I know you don't think I post on here a lot, but I feel like I do. Because I write ALL the time, I just seldom finish a thought. So anyway, the above statements were not actually today, but I'm gonna leave it. Now it's today, today. The real one.)

I really admire those who do not form opinions of people. (Yes, YOU! You know who you are.)

All of my friends, really, have this talent. I am constantly amazed at their ability to see through people's flaws and appearances.

In church on Sunday we were talking about individual talents that we all have and one of them in a quote by Marvin J. Ashton is the gift of not-passing judgement. Think about that. It really is a gift. Those people are able to love everyone around them more fully and easily than anyone else. I think it's awesome.

I'll leave you with a quote I found in seminary last week from this past general conference,

"Charity is having patience with someone who has let us down. It is resisting the impulse to become offended easily. It is accepting weaknesses and shortcomings. It is accepting people as they truly are. It is looking beyond physical appearances to attributes that will not dim through time. It is resisting the impulse to categorize others... Charity has been defined as “the highest, noblest, strongest kind of love,” the "pure love of Christ..." Charity never faileth." - Thomas S. Monson




I hope that wasn't too jumbled, and if it was, just go read this