This post is from Moms Take Ten episode 30, “Bonus Episode: Reflections from a Car Accident”, which you can listen to wherever you listen to podcasts or at https://sites.libsyn.com/403493/bonus-episode-reflections-from-a-car-accident
Last week, I drove to the south side of Chicago, to reunite a little boy and his mama. It was such a sweet reunion. She was so excited and he held her so tightly. I got in my car, plugged my address in and headed back onto the freeway to begin the long commute home. Roughly ten minutes into the drive, a white van several cars in front of me decided to change lanes without looking, causing the driver in that lane to try to get out of the way, and they slammed into a third car that then ricoheted out of the rows of traffic and into the median, bouncing back into the left lane before coming to a halt. The next hour was spent with the driver of that car as she shook and sobbed from the shock and terror of the moment. Praise God she was unharmed aside from some bruising. What a terrifying experience for her.
As I have processed the experience over the past few days, there are two main thoughts I keep coming to. I’d like to share those with you now.
We spent most of the time sitting on the side of the road next to her car. It was rush hour, on a holiday weekend. Everyone wanted to get to their destination. The fact that our cars were blocking the left lane caused quite the slow down and people were not happy. Over and over as we sat there horns blared and people yelled at us.
We are so callous, aren’t we? We are so focused on our own lives, our own plans, our own desires. We are so focused on the ways things impact us, and we have so little regard for what the other people involved are going through. This woman had just had her day completely upended. Her destroyed car was evidence of that. Her tears spoke to the impact it had on her. It would take hours for her to get home as she was checked out by a paramedic, waited for the police and tow truck, dealt with insurance, found a ride and made the rest of her long drive home. For the people driving by, their lives were temporarily inconvenienced. They were slowed down by five, ten minutes. They had to change lanes to avoid the cars. That’s all. And yet their anger at that inconvenience spilled out onto a woman who had just been traumatized.
How many times do we do that as well? We are short with the customer service person on the other end of the line because we had to wait on hold forty-five minutes to speak with them. We become annoyed with the mom in the grocery store because she does not silence her screaming child. We call someone a “butt head” because they took too long to put their groceries in the car and pull out of the parking spot they want…true story, someone called me this at Costco. We sigh and grumble about our server because the food was not prepared and served just right. We get frustrated with our children when they repeatedly interrupt us and yell at them to stop.
And we rarely, if ever, stop to think about the other person.
But we should. As Christians, we are called to live differently, to think differently. We are called to love even when it is hard, even when we are hurt or inconvenienced. We are called to think of others. We are called to roll down our window and ask if someone needs help rather than yell at them. We are called to pray for them rather than honk our horns. As Christian mamas, we are called to be gentle with our children, not to exasperate them, but to care for them as the shepherd cares for his sheep.
One other person stopped as we were waiting for the police to arrive. He was an off duty paramedic, traveling from out of town. He pulled out his medical bag and made sure that the driver was alright. He helped answer the questions that the 911 operator was asking. Before he got back in his car, he asked if I was related to the woman. I motioned to my car and said I just stopped. “Oh,” he said. “You are a bystander.” I almost corrected him, but instead I nodded.
You see, I’m not very good at standing by. I never have been. I’m the person that stops to make sure a woman is ok when I see her trying to get away from a man in a parking lot. I’m the person that goes looking for the teenage girl yelling “he’s raping me!” in the Kohls department store and then has quite the conversation with her when I discover she thought she was being funny. I’m the person that climbs down the bleachers to sit in the middle of a group of highly immature junior high boys who are aggressively teasing someone.
What’s funny about this is that I actually don’t like confrontation. I avoid it whenever possible. My stomach gets tight, my body begins to shake, and my heart starts to race when I find myself in a confrontational position. And yet, there is something in me that propels me to action. That is why I stopped my car on the highway last week. I had a split second thought about going around and yet I knew that was not going to happen. I took a deep breath as I thought about what I might see when I got to her window. It made me nervous, but I felt I had a responsibility to her to check on her. I would want someone to check on me! I would want someone to sit there with me as I cried and let me know with their presence that I was going to be ok. Especially after the car that was responsible for the crash left the scene. Especially as car after car honked and yelled. I would want someone with me.
I had actually been thinking about this before the accident even happened. Earlier in the week, I had taken the kids to the aquarium. As we were leaving, a storm came in. We ran in the wind and the rain to get to our van. The boys got too far ahead and no matter how much I yelled, they weren’t turning around. They ran past several people, none of whom engaged them or redirected them. A car pulled over and a woman got out with her child, headed to the aquarium. She heard me yelling and immediately whipped around and began yelling for them also. It was glorious. They finally heard and came back to me.
There’s a reel going around on Instagram that says something like “So, they say it takes a village to raise children. Is there like a number I call or do they just show up or what?”
The thing is, we have done such a good job protecting ourselves from the village. Our culture esteems independence and privacy so highly. We’ve built fences around all our yards, added trees to make sure nothing is seen. We have made it taboo for anyone but ourselves to correct or help our children. We keep to ourselves, keep our head down, don’t talk, don’t look, don’t ask. We have created a culture of bystanders.
Mamas, let’s be counter cultural. Let us raise children who do not stand to the side when others need their help. Let us raise children whose hearts and minds are provoked when they see injustice and look for ways to respond. We do this by modeling. Even when it is inconvenient. Even when it makes you shake. Even when it alters the schedule for our day or our week. Even if it means making room in your home for an extra mouth to feed. Even if it means other people don’t understand and they mock.
Let’s invite others into our lives and our children’s lives. Honestly, this is hard for me. It is easier for me to enter into someone else’s life than to invite them in mine. Yet, that moment outside the aquarium when the other mama began shouting my child’s name at the top of her lungs along with me, I felt a burden lift. I was no longer battling alone. I had reinforcements. And it helped immensely.
I don’t have to do this alone. You don’t have to do this alone. God does not want us to do it alone.
Let us recreate and reconnect the village.
Lyssa Stoyko 