This past august I moved back to Orlando after being away working at summer theatre. It was all rather whirlwind and last minute, as things in my life tend to be but with station-wagon packed to the max the trip was made. My gracious and beautiful mother made the 14 hr trek with me from lexington Ky. Along the way we managed to solve most of the greater socioeconomic problems plaguing our world and did not get lost once. We arrived at my apartment about 3 am and in the fog and exhaustion of travel somehow managed to get everything in from the car.
The apartment was empty aside from the few things that I had left there over the summer and the handful of things my old roommate had left behind when she moved out. For some reason it had not occurred to me just how empty it would be with no furniture. Having moved 7 times in the past two and a half years I don’t own a lot of things and almost all of the furniture and kitchen things had belonged to my roommate. So once all of her stuff was gone it left the place pretty bare.
Honestly walking in to that at 3 am was a little discouraging. I had been so excited for months to finally come home, and home wasn’t how I remembered it. On the bright side however this did mean that I got the chance to make the space mine. Where in the past I had always felt like a bit of a guest, this time it would be my apartment with my stuff (no matter how lacking in the couch department).
My mom and I began the task of cleaning and prepping the apartment for my new roommate, all while trying to keep a positive attitude about my great lack of silverwear. Among the things my old roommate left behind was a little picture that had the word “blah” written in fancy cursive letters. “Blah? We don’t want ‘blah’ here!” I remember my mom saying. As I joke I turned the picture upside down and if you sort of squint and use your imagination it spells out yozg. Right then and there “yozg” became an integral part of our vocabulary. It roughly translates, we decided, as an acknowledgement or and agreement. For example:
“Do you think Doctor Who is the best TV show ever?”
“yooooooooozg!!!!!!!”
Or more relevantly:
“We need to get you a pasta strainer.”
“Mmmm yozg”
It added so much humor to those days of cleaning and shopping and janky apartment repairs. We turned our blah upsidedown and it made all the difference. I am proud to say that picture still hangs in my bathroom to this day.
It was shortly after the move back to orlando that I began the application process for the World Race. To be perfectly transparent it hasn’t been a very ‘yozg’ time. It has been pretty blah.
About a month ago I got hit by a semi while driving down I4. I can say with certainty that it was the scariest thing I have ever experienced. They came into my lane, hitting the back of my car and caused me to swing into them and hit them again right by my drivers window, I then spun twice before hitting the left lane guardrail. I remember looking over and seeing the grill of the semi inches from my face (the window had broken) and thinking “This is it, I am going to die” and I waited for it to go black.
Well it didn’t. The car stopped and I was still alive. I wasn’t majorly injured but I was put in a neck brace, back-boarded, and taken to the ER for x-rays. The paramedics, doctors, and nurses were all really nice (and a little sassy). A dear friend came and picked me up, took me to get my prescriptions filled, and watched Doctor Who with me. If you think all of that was the hard part, you’d be wrong.
If you ever think to yourself “gosh, getting hit by a semi seems like a great time”. Don’t do it. I don’t recommend it at all. The past weeks have been filled with nothing but phone calls, insurance, tow trucks, lawyers, more insurance, doctors appointments, and tears. I think I have cried more in the past month than I have in the past five years. As a human I am not so much inclined to crying, and when I do it is unlikely to be out of sadness but out of being overwhelmed. Whether that be being overwhelmed with anger, sadness, or stress. And the past weeks have been a constant state of being overwhelmed.
Whenever I told people the story their reaction was almost always along the lines of “how are you alive?”. And I can’t say that I know the answer to that. According to the circumstances I should probably be dead, according to the circumstances I should probably at least have some brain damage or broken bones. But thankfully we don’t serve a God who is dictated by circumstance.
Yes over the past weeks it has been difficult to stay positive. With all the car nonsense consuming my spare time I have felt really behind on the rest of my adult life. Namely the World Race and all the things I have to do to prepare for that. The time that I have wanted to spend fundraising and getting my vaccine schedule in order has been given to car shopping and physical therapy.
The other day however when I was taking a shower I started thinking about that silly ‘yozg’ picture that still hangs there. All I could think about was inserting it into a song we sing at my church a lot:
Original line: “When Jesus say yes, nobody can say no”
Modified by my ridiculous brain: “When Jesus say yozg, nobody can say blah!”
It has brought me more laughs than I would care to admit but it has also brought a change of mindset. Yea, its been a really ‘blah’ time, there is no denying that. But I know God still has a purpose in all of it. After all, I should probably be dead and I’m not. And things are still getting done. I somehow managed to get my fundraising letter written and mailed and my beautiful family gave me so much World Race gear for christmas I didn’t even know what to do.
God is good. Despite, and inside the crazy circumstances. I know that things will probably continue to be crazy and not get any less so as the race approaches. But I know He called me to walk this path and as long as I keep walking He will be there with me.
