it's true. i was a sophomore in high school. went out to lunch with some friends. there was a boy i was trying to avoid so i chose to go in a truck that i'd never ridden in before. upon getting in the truck, i realized there were no seat belts that worked. i thought, "it still beats riding in the same car with what's his bucket", so i stayed.
we picked up some pizza.
we were pulling out of the parking stall, i was leaning out the window talking to some friends and i learned this pick up had a faulty door that when pressure was applied, flew open. um, hello? so yeah, no seat belt and the door flies open that i am sitting next to. lovely.
we were on 5th south in bountiful. busy road. faulty door.
so there i was.
i was suddenly very aware of the traffic situation. my buddy driving was only concerned about getting back to school.
here's the play by play:
cars coming on the left. cars coming on the right. and a gap.
my friend pulls out or should i say, "safely peels out" with enough speed that i naturally go into the door. sure enough as i had just found out, it flies open when pressure is applied.
so i flew too. right out the door onto 5th south in bountiful. it's amazing i lived. :)
i still remember as i rolled and bounced in the lane, looking up and seeing my friend Jana turning around in her seat and i could see she was yelling my name. (i have a hard time not laughing at this point in the story, it still kills me after what, 16 years?)
after i stopped rolling (or whatever i was doing), i noticed cars were fast approaching. so naturally, i got up, said "ow" and waved at the cars for slowing and found some grass near by for a rest.
i know you're worried. i was actually pretty okay. people were worried so i had to ride in an ambulance and get checked out. i was a bit sore but all was well. (my poor mother, the phone calls she got on my behalf)
i was back to school and work the next day and the driver of the truck sent flowers that day too. he...or his mom, felt pretty bad about it. poor kid. i'm grateful. i can now use it to apply to marriage all these years later. :)...and up until now, i have quite enjoyed the telling.
so marriage.
sometimes we make dumb choices. sometimes we find we are not where we planned to be or things just turned out different than we expected.
we can choose to lay in the road and make matters worse or we can get the heck out of there and work out getting back to school where we belong.
sometimes it hurts to jump up, brush off and let the crowds gather to assess the hurt. i know i felt like a pretty big idiot laying there with friends and strangers circling up. what's done is done though. we move on, we fix what's been hurt. we send flowers or we forgive.
we move on, yes and we can still remember what happened. we can learn to not repeat it. we can share our story with someone if we think it might help.
in marriage, it's likely that at some point we just won't foresee the damage that we could cause by making a choice, saying something that shouldn't have been said or even doing something that we didn't intend to cause hurt and it did. you can pretty well bank on it.
thank goodness for the atonement. thank goodness for the temple, prayer and prophets and the scriptures. i can promise you that if you turn to these places when things go wrong, you'll find you'll know how to proceed. heavenly father blesses the efforts of sincere seekers. that's how he works.
figuratively speaking, we will all fall out of a truck or be the driver. what matters is what we do when it happens.
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