There Is No Good Reason
I Should Have To Be So Alone
I'm Smothered By This Emptiness
Lord I Wish I Was Made Of Stone

So I had a strange weekend. It started off fairly normal. I played all day on Saturday. I ran flowers for the flower shop, went to visit a sick friend, went to the movies (at our NEW theatre!!) and went to meet with friends and talk about God. Then Sunday, got up and went to church. I went to Andy Stanley’s Church. It was really cool. There was a rock n’ roll show with a message and it was very good. The musicians were musicians, the lights were fantastic, the whole thing was amazingly well done. There were two baptisms, which were performed by someone other than Andy and Andy gave a twenty-five minute message that was part testimony of a church member with interjections of questions by Andy. He is good. I will probably go back. It was exactly one hour. There were no less than ten thousand people there. We went to J Christopher’s afterwards for brunch. I felt tired and ill so when John and I got back to the farm, I laid down. We took a two hour nap (!) only to awake to the weird part of the weekend. Eric, John’s middle son, was banging on the door. There was someone in the river who was not responding. Now, first off, this is weird: not many people know how to get to Towne Creek where we were. Second off: well…just read...

John went down first, not far behind Eric who was moving like a jackrabbit. He cut through the back part of the pasture down to the river. I was shortly behind him, cell phone in hand being escorted by the dog. Anyone who knows anything about the country knows that it is not easy to cut through a pasture. Pastures give the illusion of being peaceful and serene, but in reality they are wild and unruly with same types of creatures that live in them. Being in the mountains creates steepness to the “rolling” effect that is seen from the road. Pastures have briars, bugs and biting things in them. So while cutting through the pasture seems the easiest, softest way, really, it is just the only way. I stopped short of the embankment that proceeded down for about a hundred yards through a wooded area to the old baptismal hole. The incline was steep and I couldn’t hear or see John or Eric. I waited for a short time when out of now where my eye caught John carrying a woman. I ran straight up the pasture to where my cell phone would get a signal. I called 911 and was able to get someone on the way. Eric about five minutes behind me and I gave him the phone. I went back down the cleared mountain to where John had to stop. I ripped my sweatshirt off to cover her up. John was exhausted. We were no where close to the farm house yet. She was in shock, was hypothermic and unable to communicate. She had a bag full of things with her, which had: a dead cell phone, mother’s day cards, a coke, sunglasses, a set of keys, cigarettes and a lighter. She was covered in mud and was freezing. John and I hauled her up the rest of the mountain of pasture together. My legs are so cut up by the pasture that today I had to wear a dress because I couldn’t deal with them being too covered. I went inside and got towels to cover and clean. I went back to get John some replenishment. She was so mired and well, she was half dead. The first responders showed up not long there after and then emts and police. They found her vehicle and a bottle of Tylenol PM. She was so out of it. They figure that for some reason she tried to commit suicide. Had Eric not been out fishing, she’d be dead. Andy’s sermon was “Where’s God, There’s God.” Yesterday, in her desperation to just go away and just go to sleep, John and I were used as tools to save a life. It was a “where’s God/There’s God” moment. Once everyone was gone: she went with the emt’s, Eric went with the police to show them where she was, the first responders all dismissed themselves, John and I went inside. I peeled off the clothing I had on and into the shower I went where I began to cry, which lasted off and on for the next several hours, until bed where I fell asleep in tears. While I have asked questions and told the story to a couple of people who see the glaze in my being and the puffiness in my eyes, the two or three that I have spoken to have said what John and I did was heroic of sorts, but if this is what heroism is, it doesn’t feel like I thought it would. We just did what anyone else would do which was to get help for her to the best of our ability. I feel so badly for this poor woman that she found the need to try to end her life. My insides today are numb, but a bit tired. I have a headache and my sinuses have gone crazy from being out in the pasture. My legs hurt and overall, I feel like I have been hit by a truck. I think, I think that deep sleep is in the stars for me tonight. Weird day. Really weird. One person that I spoke to said that she thinks I am still running on adrenaline and that I am going to crash here soon. She is probably right. Weird weekend. Weird.