Spaghetti. It has ALWAYS, and I mean always been one of my favorite foods. So no doubt about it, when I heard we were having it for dinner at my sorority house last night, I was 110% there. Who knew I would soon find significance and depth in lifeless noodles and meat sauce? I had just finished eating my truckload of food and talking to some friends when out of nowhere I saw and felt NOODLES and MEAT SAUCE rolling down my body.
I am NOT kidding you. A friend had dropped an entire plate of spaghetti down my shirt. Imagine your horrifying scences from a Lizzy McGuire, Boy Meets World, Amanda Bynes, Amelia Bedelia, LUCY RICARDO movie/episode/book and that was me. I think I even pulled a noodle out of my tennis shoe. Yet, these events are everyday life for me, so I laughed it off and said, "IF THIS IS ANY INDICATION OF THE REST OF MY NIGHT, I NEED TO LEAVE NOW."
I should have hit the ground running. Oh, how I LOVE irony.
After dinner, we had practice just like every other Wednesday, Yet, this would be a different practice for good old me. Long story short, my feet came out from underneath me, and I hit a brick floor head-first. The entire room went silent, and when I sat up, people were untying my shoes. It is never a comforting thought when people think you're incapable of taking off your own shoes. I tried to shake it off, but tears were flowing down my face from my throbbing head. I went upstairs and laid on an ice-pack, but soon they told me I needed to go to the doctor as a precaution. So, Maidee and I got in Chelsie's car, and she drove us to the ER. It is a really overwhelming moment in life when you look down on a sheet of paper and see your name with "head injury" beside it.
After the infamous ER wait, me trying to crack corny jokes with the workers, getting taken through two different rooms, discussing my last lady cycle with a male nurse, touching my nose with my fingers multiple times,taking a urine sample that of course the MALE nurse had to come receive, and seeing the actual doctor, I was told that they were going to do a CAT-scan to check for any possible complications like swelling or a brain leak.
Swelling or leaking in the brain. Those are extremely large words to swallow at nineteen.
My mind began to race. I began to think of every possible head injury I had ever heard about, and all I kept thinking was that this could not be the case for me. I was only nineteen. I had to master Accounting 201, convice 900 girls why they should be a DG, successfully park in between two cars without backing up a thousand times, and worry about missing the latest Glee episode. Not a brain leak. I know it seems overdramatic, but I am an honest worry-wart. Then a nurse came in with a wheelchair, and I had to leave my friends behind. As I was slowly pushed towards the next room, anxiety permeated my mind. I had never been to a hospital without my mother there (she did however drive like a bat out of Hades and got there right as I was dismissed), never had to have my head checked, and never heard the possibility of "brain leak." When we arrived in the room, I saw a screen that I had seen a thousand times in Grey's Anatomy and similiar TV shows, but this machine wasn't for a fictional character. It was for me. That's another horse pill to swallow. However, the system was down, and the guy had to leave me for a brief second before the scan began. As I sat in the room alone facing a screen with a diagram of a brain that would soon show my own, I felt like my "spaghetti had come rolling down." My once compact, undisturbed, mixed together, and neat plate-of-spaghetti life had now come rolling down. It was messy. It was chaotic. The noodles were separated from the sauce. I didn't have my friends, I didn't have my strong-as-a-mule mother, and I didn't have the answers either. I only had one place to turn when my spaghetti came rolling down. With tears in my eyes as I was waiting for the man to come back, I started praying out loud. Although I desperately hoped the man did not come back to see me talking out loud to the empty room and think I was much worse off than I was and send me to a mental instituition, I did not care. I was talking to the only One who could reassemble my spaghetti. I was talking to the only One who could comfort me when things were messy. I was talking to the only One who can give hope when your plate comes rolling down.
The CAT-scan results were minor. I had a slight concussion, and the only consequence I received was a very sore head/neck and a week without physical activity. My plate was neatly reassembled. Yet, this would not have been possible without two amazing friends, a God-send of a mother, and faith in One a lot larger than me.
So although my incident is minor compared to a BILLION of other people's unfortunate days, I learned a lesson from it all, and the lesson came from the beginning of my crazy-Lucy day- the spaghetti. When your perfect plate of spaghetti comes unexpectedly rolling down, where will you turn? When no one else around you can help you and you are alone, how will you make sense of the mess? When your noodles and meatballs are scrambled, where will you find strength and peace?
"Cast all your anxieties on Him, for He cares for you."- 1 Peter 5:7
Let me rephrase this for you: "Give me, your dropped plate. Give me every slimy noodle and every enormous meatball. Don't worry. I will make your mess into something neat again.I will reassemble your spaghetti."
So, the next time your spaghetti comes rolling down, remember there is always someone waiting to take your mess, give you hope, and reassemble every noodle.
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