Orange & Blue

Issue date: 4/4/08 Section: Opinion

Jessica Cross, Co-Editor

Life is like a roller coaster; it has its ups and downs. Sometimes you cannot see the light at the end of a dark tunnel and you wonder when the nightmare is going to end. But no matter how scared it makes us, we grit our teeth and hold on for dear life and in the end, we learn from it (in the case of roller coasters, often not to eat chili cheese dogs beforehand) and often, enjoy the ride.

Lately my family has experienced the downs more than the ups. In the last few months, we have seen deaths. My uncle died, an old family friend died in her sleep, and my cousin (who is three days younger than me and now expecting her first child) lost her father unexpectedly to strokes and a brain aneurysm.

We have experienced heartache. My other uncle was involved in a fatal vehicular accident that claimed the life of an 18-year-old teenage boy, a friend of my younger cousin. Although my uncle's truck never ran over the boy, the motorcycle the boy was driving clipped the back wheel of the truck. Now, my uncle feels like he killed the boy, even though he never hit him and the accident was not his fault. He has not been sleeping and is going through a slight depression.

We have been through injuries. I have been on crutches for over four months now and after doing two rounds of physical therapy to fix my severely tilted kneecap have been discharged from their care because it was not correcting my injury. My doctor also discharged me from his care, saying he was "baffled" as to why my injury has been so prolonged with this much pain. On April 11, I go to another orthopedic for a second opinion. My cousin recently sprained both her ankles and is also on crutches. My five-year-old cousin just found out that she needs her tonsils taken out and her father, the same uncle involved in the fatal accident, got hurt at work last week and broke three ribs around the same area where he had back surgery earlier last year.

The combination of everything has been rough on all of us. We cannot help but to question what we did to deserve all of this, what we should expect next, and/or why God is choosing to punish us. Even in our own doubts, we still find that God is good. I still feel his healing power. He is here. Maybe we just have not been reaching out for him enough. We should never question his authority and choices. He may be giving us burdens and trials, but he will never put something on us that we cannot handle. He knows what he is doing. These trials may be to teach us something. If anything, I have gained patience (something I had little of before) from being on crutches.

I am often reminded of biblical story of the woman with the issue of blood. After spending her whole life trying to find a cure for the disease, she knew that if she could just touch Jesus she would be healed. Fighting through the crowd, she touched the hem of his garment and was healed. Her virtue of faith made her whole. In the hardships, we need to strive to be like the woman, holding our faith high in God that we will be healed and get through the trials.

The trick to surviving the roller coaster is to hold on tight. In the roller coaster of life, you will face hardships and you may begin to question God. Instead of questioning, hold on tight to your faith. He is there. You just have to reach out for him. In the downs of life, hold on with all the strength that you have. In the toughest of tough when we cannot go on anymore, we just have to hold on to him and he will carry us through.

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