Life at Hope College

Life’s Twists and Turns

Wow, readers, what a week. I say that all the time, but it has been a crazy week leading up to Fall Break. What are you all doing for break? Camping? Going home? I bet you have some crazy and relaxing plans that I’d love to hear about.

What I want to talk about in this post is how twisty and life actually is, and how wrapped up in ourselves and self-centered we all can be most of the time. This happens to me all the time and there was one instance the other day that really jolted me out of my own little world inside my head and it made me realize how self-involved I actually am.

So the short version of the story is that my sister tore her ACL. My family is generally healthy and hasn’t had any major injuries, praise God, even all throughout my sister’s and mine high school careers where we played every sport under the sun. In high school when everyone else was tearing and icing and recovering, we were playing and running and picking up slack where there were open holes.

Also a little bit about my sister: she is crazy awesome, crazy athletic, and the proudest girl I’ve ever met. She has an extremely high pain tolerance and hates going to the doctor for injuries because, in her mind, she can and will just shake it off and rub some dirt in it, like coaches always tell their players to do.

Well the other day my sister was playing in a flag football game and, like always she was playing her hardest and got tackled in the end zone (even though the game was, ya know, FLAG football). She felt something weird and didn’t play the rest of the game to be cautious and didn’t give it a second thought because she’s used to feeling some pain due to sports. But the next day, just to be sure, she went to the Health Center here at Hope to get it looked at, got an MRI and found out she tore her ACL all within a couple of days (Props to the Health Center for being so on top of everything for her. The Health Center ROCKS).

When she told me the news after her appointment, she was pretty shaken up, but I think I matched her anxiety about it. As I said, my family has never had any major injuries like this, so I was pretty taken aback when I heard about her significant injury. The news jolted me and made me realize that I had been too caught up in the thoughts in my own head to realize what was going on in her life.

The point I’m trying to make is that she didn’t plan to tear her ACL. It was something unexpected that just happened and she has to deal with it. Life handed her this, and woke me up as well to what was going on around me. It is not the perfect situation, but it is one that we will both learn from. So, readers, I challenge you this fall break to wake up and get out of your own head; to really realize what is going on in the lives of those around you. It may not be easy, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.

Until next time!

Questions about what I wrote? Check the bio and shoot me an email!

Exit mobile version