Easily Excitable

I want to tell you a story about my sister, Caroline, that will tell you everything you need to know about her personality. 

When we were living on Berkley Road (our younger years), one afternoon, Walker and I were playing in the front yard. 

Who knows what we were doing- probably plotting world domination or maybe making science videos on his camcorder. I don’t remember the intricacies. 

But here is what I do remember:

All of a sudden a roaring sound cut through the quaint neighborhood silence.

I’m sure we wondered what the noise was, but we didn’t have to worry for long. 

Caroline, youngest yet most daring of the Meadows siblings, shot out from around the corner. 

She was pedal to the medal as she cut across the front yard. 

She built up speed, and the song “Born to Be Wild” began to stream down from the heavens as her blond hair streamed in the wind. 

She headed straight for the ditch. 

She rode up the ditch, her speed propelling her. She commenced to get so much air that she jumped the four wheeler straight over the road.

Caroline then proceeded to ram the four wheeler into both the shrubbery AND the side of our neighbor’s house. 

And just as soon as she was there, she was gone. 

Without saying a word, she threw that little four wheeler into reverse and flew out of there (it wouldn’t be the first OR last time that little machine would beg for mercy).

I’m sorry to all of our neighbors on Berkley Road, and I’m especially sorry to that neighbor. 

And I’m doubly especially sorry if this is the first time that you’re heading that a Meadows child (yet again doing something wrong) wreaked havoc on your home. 

It was a highly missed opportunity that they didn’t have us shirts made that said “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made…and Terribly Behaved.”

Not for our parents’ lack of trying: they deserve a Medal of Honor for putting up with us.

That memory is the perfect representation of my sister, in some ways: 

Fearless, bold, and unpredictable. 

And a cornerstone of all of our childhood stories. 

Now, I’m aware that I might be writing to a mixed audience right now. 

(I might be writing to no audience right now, and that’s fine too. Carry on, folks.)

That being said, I’m aware that some of you may not have known my younger sister. 

Caroline Meadows was headstrong, tough, funny, caring (if you were a lucky one!), bold, and in all honesty, did not give one dang about what anyone thought of her. 

She was 5’11- made of pure steel- and through being her sister, I learned that the most effective way to solve a problem was ALWAYS with fists. 

She was tough, so very tough, but underneath all that steel, she was soft-hearted and compassionate- she just didn’t show her hand all that quickly. 

Caroline was my polar opposite: 

I’m a people pleaser, she did her own thing. 

I’m an extrovert, and she was introverted. 

I am a rule follower at my core, and she never saw a boundary she didn’t love to tap dance across. 

And I write this today because, three years ago today, my sister left this world and stepped into eternity.

I remember Caroline as that nine year old, hair streaming behind her, jumping the ditches, only to make four-wheeler-first contact with our neighbor’s home. 

That’s how I remember her. 

I remember her when I smell chlorine- can see her lathered up with Blue Lizard sunscreen; 

I remember her laying on the floor in a beach condo as we watched a movie and had our ‘rest time;’

 I remember her running to check the Totino’s pizzas in the oven as we all watched MTV (strictly forbidden, but when Momma went to pre-planning, we got a little footloose with the rules).

I remember her in early morning fresh cut grass at softball practice; 

with a ring of blue Gatorade around her mouth at the rec department;

 across from me at the dinner table (we couldn’t sit beside each other); 

up on stage at VBS singing (as I cried- I hated crowds and hated singing); 

hanging out around a bonfire at high school parties. 

This is the Caroline I remember. 

The living Caroline lived life to its most extremes, and she left an impact wherever she’d go. There are so many stories from our childhood, and largely, they make Walker and me laugh until we almost cry now.

My memories of my sister are mainly happy ones. 

But all the same, there is no denying that grief is heavy. 

And it’s at its heaviest this time of year. 

But grief is also slippery, and it transforms. 

When Caroline first died, I remember feeling so raw inside- like the smallest whisper might just bring the whole house down. 

Everything hurt, and that pain was so immediate, and really, there wasn’t anything to say. 

That’s what I can tell you about grief in its first stages: it feels like you can’t get a good breath, like you just had the air popped out of your chest. 

I remember for the first year of her being gone, I would look for her in a crowd at the fair. It sounds so odd, but there was a lingering feeling I would run into her- that she would pop back up in front of me. 

Now, grief is different. 

I write a post every year for this day, even if it doesn’t fall on the day, and I think I do this because it blends grief and memory together. 

I want to mark how the grief changes. 

I want to dwell on and remember my sister. 

I want to be able to look back and remember the different places I was in in relation to that grief. 

But in all honesty? 

It helps me process for a little while, and for just a bit, my sister comes to life in my mind (and on your screen, too, I guess).

When we were in the initial stages of Caroline’s death, a thought popped up into my head as I was praying: I think I wrote about it once (briefly), but it was this thought:

He is the only One who can see us both. 

As He holds a hand on me as I pray, He has His eyes on my sister. Jesus can actually see Caroline. He is the bridge, the connection point. 

He is the connecting block to eternity, and as He feels my pain and hurts with me, He also sees my sister whiling away her forever in His Presence. 

And that is reason for joy. 

And sometimes, in the sadder moments, it’s almost as if I’m being told, “But, Emmie, if you could see her now.”

He is the Savior who sees (and holds onto) both sides: Heaven and Earth. 

Another thought I had was this: grief can look on the positives, but it also can turn the positives into a negatives: 

Positive: I’m grateful I got 25 years with my sister. 

Negative: I only got 25 years with my sister. 

And wouldn’t you know, Jesus can see both sides, know both feelings, and love us in both places. His hands are big enough to hold all of that grief- even at its most jagged, messy, sharp points. 

And how incredible that He doesn’t hold that against us. 

He is the Savior who sees (and can handle) both sides of our grief: the ‘acceptable’ parts and the messier parts, too. 

Jesus is both man and God.

He’s been there before. 

He came here, and He didn’t skip by the chaos of humanity. 

He dove into it headlong. He lost Lazarus, He lost His father, Joseph. 

Jesus knows what it’s like to feel that raw pain that tells us nothing can ever be good again, and nothing can ever be the same again. 

But, interestingly, He’s also God. So, he sees the big picture. He knows the good that will come of hurt, without denying the crippling tragedy we’re facing. 

So as we sit in the dust, tears streaming from our eyes, head bowed on our knees, He sits with us, and He offers the edge of His robe for us to blow our nose on (look, that last part was my imagination, but still- think it probably works here).

He is the Savior who sees (and feels) both sides: the pain of man and the perspective of God.

Jesus prepares us in the present to provide for us in our future. 

I didn’t really know how much I would appreciate my church, my school, my community, my friends, or my family until the Meadows family sat at its lowest point.

These were the people who sat with us in our grief as Jesus did. 

And rather than the edge of their shirts, they offered us tissues (that wasn’t imagination- that was real). 

God gave me a then-boyfriend who stepped up and looked after all of us without being intrusive (bolstering his spot as the favorite- tied with my sister-in-law, Hanna).

God gave me my best friends who surrounded me at that moment. 

He gave us our blood family and our church family who visited and prayed and remembered along with us. 

God put me back in Bleckley County (wasn’t exactly what I wanted at 22, but the place I needed to be), and in dark days, our community grieved alongside us. 

And God put me at Bleckley County High School, which I loved a lot in the beginning. Yet, today, it’s an even more special place because the halls that I walk every day are the ones where, for four years, my sister spent most of her waking hours.

He is the Savior who sees (and prepares us for) both sides: the present and the future. 

What can be said of a merciful God who spans from eternity to eternity? 

What a merciful God that He would give us memories to hold us over until we see those we love face to face? 

What a God who would give me 25 years with my sister.

That those years were filled with her snorting laughter. 

That my sister and I were born 13 months apart, so the first ever “what’s mine is yours” was with my sister. 

(Do you know how well you get to know someone when you fight with her about who gets to drive to school everyday for two years?) 

I am in awe of my God who puts up with me. 

He’s the Father who stands with me, holding my hand in the chaos. 

And if there is any breath in my body and words in my mind, let them glorify the Savior who died on a cross for my sister and who carried her home. 

And if happiness can’t be found, let there be a resounding joy from me that the day is coming when I’m going to see my sister again. 

There is a place- a life- where my sister worships at the throne of God, away from the hurts and heartache we find inescapable here. 

It’s a world of resplendent perfection, where life is realer than anything we can find here. 

And so, today, on August 24th, I ache for who we lost here. 

I hurt for the mother Zayden lost, the daughter my parents grieve, the sibling Walker and I miss, and the aunt our future kids won’t know this side of heaven. 

I mourn that I won’t get to see her blond hair turn gray. 

But I look forward to an eternity with her, where our faith will become sight: where goodbyes can kick rocks and love is unencumbered by the weights we carry here on earth. 

I like to think Paul had a little something like this on his mind when he wrote this tidbit in his letter to the church at Corinth: 

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).

One day, we’re going to know as Jesus does: one day, we will arrive in eternity, and we’ll be able to see both sides: 

How he held onto us as we clung to Him

How He prepared a way for us, even as we didn’t know the way we were walking

How He saw simultaneously us and those who preceded us in death

How He loved us through our prettiest highs and messiest moments of grief. 

We see and know echoes of this, but one day? Jesus is going to show us face to face. And what a day that will be.