a story of redemption

With the exception of the fear I blogged about here, as regarding Stellan's health, I don't often find myself gripped by worry or fear. Even during some of the darkest hours we walked through with Stellan, I mostly felt peace, comfort, an assurance that Jesus was always with me. It is unexplainable, that peace and absence of worry and knowledge that God is in control even when circumstances are spinning right out of it. There are few reasons that make me so glad that I am a Christian as that fact that I am able to be certain about my future, sure about God and firm in the knowledge that, no matter what is happening, He is still there, not surprised, always loving me, always wanting to redeem every situation.

God wants to redeem every single situation in all of our lives, I think. To bring something good from bad. To have people come to know about Him even through tragedy. To use even our fears to draw us closer to Him.

So, back to how I'm not usually gripped by fear. I'm not. Until a car from the opposite side of the freeway careens over the median, bounces up into my lane and comes speeding directly towards me, that is.

Then, I start singing a different tune.

But let me back up a little in this true story. I was still single. One weekend, I packed up my two little Pug dogs into my silver Toyota Echo, and drove home to see my parents. And my boyfriend. Both my parents and my would be Prince Charming lived in the same state in neighboring cities at that point, so that was convenient. After I unloaded my stuff and my dogs at my parents' house, I visited them for a while and then hopped back into my car to go visit my future husband.

It wasn't a long drive, especially since some of the trip was on the interstate. If my memory serves me, it was winter. I remember snow, but the roads themselves were, thankfully, not slippery. Even though flying in airplanes freaks me out, driving in cars doesn't. I do understand that that's not logical; more people die in car accidents each year than die in plane crashes. In fact, my husband's father and older brother were both killed in a car accident when my husband was 16. I suppose it would be logical if I did fear car accidents. It's just that, typically, I don't.

Until this day.

I was driving down the right hand lane of the interstate, probably listening to my They Might Be Giants cd. As I started to get close to Prince Charming's exit, I happened to notice two cars on the other side of the interstate, traveling in the opposite direction as me, towards me. They were a ways away still, but we were approaching each other quickly. What transpires in the next few paragraphs here took in real life only moments. The second car, some kind of an Oldsmobile I think, was driving erratically. The first thing I noticed was how fast it was going as it approached the car in front of it. It literally came from what seemed like out of the blue and flew towards the first car. Catching up with it quickly and easily, I remember thinking that the car that came from behind was going to crash right into the car in front of it.

The cars didn't crash, though. Instead, the erratically driven car swerved to the left, in an apparent attempt to avoid hitting the car in front of it. At this point, I was like, "Whoa! That car almost ran into that other one on the interstate. Crazy." I put my eyes back on my side of the road again, but not for long. Moments later, first in my peripheral vision, I saw that the Oldsmobile was swerving and weaving all over the two lanes of the interstate, this time in front of the car he had just passed.

Then, in the blink of an eye, it happened. The car careened right off the pavement of the interstate, hitting the snowy median, and started heading directly towards my side of the freeway. There were no cars ahead of me as far as the eye could see, but I remember there was one behind me. A surge of adrenaline coursed through my body, my hands gripped the steering wheel. For a moment, I did nothing. Just kept driving. I was frozen. As the car hit the median and then the freeway on my side of the interstate, it bounced around like a rag doll. Finally, it landed, as it were, and continued its fast rate down the freeway, this time barreling down the freeway in my lane, directly towards me. I did the only thing that seemed to make sense to me at the time. I could taste the fear in my mouth. As it approached me, I could almost hear the sound of our cars crunching, as that is what I expected to happen. I swung my steering wheel to the right, desperate to avoid a crash. The swinging of my steering wheel sent me off the pavement and into the gently sloping, snowy, muddy ditch. We didn't collide. My car came to a stop. I looked behind me. Somehow, this other car was now facing forward, pointing the same direction I was, behind me in the ditch.

My heart was pounding out of my chest. My first instinct was to call 911 from my cell phone, so that is what I did. "There was an accident on the highway. We didn't actually collide. But this other car came over the median and barreling down my side. He kind of crashed into the ditch behind me!"

"Okay, where are you?"

"Oh, man, I don't know! I don't live in this area anymore. I'm way out by Menard's, past it a ways, but not quite as far as where the highway ends and the speed limit drops. Oh, I don't know!"

The 911 operator walked me through explaining where I was. Once we nailed it down, she sent the police and an ambulance our way, after asking me, "Who is in the other car? Are they hurt?"

"Oh, dear. I didn't even go and check yet!"

I hung up the phone. And as I waited for help to arrive, I ran out of my car towards the other one. I saw a man inside, not wearing a seatbelt, slumped over his steering wheel. He wasn't moving. I opened the passenger door and got inside his car. I was so scared. But little did I know, this was just the beginning of an amazing story of redemption that would unfold slowly. I didn't learn until years later, after I was married and had children, very recently in fact, how this story of redemption did unfold. But at that moment, I just saw a man. A man who needed help.

To be continued.