Well, I feel horrible but extremely thankful at the same time. I piled the kids into the van this morning and headed out to run some errands. First the dry cleaners, then Target. One of my pet peeves is slow drivers who have nowhere to be at any certain time, and sit lurking in the shadows until they see my van start to back out of the driveway, before all deciding to come out on the road at once.
Driving in our town can make me absolutely crazy sometimes because there are certain traffic lights that only stay green for 3.5 seconds before turning red again for 8 minutes. So, on occasion, I have been known to speed up a tad through the yellow lights in my haste to get around town and finish my errands before the kids reach their "tolerable behavior" limit (which can vary anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour at a time).
So, this morning as we approached an intersection to turn left, I was delighted to see the light was staying green. "Life is good," I was thinking to myself when all of a sudden, the car in front of me stopped. "What are you doing?" I yelled. I quickly glanced up at the sign to make sure it wasn't a "left turn signal only" deal and saw that the sign plainly read, "left turn yield on green". It appeared there were no oncoming cars to yield to, so I sternly instructed the driver to "GO!". (Of course there was no way for her to hear me shouting but she did go ahead and pull out anyway).
Just as she turned into the intersection, I saw the front end of a car coming straight from the other direction. The view from our vantage point was blocked by a huge SUV that was trying to turn left coming the opposite way. As is the case with most horrific experiences, the next set of events happened in slow motion. The lady in front of me kept going as the squeal of tires from the oncoming car filled the air, obviously as a result of him slamming on his brakes. The force of the collision smashed her back end and his front end to smithereens and spun her car completely around in the opposite direction. Shattered taillights reflected the sunlight as they lay scattered across the road.
My heart stopped beating for a full 5 seconds before the beats began to come faster and faster. I wasn't quite sure what I should do. The guy jumped out of his car and immediately got on his cell phone. I didn't want to get out of the van and leave all the kids in there by themselves for fear another car would come by not paying attention and slam into the back of it. Thankfully another lady who witnessed the whole thing jumped out of her car and ran to check on the lady who had been in front of me to see if she was ok. Out climbed this white haired little old lady seemingly without a scratch on her.
We went ahead and pulled slowly passed them, which I felt awful doing, but, again, there was not much I could do with all the kids in the van. I turned the radio off and tried to absorb what we had just seen. In near misses such as these, it is easy to recount all the "what ifs" that, had they occurred, would have all added up to us being right in the middle of that wreck. What if Drue had put her socks on the first time I told her to and we had left the house 30 seconds earlier? What if that lady had stopped midway into the intersection when she saw the other car and he had slammed into her front end thus sending her spinning back around toward our van?
Certainly I feel incredibly guilty for yelling at her for stopping initially when the light was green, and I can't help but wonder if God sent her to do just that. Otherwise, she would have already made her turn, and I would have followed behind her, not being able to see that other car myself. Calculating that he would have hit my van in the same spot he hit her car, that would have been right where Tate and Drue were sitting!
As we drove down the road in silence, I told Reese to say thank you to Jesus for keeping us safe in our car as I offered up many prayers of thanks myself. I've always wondered what my guardian angel looked like. After this mornings' events, I believe she must look a lot like a little old white haired lady.....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment