Divine Protection

This past Tuesday night at around 8:00 Melanie and I were involved in a car accident that required her to be taken by ambulance to the hospital. Thank God, she is doing fine, as am I.

We were about two miles from home when the car in front of us suddenly slammed on his brakes. I later learned that he hadn't seen the road where he planned to turn until the last minute.(He was on his way home from traffic court when this happened . . . without a tag on his car - yet the car behind us was charged with fault.) Of course, I slammed on my brakes too and stopped just short of hitting him. I immediately looked in my rear-view mirror and saw an oversized pickup truck that was pulling a fully loaded trailer bearing down on me.

Before I could even warn Melanie, he hit us in the rear, slamming us into the car in front of us. He was trying to swerve, so his driver's front end hit the passenger's back end of our car. Thankfully, the impact threw us forward, out of his way and he kept rolling forward another hundred feet before he was able to stop.

Our car was totaled. By the time the police and ambulances arrived, Melanie was hurting in her chest, back and neck and was having trouble taking a deep breath. They put the neck collar on her and lifted her out of the car onto a back-board, loaded her into the amubulance and took off to the hospital. The officer told me I had to stay there until the report was completed before I could leave to go to the hospital. I was so shaken that I don't know how much good I was. I couldn't even remember my address when she asked for it.

When the scene at the accident was settled, the policewoman brought me home and I went to the hospital in Melanie's car. We were there until about 2:00 AM. Thankfully, she had no broken bones. Her pain was from the seatbelt and from being slammed around. They released her and she is fine now.

I clearly see the hand of God protecting us through this situation. If the man in the truck behind us had not been able to swerve to the right as he did, he would have hit us at full momentum. Considering that, after hitting us, he still rolled forward another hundred feet I wonder if we would have survived if he had hit us straight on at that speed.

As we looked at the car in the salvage yard today, we both walked away and thanked God for protecting us. I suspect that when we all get to heaven, all of us will find that there were times our lives would have ended on earth had it not been for the intervention of our Father providing his divine protection.

P.S. Talk about word traveling fast - A friend in London, England sent a message asking about the accident this morning because he had heard about it from someone in Wales. That's what caused me to post this blog, to provide the details to those interested.