packed with warm weather clothes. I don’t mind packing, it’s the putting away
that I find laborious. Maybe it’s because it means it’s time to come back to
reality. My neck hurts pretty badly anyways; whiplash. We hit the concrete
barrier at 80 miles an hour. I don’t know why it wasn’t worse than it was, but
I do know why I don’t have burn marks on my face from it meeting an airbag at
an obscene rate of speed. Jesus.
Shrugged on the drive down to St. Augustine. Ayn Rand sure has a way
with descriptions, vocabulary, etc. That’s probably why I was still holding the
paperback tightly in my clutch as we spun 360’s across I-75,
this jaunt on theway back up to North Georgia from a relaxing weekend in one of my favorite
places. Reading aloud, I was working my way through to the end of an intense
chapter. I just wanted to finish reading so I could take a drink of diet Dr.
Pepper, stretch my legs from the awkward position I had them resting in on the
dashboard, and ask Adam what CD he wanted to
listen to next. But, I started to become increasingly more uncomfortable with
each new vocabulary word that found its way springing from my mouth. The sound
of rain pelting us from outside my humble four-door had grown so loud I had to
noticeably raise my voice so Adam could keep up with the characters I had found
myself so absorbed within.
of white. I see us spinning, hitting the concrete divider in the middle of the
interstate, airbags deploying: my absolute. worst. nightmare. I don’t know what
it is, but I have a freakishly intense fear of being in a bad car accident.
Having only experienced one early on in my life, that I happened to walk away
from, it seems irrational. I find myself thinking about this at the most random
times – in the shower, driving down the road, at work. So, I didn’t actually
pay too much attention to the strange vision that vividly interrupted my
reading. I did however pay enough attention to immediately pray silently,
‘Jesus, please don’t let the airbags go off’.
Spinning. Out of control. The whole world is spinning and
I’m more than terrified, bracing for some sort of control. I wait for impact.
***CRASH*** I wait for airbags to rudely greet my face. I am clenched, eyes
shut tight, the only words I hear are me methodically chanting, ‘Jesus, Jesus,
Oh Jesus…’ and Adam, calmly, ‘It’s fine. It’s going to be okay. We are going to
be fine.’
The spinning stops and we are facing oncoming traffic. Oh,
Jesus. Adam expertly guides my car off the shoulder of the highway. Holy shit.
What just happened?! Impossibly, the rain we had just encountered is coming
down harder. Oh, how convenient – hail starts to ricochet off the miraculously still
intact windshield. I am in shock. Adam is looking at my distressed profile,
continuing to ask, ‘Are you okay? Are you hurt?’.
I am having a hard time not being doubly traumatized by the
fact that a mili-second before our accident, I saw it happen. I can’t find any
words to communicate. For the most part, my little Hyundai is still intact.
Thank Jesus the blasted airbags did not deploy. Blood. The only marks of injury
are three toes on my left foot. I became so randomly uncomfortable before I had
time to finish the chapter I was reading aloud, I pulled my legs down from the
dash to a normal seated position (Thank you, God!), and my toes got jammed
under the dash during impact.
I am trying to make sense of how we are okay.
airbags go off? Why is Adam walking around outside the car surveying the
damage? If you hydroplaned into cotton candy at 80mph wouldn’t your car be more jacked up than this? Why hasn’t anyone stopped to help us?
situations, even when I don’t know to pray that I need Him?
taking in the scene with a mechanic…at 5:40 p.m. On a Sunday evening. In
the-middle-of-nowhere-Georgia. Really, Jesus? Thank you. We still had four
hours to drive to make it back to Gainesville, and by this point, I was mentally
preparing myself to have my car towed to God-knows-where, and stay the night in
a roadside motel that I’m sure has the soundtrack to Deliverance playing on repeat.
roadside repair mechanic for a truck stop we were only half a mile from.
Hegave us the amazing news that, even with a front impact, the radiator was not
damaged enough to keep us from driving the rest of the way home. Upon closer
inspection, Kenneth pointed out that the way the metal just so happened to bend
around the point of impact, it formed a sort of barrier around the airbag
sensor. ‘If the impact hit just even an inch over this way, the airbags would
have gone off’, Kenneth reported to us while kneeling near the driver’s side
fender.
mili-second before the crash, that the airbags would not go off, but I do know if
they had:
I would have been in full-fledged shock and likely inconsolable
there would have been much greater whiplash than
what Adam and I have been experiencing
my car would easily have been totaled for more
than it’s worth
we would not have been able to make the
additional four-hour drive back to Gainesville we still had
proclaiming that our God has our best interests in mind, even when we can’t see
or make sense of them. The morning of the crash, I randomly became captivated by
Exodus 33 when the Lord commands Moses to lead his people of out
Sinai. The verse I spent the most time fixated on was verse 19:
proclaim the name of the Lord before you.’
