The power of a single prayer.

I am absolutely horrible about updating my blog. It’s part of my amazing ability to procrastinate until my feelings become so overwhelmed that I must sit down and write…something. This would also explain why on some posts it becomes disjointed at times until I can edit, or not, and try to convey a particular mindset. Today, I am simply overwhelmed with feelings of sadness, loneliness and joy, all combined. I feel them all with every passing second. That alone is sending a million thoughts racing through my head and it’s becoming difficult to just grasp one of them. I am sure that by the end of today, I will be in tears simply because I won’t know of any other way to release the feelings.

Not that crying is a bad thing for one to do. It’s just rare from me, or at least it used to be. Now it’s the so called norm. Granted, I have watched countless videos this morning that have left me in tears because of the depth of emotion it has stirred in my soul, but I cannot blame the videos for the feelings I have. One video in particular made me watch in horror and then, in a split second, I was crying tears of happiness. A woman, pulled from her car that had sank in a torrential rain, yet when the car was pulled from the water every single window was up, just as they had been when the car sank. I, through my faith alone, know with every fiber of my being that God himself was there in that horrendous moment. He is the one that brought angels, in the form of good Samaritans, to rescue this woman. It was not her time to leave this earth that day. Plain and simple. It brought me back to an incident that I went through this weekend.

I have shared this with only a couple of people. My life was spared and I know that whatever my mission in life is, it has not been completed yet. The day was a normal one, in the sense that nothing out of the order had happened. I kept procrastinating about going to a particular store because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of weekend traffic in North Austin. Finally, I determined that I could no longer put off what I needed to do. I exited from the interstate and made the turn to go in the back way to the store, noticing flashing lights at the top of the hill at the entrance to the back way. I made a turn into the center lane and turned into a shopping center so that I could make my way to the regular entrance. I had no issues and was surprised to get in and out of the store in a relatively short amount of time…when one is surrounded by people shopping for the upcoming holidays. I ended up being in the store for about 30 minutes.

Having once worked emergency services, I knew I was taking a chance with exiting out the way I had hoped to come in. A wrecker was on scene and there were less emergency vehicles, so I was completely okay with waiting for the Officer directing traffic to motion for us to move through. When I pulled out and around the accident, there was another police officer behind me. I’m sure he had fulfilled his duties on scene and I said a silent Thank You for whatever work he had completed. As I was coming up to the green traffic light, doing the posted speed limit of 45, I notice a vehicle headed the opposite direction. Since I had the green light, like any other driver, I was still driving the speed limit and about to cross into the intersection. It was at THAT moment I realized the other driver was doing a much faster speed than I and they were turning across my path, going against the red signal in the turn lane.

You hear the expression that some say, the one about how their lives flashed before their eyes? I now understand that. In a split second, everything in my life flashed before me. My second thought was that this was going to hurt. *Quick side note* I have taken countless defensive driving courses throughout my life. I know how to avoid accidents when possible, how to handle a skid in both wet and snow conditions. I’ve nurtured those lessons and know that most accidents can be avoided, not all, but most. – I knew that if I did NOT turn my car to the left that we WOULD hit head on. I slammed on the brakes, the ABS kicked in and I jerked the steering wheel as hard as I could to my left, praying silently that I could avoid this and that there would be no phone calls made to my family members. As my SUV made that sudden sharp left turn at approximately 45 miles per hour, I felt a sensation in a vehicle I have never felt before and one I hope to never experience again. I felt the passenger side of our Traverse begin to LIFT away from the road. Determined to do anything I could and quickly resigning myself to the fact that I was about to experience a roll-over, I let off the brake, grasped the steering wheel tighter and simply prayed, “Please God. Not today. Not this way. I have a daughter that needs me. Don’t let my husband get THAT phone call.” I knew that even if I rolled, I would still stand a better chance of survival, than if I had hit the other vehicle head on.

This is where I know I was not alone in my vehicle. It stayed upright. The police officer behind me, who witnessed the entire scene that felt like an eternity, but in reality was maybe 10-15 seconds in its entirety, when my car came to a stop he rushed up to check on me, to make sure that I was okay even though there was “accident” scene. I never took my hands off the steering wheel. I would have lost it if I did. I assured him that I was okay. Shook up and I knew I’d be sore from the seat belt locking, but I was okay. I just needed to pull off the road and collect myself. I was told by the officer that he witnessed my SUV lift off the ground and then he said just as quickly he watched it set back down. How he had NO plausible explanation for what he saw, how he had seen smaller SUV’s just continue with the momentum they had and that, in reality, my car SHOULD have rolled. He’s right. It should have. But, while I felt the car lift up, in the next moment, I felt this massive weight on the right side of the Traverse and THAT is when it set itself back down. As I screamed that prayer in my head…that is when my SUV…just…set down.

I’m positive that I experienced a true Divine Intervention. There IS no other way to explain between what SHOULD have happened and what DID happen. I have my faith, I know that God is real, that Angels are real and I know that there ARE answered prayers. I couldn’t speak much to the officer. I was concentrating on not going into shock. Calming myself down. And then, just as suddenly, I WAS calm and I felt a presence with me. I came home and I’ve just marinated in the events of this weekend, letting the emotions wash through me and just being eternally grateful that my life was spared. I did jokingly say that if a human’s life is measured in cats’ nine lives, I had run through 7 of them in that one incident. That is how I deal with horrendous incidents…dark humor.

So, whatever I need to do in this life, it is not completed yet. I still have work to do here. I have just one more story to add to my testimony about the unfailing love and grace of God in my life.