Divine Intervention?
“The Lord is your guardian; the Lord is your shade;
He is beside you at your right hand.”
Psalms 120:3:5
There have been stories we’ve all heard of someone who was about to die, or suffer great harm who swears the hand of God prevented it at the last moment. The cop who’s badge stopped a bullet, the car teetering off a bridge, well you get the idea. Call it what you will, because while I believe everything happens for a reason, I also believe god helps those who help themselves. I’ve spent many years going up and down on the roller coaster of faith, but now I feel I'm more like a man on a lazy river ride. Slow and steady, relaxed, trying to enjoy the view.
The birth of my children helped reaffirm some of my thinking, but one situation in particular had caused me to reach a little deeper.
Some years ago, I was having trouble sleeping quite a bit. At least three to four nights a week, I was losing precious sleep due to nightmares and sleep apnea. It got so bad I was falling asleep at the wheel, micro sleep, that is, not only while in my car, but in my rig as well. It was scary, and while I tried to push through it, because I was scared of losing my livelihood, I also constantly thought about how I would cope with hurting someone, should I fall asleep in my truck.
Some time in spring of 2003, I was heading South on US-1 in Port St. John, which is just north of the Kennedy Space Center. I was driving my truck, delivering for Sysco Foods, and the route was my regular run. I’ve driven US-1 a million times, and could do it with my eyes closed, but on this day, they really did close. I don’t recall the mile or so up to the traffic signal, but at one point, while traveling about 50 mph, I noticed the light was red, and in a microsecond, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop. Simultaneously I reached for the air horn, and shit myself, while I realized I was about to kill someone. Opposite me, northbound, was a car in the turn lane to turn west in front of me, and to my right, eastbound, was a car ready to turn left north bound across my lane of travel. This all took place in a fraction of a second, but I looked at the car straight ahead, and she was leaning all the way over looking on her passenger floorboard, and the car to my right had a full sized newspaper, fully opened, reading away.
My light was red. One of those people had a green. Why were they each, at that very moment, preoccupied, so as to not notice 60000 pounds of stupidity barreling at either of them? They didn’t even flinch. If I was in my car behind either of them, I’d be on the horn screaming at them to ‘wake up’.
Did the hand of God help them that day? Or did he help me? I told Patty about what had happened, and I recall her saying something to the effect of it was God’s will that nothing happened. Look on youtube…search car/truck accident videos. Car drivers get killed even when the truck was going slower than I was.
Divine intervention. I believe it happened that day. After I made it through the intersection, and breathed a sigh of relief, and I pulled into the parking area for the Banana River Shuttle Viewing site. I pulled the air brakes, folded my arms on the steering wheel, and put my head down for a moment and almost broke down crying. I was just saved from a disaster of epic proportions. I’ve thought about those two people, a woman and a man, who both appeared to be middle aged, and I wonder if they have kids. Are they happy? What do they do for a living? What were they doing that day? The woman was turning into a residential neighborhood. Did she go home and hug her kids, oblivious that she might have been killed a few minutes earlier?
The man on the right was reading a newspaper. Was he checking the times for a movie? Was it date night with his lovely wife? Was he going to CVS to get medicine for a sick child? Wherever they were going, they made it there safely that day, I assume. One moment in time. That’s all it takes.
I made it a point to get more rest. My schedule was hectic, and I went to work and asked to be removed from the 3 am Disney route I did on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I could get more sleep. They were very understanding at work. Even today, I try to get as much sleep as I can, and although I'm driving a smaller truck now, I still have a commercial license, and still have to adhere to the hours of service regulations.
In November 2005 I crashed my car on the way home from work. I fell asleep at the wheel of my car, and plowed into a guard rail at 65 mph, breaking my right knee cap. It was 3 years after this incident, and was the last time I dozed off at the wheel. In my eyes it was isolated to that day, a fluke. I was tired. I closed my eyes, for maybe 2 seconds. That’s all it took. It’s my only accident, ever. Thank God it was a guard rail, and not someone going home to hug a kid. To this day, I am over a half million miles accident free in a commercial vehicle. It could have been very different.
Divine Intervention? Absolutely.
No comments:
Post a Comment