Before my eyes

When I was about to be hit head-on four years ago, it happened quickly. I saw the car coming toward me, knew I had no place to go, and within no more than three seconds our cars met, crunching metal, breaking glass, and deploying airbags. 

I did not pray at the last second. I did not call out to God. I didn’t even wonder if it would hurt—my only thought was an incredulous “he’s going to hit me.”

In the moment of realization, the brain has a primary goal of preserving life and that takes precedence over everything else. All its other functions shut down and there is no space for rational, controlled thought. The brain goes into life-saving mode and completely takes over. During a trauma, your brain does whatever it has to to keep you alive, to help you survive the current emergency. You don’t see your life pass before your eyes like Hollywood would have you believe. You don’t think about your spouse or your children. There is no praying.

Once the accident was over and I opened my eyes and realized I was physically safe, that’s when my thinking brain could start up again. I was still in survival mode, but my prefrontal cortex, where decisions are made, began to come back online a little bit. I began talking out loud to myself.

Put the car in park. In that moment I remembered a wreck I’d had thirty years before where my minivan wound up on its side, wheels spinning because my foot was not on the brake and it was still in Drive. When I shifted it into Park I could hear the gear teeth snapping off as the transmission ground to a halt. It’s amazing to me that in this moment of intense stress, my brain pulled that very distant memory to the surface because the two situations were so similar. It reminded me to have my foot on the brake before I shifted to Park.

Shut the car off. Get the seatbelt off. Get out of the car.

My ability to think was coming back slowly, but only in a limited, self-preservation kind of way.

It was only when I ran 50 yards away from the car, stumbled through a ditch, and sat down on someone’s lawn that my thinking could shift to God’s care for me. That’s when I could thank God for preserving my life and giving me a great car that kept me safe and not letting the accident be worse than it was. Like David said in Psalm 26, I could say

But how did it get there—his lovingkindness before my eyes? How was I able to sit trembling in some stranger’s front yard, looking at my totaled car while the horn continuously blared, and see God’s graciousness and mercy?

I could have been angry that God let it happen at all, and if I’m being honest, I did ask him the “where were you?” question a few times in the coming years. 

But God owes me nothing. I haven’t done anything to deserve his favor or his protection or his mercy in my life. Everything I get is a direct result of his lovingkindness toward me. I don’t earn it. He gives it freely because that’s who God is. It is his character to love us and be kind to us. 

We don’t always understand why he does things. Sometimes bad things happen because that’s just life. People drive unsafely and make bad decisions and our paths intersect at just the right (wrong) moment.

“He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” 

In time I was able to see how much worse it could have been and how I walked away with no more physical injury than a stiff neck and a burn from the airbag.

But here’s one thing I’ve learned: we can always trust God’s character, which never changes. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does all things well, as the songwriter said, and he can use the things that “just happen” for our good and his glory. It took me a long time to see how the mental health struggles of this whole event could be used for my good, but now, almost five years later, I am beginning to see how some good has come out of a very difficult event.

Some days I’m not fully there, and I’m not quite ready to be thankful it happened, but I can see how going through the trauma and learning how to heal from it have helped me and been a positive thing in my life. I like to remind myself of God’s goodness to me in all things. It helps me keep his lovingkindness before my eyes.