March 30, 1993, marks the day that my life turned on its ear. That morning as I was getting my day started, I ran a mile for the first time in months as I had been recovering from surgery and had been inactive. It was a cool damp morning, but the run was so invigorating that the elements were of no concern. My then husband, two children (Ches 4 and Gabi 3), and I were living about an hour drive from his work, their part-time daycare, and my school. I was in my clinical program at Northeast Louisiana University for Radiologic Technology. I had just over a year before I was to graduate.
Typically, my children would stay with my mother while we were in Monroe for school and work, but my mother had a dentist appointment in Monroe, so the children were with me. We all left Oak Grove at the same time and when we reached a little intersection where you could turn or go straight and both routes took you to the same place; mom went one way and we went the other. The drive to Monroe from Oak Grove was all rural highways and mostly substandard roads at that. On this particular day, there was an ever so slight mist in the air so the highways were damp, not saturated.
The kids were in the back seat of our small four-door car. I was in the passenger side studying. At my last glance at Ches and Gabi, they were buckled in and I had the automatic shoulder strap in place. At some point I remember my ex-husband making a sound. It was a deep, desperate sound that caught my immediate attention. I looked up in just enough time to see a white flash and try to turn to check on the kids. That's the last thing I remember as an able-bodied, independent to a fault, twenty-five-year-old, young mother.
My next state of consciousness must have been only seconds later because I heard a loud hissing noise. It was steam off the motors of the little white truck and our little black car that had just collided at a rate of about 55 miles per hour head-on. I didn't hear my children crying (then), but I heard my husband moaning and laboring for breath. I think God must have somehow buffered my mind from everything going on around me because I could not have helped anyone. I lay there, draped over that shoulder strap like a rag doll. The only things moving on me were my eyes and the rise and fall of my chest with shallow respirations. I was paralyzed.
That day marks the beginning of a road of discovery. I discovered just how vulnerable and fragile life is and how awesome and gracious God's power to overcome tragedies is.
*Edited and transferred to Word
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