Angels Among Us

Yes, I rolled my hummer - affectionately named “Cherry Bomb” - last week. For those who already know the story, feel free to skip this next paragraph. For those of you who don’t care or find my unfortunate event trite or insignificant, feel free to leave my blog and create your own blog, wherein you can discuss your own unfortunate event, thus, trumping mine and feeling better about yourself, by yourself.

Now then, the boys and I were on our way to Tampa to meet up with my husband (who had gone by himself for work-related issues) and a few of our friends who live in that area. It had been raining on and off the entire trip, and we were about an hour and a half south of Tampa when the rain finally let up. I was cruising along at 70 mph in the Venice/Englewood area when Cherry Bomb started fishtailing. We all know how unsettling that feeling is, but imagine my horror when the fishtailing promoted itself to hydroplaning, and the hydroplaning upgraded to losing all control of my massive vehicle. As we skidded from the far left lane, spinning across three lanes of traffic heading right for a five foot drop-off into the Florida wilderness, my hands left the steering wheel and I began fervently screaming prayers to God. This event is tragic enough, but…

…my babies were in the car.

I don’t know the position of the car or how long we spun before we started rolling. I don’t even know how many times we rolled, but it was at least three. All I remember through it all was the dog slamming into the passenger‘s window, and slamming into a tree at some point.

Some people have asked me what I was thinking through it all, and as difficult as it is to replay the whole scene in my head…well…what is that they say about curiosity and a dead cat?

Here were my thoughts (from what I was able to muster) broken down into a time sequence:

Point of fishtailing: If I don’t get control, I’m going to start hydroplaning.
Point of hydroplaning: If I don’t get control, I’m going to start spinning out.
Point of spinning out: If we don’t stop spinning out, we’re going to flip!
Point of flipping: How is this going to end….

We landed on the passenger side. As I dangled from my seatbelt, I twisted around towards the back. “Are you guys alright?”

“Yeah, we’re ok!”

I can end the story there and declare that God is good. But there’s more…

I unbuckled myself and fell onto the passenger’s door. Robbie, grasping what had just happened, started panicking. “Why am I just hanging here?! What just happened?! What am I supposed to do?!?” Meanwhile, I can’t find my phone, because everything in my car is everywhere. I was stepping on things I didn’t even know I had (where did this pink hairclip come from? Oh, there’s my CD!) I hit the Onstar button, but apparently they hired Charlie Brown’s teacher as the Onstar spokesperson.

I had to calm Robbie down. So I unbuckled his seatbelt and he tumbled into his brother. Now it’s a fun, fun game for them. I remember thinking that I shouldn’t stand on the actual window because the glass might break. So as I guided my feet onto the panels, I saw my phone peeking out of some random crevice. Thanking God for the hundredth time in the last twenty seconds, I grabbed it up and dialed 911.

“Thank you for calling the Manatee County emergency department. Please wait for the next available representative.”

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?!?

I rolled down the driver’s side window so I could stand up straight. People had already pulled off the side of the road and were rushing over. “Are you okay?”

“We’re all fine, thank God,” and that was the first of the million times I repeated that sentence.

A began lifting my spawn up through the driver’s window and passing them to a bunch of men, handing over my dog, and ultimately lifting myself out as they helped me out of the car and onto the ground. And then this is what I saw….

Andrew looked up at me, an empty packet of Capri Sun dangling from his protruding arm, and announced, “Here Mommy, I’m done with my juice.” The women standing around began crying.

Cop cars and fire trucks roared to a stop on the side of the road and uniformed men came running in my direction (now I know this is a dream come true for some women, but please…now is not the time).

Amazed that everyone involved in the accident was standing there, they retreated back to their trucks and left, save one cop who wrote up an accident report for me. In the meantime, one of the guys who stopped hooked a tow strap onto the front of Cherry Bomb and righted her…and she was still running! So believe it or not, they actually drove her out of the jungle area, up the ravine, and onto the side of the highway.

Another car stopped and a husband and wife rushed over, the woman exclaiming, “I saw them pulling babies out of the car and I just had to stop!” It was this couple who talked to the cops because I was too distraught, and he drove - yes, I said it, Cherry Bomb is a trooper - he drove my car to the next exit while the boys and I got in her van (her kids were entertaining mine) and they took us to a McDonald’s, where we waited an hour and a half for my poor frantic husband to pick us up.

I could continue about how the tow truck driver couldn’t believe that that car had rolled (none of the windows were broken, airbags never deployed, and really the only damage was done to the body), but I really just want to address a question that arose when relaying this story…

While most people have joined me in thanking and praising God that we were able to walk away from what could (and probably should) have been a fatal accident, after the usual comment of, “God really was protecting you,” some ask, “Well if God was protecting you, why didn’t he just prevent the accident from happening altogether?”

Well I have an answer for that completely logical question. First, I invite you to look at the picture on my face book page, and read all the comments written below it. Read my wall posts; scan over the comments written under my status from that day. So many of my friends wrote praises to God - praises that would have never been proclaimed had the accident not happened. Not to mention my grateful expressions to God in front of all the people who stopped and helped me, my insurance company, etc. I truly believe that God was fully glorified throughout the whole situation, and isn’t our whole purpose for existence to bring honor and glory to Him, no matter what the cost? Didn’t Paul say in Philippians that “Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death”?

So if that is what it took for me to be used as a vessel of God to bring glory to Him, then I will roll my car every day if that’s what it takes. And there’s no disputing the fact that angels really are among us, and I will never stop praising Him for sparing these two angels imparticular: