I'm Not Done.....Yet

Two days ago my life, and that of my best friend....nearly came to a bitter and sad end.


We were in a really bad car accident.


Round and round we spun after being hit.  The car slid down a "hill" and came to stop in a ditch.


People say that in moments like this your life flashes before your eyes.  


That did not happen to me.  


I had a completely different experience.


I remember it so vividly and so clearly.  


Since it happened, I have been reliving and having flash-backs of that moment.  I have remembered, with perfect clarity, all the things that went through my mind during that moment.


The first thing that happened as the car began to spin out of control was I got a picture of my nephew's, Nathanael, face.  I saw him clearly in my mind.  It was like he was looking strait at me.  He is one of the most significant people in my life so I'm not surprised that I saw him, but I was surprised to see him in THIS moment.  He looked neither sad nor happy.  It was just his face.  The way I know him to look.  I wonder if my mind was trying to keep his image there so that I would never forget him.  So that if I...died...no matter where I would go after...he would always be a part of me.  I don't believe in ghost's or in things like that but I have to wonder if I had died...to think of it makes me cry...but if I had....Would he remember me, always?


Would he know how much I loved him? Would he know how happy I was to see him on the day he was born?  Would he know that for me, he was the greatest gift I could have ever received? I know I'm not his mother.  But he and I share a special bond I have never had with anyone.  I remember on the night he was born I stayed in the hospital all night long holding him and singing to him.  I talked to him and told him stories.  He would look at me, with those same wondering eyes he has today, and I just knew he understood me, even as small as he was.  I wonder if that day had been my last, as the years go by, would he remember me? Would he think about me?  Would he know that he changed my life and made me a better person?


I don't know why my brain didn't show me my Niece...perhaps there wasn't enough time.  I love her just as much.  She also changed my life.  Maybe his image in my head involves them both.  While he taught me about unconditional love when he was born, when she was born, she taught me about unconditional joy.  Aliyah is just that...joy.  She is a child that loves to laugh and have fun.  She never stops playing.  Sometimes it gets her into trouble. lol But I hope she never looses that.  I hope she feels free to play all her life.  Thinking of what might of happened I wonder if she knows just how special she is to me? On the night of her birth, just as I did with her brother, I stayed in the hospital and held her all night long.  Singing, talking, rocking her.  I remember how peacefully she slept.  I remember thinking that I had never seen such a beautiful baby....and in my life, I have seen many.  I remember praying for her.  I mostly remember the prayer.  I remember I asked God to protect her because I knew one day she would grow up...and like a boy...and maybe that boy would hurt her, like I've been hurt, oh, so many times.  I prayed that He would help her through that, and if He could...help her avoid it.  But that's unrealistic.  We all go through that.  I watched her sleep and prayed so earnestly to God that He would protect her heart from shattering...being broken may be unavoidable...but that He could in some way keep her from ever feeling like her heart was shattered.


As the car spun round and round the image of my Nephew's face became clearer and clearer.  Suddenly, the spinning felt like it was in slow motion.  I heard the screeching tires and the sound of honking horns.  I heard the voice of my best friend and my voice as we screamed for our lives.  But the car, to me, moved as it was in slow motion.  Each 360 degree turn went slower and slower...it felt as if this car would never stop turning. Suddenly I heard a voice in my head...it was my own.


I shudder when I think about what I heard. Quite clearly and directly I heard my voice say to me, "The car is going to flip over now, and you are going to die." I did not shout it.  I was not loud.  It was a very calm and matter of fact voice, even for me.  All at once my heart ached and I whispered the words, "Help us Jesus".  I reached out and grabbed what I thought to be my friend's wrist...I'm not sure if I actually did that...and I'm afraid to ask her...but in my memory of that moment I did.  I found that I was bracing myself, getting ready for some type of impact.  I heard my voice again, "You'll see the grass soon, don't be afraid."  Immediately after that, a wall of dirt and grass came shooting up the side of the car I was on and everything went black for a moment.  "This is it", I heard myself whisper.


But it was not.


The car stopped moving.


My senses cleared and I looked around.  My body shot out of the car as quickly as I could open the door.  I stood up blinking in the sun surrounded by the dust from the dirt that covered everything.  In a moment my best friend was standing in front of me yelling at me if I was ok.  I responded.  I watched as people from other cars jumped out and ran to us.  I watched them run over to the woman's car who hit us...her car had flipped over many times, enough to land her on the other side of the high way.  


I looked down and saw the tall grass I was standing in moving gently in the breeze.  I looked down at my hands.  I looked down at my body.  I looked at my best friend to see if I saw an visual marks that we had just been in an accident....nothing.  Then when we looked at each other again...


We started laughing.


It was a nervous laughter that comes before you start to cry.  She teared up a bit as she realized she was ok.  I teared up for the same reason.  We were alive.  How that happened was amazing to me...especially because while in the car...I KNEW I was going to die.  I was bracing myself for it.  And the only thing in my mind at that moment...the only mental picture I had...the only thing that apparently my mind thinks of in a life or death moment is the image of something that truly matters...something my mind feels is more important than anything else.


That was represented clearly by the face of my Nephew, Nathanael. 


When my sister-in-law and brother were pregnant with him and deciding on a name, they chose Nathanael Seth because his name in Hebrew means, "Gift of God" and "Appointed son of God".  


In retrospect, sitting here, sore but without a scratch on me, typing on my laptop, like I did before this accident many times, I have to wonder.  Nathanael's face represents all that God wanted to teach me in that moment.  That the important things that matter in our lives are what life is worth living for.  And that is a gift to us, God's children.  The people I love most in the world.  They are the one's that matter.  They are the one's I should focus time and energy to.  They are the one's who will keep my name alive forever and I should invest my time in them, that is truly my gift on this planet, a gift from God, my Father.  All the other crap I worry about.  All the other people who don't deserve the time and energy I invest in...they don't matter.  


Standing up next to that car after that crash, I realized one more thing.  It could have been so easy for my life to end that day.  I was in the perfect situation for it.  It could have been easy for my head to hit the window or for my neck to snap.  In an instant, I would be gone.  Maybe I would not have even felt it.  So why didn't it end?  Why didn't my best friends life end?  


Because its not over for us.  


Because we're not done with whatever it is we have yet to do here.


Because there is still time to do all those things we have yet to accomplish.


I don't know what she was thinking when this was all happening.  I wonder if she'll ever know that as my best friend she is more than just that to me...she is like a sister.  I wonder if she'll ever know that I am so grateful I didn't loose her and that she is in that list of "People that Matter" to me.  But most importantly I wonder if she knows that her life was spared because its not over for her yet.  Earlier in the car ride, she and I spoke about plans she had for her future. Things she was planning and wanted to do.  I smile now because I know that she'll get to do those things.  All of them.  And I'll be around to see her do them! I wonder if she realizes how close she came to loosing that.  I am so happy that I will still have more adventures with her.


I end this post with this thought:  Whatever direction or goal I am meant to achieve...I am so blessed that I am being given the opportunity to achieve it.  Whatever "thing" I have yet to do...I am so grateful I am being given the chance to do it.  Maybe its fall in love, maybe its finish something I started, maybe its do something "great" or "important" for the world, maybe it to have a baby.  Whatever it is....


I am so thankful for being given the gift of completion.  


And I am forever grateful to the God who surrounded us while we spun round and round in that car and never let us fall.  

I am truly thankful.