Don't Believe In Miracles?

I was thumbing through an old photo album not too long ago and I came across some pictures that reminded me that if I should thank the Lord every day for no other reason, it should be for allowing me to walk away from this van...yes an ASTRO VAN!

I remember a few years ago someone in my Sunday School class said that Jesus didn't
perform miracles in modern days, only in the days of the bible. Let me tell you what I told him.......

It was a cold November Sunday morning in 1995, and I'd decided to ride with my mother to her newly appointed church in Godfrey, IL. We were having dinner after church so we had a crock pot, some pyrex dishes and a few canned items in the
back.

I'd decided we had gotten up waaaay too early, so I looked at my son in the back seat and he looked uncomfortable, so I took him out of his seat belt and let him lay on the seat. I don't know why he wasn't in a car seat, maybe they weren't enforcing them back then. Anyway, I remember seeing snow starting to blow across the highway (we were traveling I-55 South) and we were coming up on Litchfield, which meant I
had enough time to catch a cat nap.

The last thing I saw before I reclined my seat was another Springfield pastor
whose church was in nearby Alton, go flying past. I remember thinking that his tires couldn't even be really touching the ground.

I lay my seat back and closed my eyes and almost immediately I heard my mom say “Oh Lord!” The next thing I remember was thinking “We’re rolling. When will it stop?”

It seemed like we rolled 4 or 5 times. I don’t really know how many, but I know that when we stopped I was upside down.

I mean as soon as I opened my eyes, there was a woman poking her head in the window saying “I’m a nurse, can I take your vitals?” “Is anyone hurt?” Then it hit me
that my son was in the van somewhere and I didn’t hear him. So I started screaming his name and his little head popped down from under me, which was now on top of me.

I pulled him down and the woman took him out the window and wrapped him in a blanket as she checked him out.

I called my mom, I don’t remember why I couldn’t see her because she was next to me, but she didn’t say anything and I started freaking out. To this day I don’t know how I got out of the van, but the next thing I remember is sitting in a man’s car with my son while the fire department used the “Jaws of Life” to cut my mom out of
the van.

When the ambulances got on the scene, they put me on a stretcher and put my son and I in one and took us to the hospital. I’d always heard Litchfield referred to and
Lynchville, so I wasn’t comfortable at all going to their hospital. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I was examined, x-rayed, poked and prodded for hours. I didn’t know where my son was and a state trooper was kind enough to come and let me know that my mother had been
extracted from the van and also being examined. Then he handed me a can of peaches. Yes, peaches! He’d found it in the grass near the accident and at that time he told
me something I’ll never forget. Be mindful of the things you carry in your car because in an accident, something as innocent as a can of peaches can become a weapon.

I kept telling the people examining me that my vision was blurry in my right eye. They checked it, gave me eye drops and checked again and it still didn’t clear up. They concentrated on picking shards of glass out of my leg. My leg was crossed when I laid back. When they finished, I was asked how I felt. I told them I felt ok, but that my vision was still blurry.

They dilated my right eye and put some special fluorescent drops in it and turned out the lights. They shined some special light on it and discovered a shard of glass right in my iris. I don’t remember what happened next, I just know they removed it.

By this time a nurse brought my son in to see me. Lo and behold, in this so-called all white prejudiced town, here comes my son on the hip of a black nurse and bragging about all the jello and green beans he’d eaten.

The nurse assured me that they’d found nothing wrong with him in his exam and that he was entertaining the nurse’s station. (What a surprise.)

About that time my dad and uncle came in to my room and said they’d been to the place where the car was towed and got all the information my mom would need for the insurance.

They’d gotten our purses out and took pictures for insurance purposes (my uncle was a former state trooper and knew all these things would be needed).

We waited and waited and when it was over and done with, my mom had several stitches, a bunch of cuts and a funky new set of bangs.

Turns out that when I was calling her, she was passed out. When she came to, we were already out of the van. Skeptic about seatbelts? If she hadn’t had her seatbelt on, she’d have likely been under the van because her fingertips were pinned under and so was the front of her hair, hence the new hairstyle.

It also turns out that my son NOT being in a belt is probably what saved him (well I know it was the LORD who saved him) but logistically, he fell under my reclined seat
and when we were rolling, he was safely kept between the seat and the floor.

Turns out when we finally stopped, we were upside down on a median just yards away from the northbound traffic.

We were given some real good painkillers and released.

Anyone who’s been in an accident knows that when you wake up the next day, you don’t recognize yourself. You are one big walking bruise. By the way, when you buy a used vehicle, make sure the air bags work. These didn’t, so when we flipped it was the seatbelts that held us in place and every place the belt touched was a bruise. We looked like Big Sal had taken us out back to rough us up. Mom had 2 black eyes,
just looked beat down (shaking my head).

All this to say, that even when I wasn’t actively seeking the Lord, He had his angels of mercy all around me.

FYI-angels are NOT the cutesy lil naked babies or beautiful golden hair, white winged beings society says they are. Read any story in the bible about angels speaking or showing themselves to someone, they always say "Do Not Fear" or
"Don’t Be Afraid". Don't believe in angels? That’s a whole ‘nother blog post.

Just wanted to share how I’ve been blessed.