Timing is Every Thing!

The above picture was taken two years ago. The rescue workers were trying to extracate Adam, my daughters boyfriend.  He could not extracate himself because about 2 years prior to this scene, he was involved in another accident as a passenger.  As a strapping young Junior in highschool his life changed drastically with a severe spinal injury as a result of that previous accident.  (His wheel chair, cannot be seen in this picture, but it was in the bed of this truck.)  Both my daughter and Adam escaped THIS accident without injury.

As a Mother, this picture is difficult to look at.  But I thank the Lord each and everytime that I do.

A few years prior to this accident, this same daughter was in another icy road roll over in my car.

 A friend of hers had come to our house on an icy snow day.  A welcomed day off of school.  Her friend had accidently locked his keys in his running car in my driveway.  He said he had another set of keys at home (about 6 miles away).  I allowed them to take my car back to his house to retrieve his keys. 

I had a police scanner in my kitchen that was always on, and while I was going about my daily routine, I heard my name on the scanner.  Time stood still as I went to the counter where the scanner was located and I stared at it . . . willing it to speak again, and repeat what I just had heard.

The dispatcher repeated:  Vehicle information, "registered owner, Sandra Adams".   Instantly my hands began to shake, I felt vommit in my throat and a moment from about 6 years prior tried to illicit my every fear.  I picked up the phone and called the sherrif's office.  The dispatcher answered and I explained that I had just heard my name on the scanner, and I demanded to know why.

The dispatcher responded with "Oh, okay, yes Sandra.  I'm going to have to have the officer who 'came upon it' call you back"!  WHAT?????

"Came upon it"!?!  OMG, I thought I would collapse right there.  I told my husband (now my EXhusband) to go start his vehicle which had been "iced in" behind sliding doors in our large shed.  Meanwhile, I paced.  I hyperventilated, I grew grey hairs.  In what seemed like a lifetime later, but in actuallity it was about 5 minutes and my phone rang.  I picked it up before the first ring finished.

The officer on the other end of the phone explained that my car was located rolled over in the ditch about 3 miles away.  NOBODY was in it!  I asked him in a voice that didn't even seem like my own, "Did you look UNDER it?"  He was pretty certain that there was no one under the vehicle . . . I was not so sure.

He explained that they had called a tow truck and would soon have it uprighted.  I told him I'd be there in 3 minutes.

When I arrived at the scene, I saw my car rolled over in the ditched and several people standing around while a tow truck driver was hooking up to my vehicle to get it righted.  Within the people I saw, I spotted my daughter and her friend.  Instantly, I started to bawl and started toward her.  It was like the rest of the world was black, and all I could see was her unharmed beautiful face (though looking back I think she was terrified to see me). When I got to her, I took her in my arms and hugged her, and NEVER wanted to let go.  She sobbed "I'm sorry Mom, we wrecked your car."  She had no idea that I really didn't give a flying you know what about my car.

What had happened was, they were on their way back to my house when they lost control on the ice and crossed the oncoming lane of traffic sideways, hit the shoulder on the opposite side of the road and rolled the vehicle. They both had their seatbelts on and both walked away unharmed. 

One of my beautiful daughters being in an accident would be bad enough. But couple it with the fact that several years prior to that accident . . . I received a call that would forever change how I perceived life.

January 11, 1996
That evening I was on the phone with someone I hadn't spoken to in a little while and they asked, "How are you?"  My response was "It can't get any worse." 
We were having an extremely cold, cold snap and had lost some very expensive livestock because of the weather, and my car had been disabled after a rough extracation from a deep and solid snow drift.  I wasn't going to be able to go to work the next day, and life was just not going right. 

Those words, "It can't get any worse" have haunted me to this day.  I challenged Satan, and he called me on it.

The next day, I was home, whining about my car, and shortly before noon, I answered a phone call and it was my husbands ex wife.  She announced to me in a voice that lacked all emotion, but was full of shock that my husbands 18 year old son, my stepson was killed in a car accident that morning.  They (he and two other kids) were on their way to school where he was a senior and had lost control on an icy road, slid sideways across the oncoming lane of traffic, and were broadsided by a school bus. My stepson was the passenger in the car and died on the scene.

The world stopped.

I loved that young man.  He had the most beautiful smile I had ever seen.  One that could make a mad parent forget what they were mad about.  It was also one that he shared with his older brother, his beautiful younger sister and their Mom.

A minute after I hung up the phone my husband drove in our driveway. 

"How on earth am I going to tell him"?

He came in the door, and I said "I just got a horrible phone call.  Charlie was in an accident, and he was killed."  My voice sounded the same as his ex wife's did. Shock

My husband's  knees buckled and he literally fell to the floor.  I had to physically pick him up and bring him to a chair.  After a few minutes, I put his coat on him, and I drove us to his ex wife's house an hour away.  As I drove . . . I remember being amazed that the world was still going on when ours had stopped. I remember thinking "How can these people being going through this day, smiling, laughing and having fun? Don't they know?"

It was horrible!  And the words from the night before . . . "It can't get any worse" rang over and over in my mind.  These are NOW words I would never again utter.

The point is:  Basically, my stepson Charlie & years later my daughter had the VERY SAME accident.  The only difference had been in the oncoming traffic.  AND, had I not had an issue with my car the day prior, I would not have gotten THAT call and would not have known till many hours later.  AND, as at had turned out, my wonderful stepdaughter had wanted to ride in the car that fateful morning with my stepson, but he (and their Mom) had told her "No.".

Yes . . . timing is EVERYTHING.

Can you think of a time that changed YOUR life, but had the circumstances (or timing) been different would have changed the whole thing to a non eventful moment?