"God still has big plans for you, Mom!"

Sometimes children say the silliest things and at other times they spout great wisdom. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, Collin and I were in a pretty serious car accident a couple of weeks ago. It was after church. Our family had driven two cars to church that day due to ministry commitments we had a different services. Some of us needed to be there for both services but others didn't. After church was over, Collin and I took the van to the local feed store to get some chicken wire while Shannon took his car with the other children to go pick up Brandon from his group home. When Collin and I were finished at the feed store we were going to go directly across the four lane highway to the local Menards.

As I sat at the stop sign waiting to cross there was quite a bit of traffic on the highway. There were also three, I think, cars across the highway in the Menards driveway waiting to turn left onto the highway in front of me. I felt a bit of pressure to go as soon as possible, knowing that if they were following traffic laws, they were waiting for me to cross before they could go. I waited for a couple of cars going one direction, then a couple going the other. The road looked clear as I looked both ways and I kept my eyes on the car in front of me to be sure they wouldn't try to turn out in front of me. All of a sudden, seemingly from out of nowhere, I saw the front of a car hitting my front wheel and engine compartment from the left.

Although the picture of the van may not show it, the impact was incredible. The car that hit us was just coming into town on a main highway and was probably going between 50 and 60MPH when she hit. Fortunately she had an airbag and she was cushioned by that as her car hit us then flew across the highway and into the Menards driveway facing the opposite direction she had been going. Our van spun to the right and ended up against the curb facing nearly the opposite direction as well. I hit my head and eye on the left side of the van and Collin and I think I may have been knocked out for a few seconds based on my slow response to him telling me to turn off the van.

It ended up that both our van and her car were totaled out. We had just put $2800 in the van in the previous two weeks fixing the transmission and putting on new tires in preparation for our vacation. The other driver had a small cut on her hand, probably from when the airbags deployed from out of the steering wheel, but was otherwise fine. Collin had a sore lower back for a couple of days and I have been fighting a sore back, neck and shoulder. My entire left side was bruised and I had a black left eye. We discovered a surprising thing after the accident. We knew the van had both front and side impact airbags and were baffled as to why the side airbags didn't deploy. I sure would be feeling a lot better physically if they had. Anyway, after we found out that the van was totaled out, Shannon took the panel of the side of the seat where the airbags belong. Lo and behold, there wasn't one! We believe at some point in the vans journey to reach us via used car markets and auctions, someone removed them to sell them. Nightline has done stories on this and it looks like we experienced it personally.

We spent the next 5 days car shopping, not fun when on a deadline. First we were looking for the same style of van(it was a Pontiac Montana), then we switched to looking at Toyota Siennas. After a couple of days of looking at them we quickly realized they just weren't big enough for our family. Although Toyota's have great safety ratings and reliability, they are the smallest of all minivans and we were concerned about the lack of cargo space. WE ended up getting a Chrysler Town and Country. The children are ecstatic with the fact that the new van has a DVD player, it wasn't however, a huge selling point for me. We will maybe let them watch a video on the way out to the Black Hills on our vacation but it is one feature we are very unlikely to wear out.

As I've thought about how this all played out and how I honestly don't know how I couldn't have seen the other car it has frustrated me to no end. Just this morning I read an article about a driver's ed instructor who was killed when someone ran a red light and hit his side of the car at a similar speed as my accident. As I talked with the children about that this morning and how, if it had happened a split second later, it would have been my door rather than the front wheel area being hit I realize how very fortunate the three of us involved in the accident are to walk away in as good of condition as we did. During this conversation it was Molly who said, "Mom, God still has big plans for your life!" What could I say to that other than what I did, "I know God still has big plans for my life!"

"For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11