In January, I did what I think is to date the stupidest thing I have ever done. I hope that when I die, I am able to say still that the stupidest thing I have ever done was on Jan. 24, 2013... I turned left in front of someone and caused a car accident. It was a big car accident, but not necessarily serious. No ambulances were involved, but both cars were totaled.
There were so many blessings involved with this accident that it is impossible to outline all of them in a blog post. But I want to try to share a few blessings. Blessing number one was that it happened in our brand new van. (We'd made one payment on it, and I was clever enough to total it on the one-month anniversary of us buying it...) Scott had purchased the van on Christmas Eve. It'd been a huge joke at our house- I'd sent him to the store to check a price on something and instead he came home with a new van (and didn't check the price...). That story is deceiving because while he did the initial stuff, we made the decision to purchase it together and he brought it home for me to test drive before signing anything... But in any case, it was an unexpected purchase. He woke up that morning feeling very drawn to buying the van. I'm sure there were many reasons for that, but I now think that one HUGE reason for the purchase was this accident. If we'd still been in the tiny little Fit, I think we'd have been injured in this accident. I don't think anyone would have been killed or even permanently maimed, but I think we'd have been hurt- especially Katie. It hit on her side of the car. While in the van it was nowhere near where she was sitting, in the Fit the point of impact would have been very close to her.
Blessing number two was the actual totaling of the van. We were able to pay off the original van and get its twin brother- same make, model, color, etc. We were also able to use some extra money from the van to pay off (with the help of tax return) two small bills that reduced our monthly expenses. (See my previous blog post titled 'Perspective' for more info....)
Blessing number three was Moriah Spainhower. She happened to be driving by the area where I crashed the van shortly after the accident. She was with a friend who was driving and recognized me. So they turned around to see if I needed any help. I sent the girls home with Moriah so they didn't have to wait for everything to be finalized and signed. Moriah saved us a ton of stress as well as calmed Anna down. Katie was too little to know what had happened. Anna wasn't, and she was really scared. But not only was Moriah fun and cool, she had bunnies... By the time Scott and I were finally able to pick the girls up from Moriah's house, Anna was very happy. In fact, she didn't want to come home with us- she wanted to stay with Moriah. :)
Blessing number four is forgiveness. I got distracted and did something stupid. But I did all I could to make up for the mistake and was able to repent. I can't imagine having something like that mar my spiritual being forever. It was a mistake- I hadn't done it on purpose. But it was still carelessness that endangered people and affected more than just my family. (Fortunately, it appears so far that the lady in the other car is nice- we haven't heard any bad things from our insurance company about her or her husband....)
As I've said in other posts, look for the blessings in the trials. They are ALWAYS there. It would have been so easy to look at the negative things with this accident. There were a LOT of them. But what good would that do? Instead, we have come to view this accident as a blessing. First and foremost, of course, being that no one was seriously hurt. Because it could have been a lot worse. If we look for the bad, we are sure to find it. If we look for the good, we will see things that will amaze us and fill us with gratitude to our Heavenly Father. So why not look for the good? Just a thought.
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