Crash

So my car, the Civicus, also affectionately known as Civy, is dead. The pictures are pretty ridiculous, and you should click to enlarge them to get the full effect.

Anyway, thank goodness for Grace. My car is totaled, but I'm OK. Thanks to everyone for all the phone calls and e-mails. My parents are safely in Mexico now, and they called to see how I am today.

So God is funny... yesterday I fasted. Instead of eating lunch I decided to read my Bible and pray. I admit I have been pretty horrible about making time to pray, but yesterday I spent a solid 20 minutes with no noise, praying out loud. I prayed for my prayer list, for my family, for some of my friends... and then I started praying for myself. I have been realizing that I have to work through some of my feelings about death and dying. I'm not afraid of death really, but pain. I have never been in serious pain, so I found myself praying, "God, please help me to not fear pain, and if that means I have to feel pain, please hold my hand while I go through it." I knew, as I prayed it, that this was the kind of prayer that you almost immediately regret praying ( on some level.)

That was 1:30. At 3:30 I was supposed to meet my covenant group at Trinity to cook dinner for the rotating homeless shelter. I was running late, and had to drop something off for my mom at the Youth Center. I stopped to turn left onto Randalia Road. I saw there was oncoming traffic, and reasoned that I could probably make it, but I am always kind of scared turning on 213. So I decided to wait. And then all of the sudden I heard a crash, and realized that my seat was reclined and I was spinning. I had no idea what was going on, but my immediate reaction was, "Oh come on God... you didn't have to take my prayer so literally." When I stopped spinning, I sat up (my seat had reclined), and got out of the car. I was dizzy and there was already a police car with his lights on, so I thought at first that I had been unconscious. You can see in the picture that my seat was reclined right where the trunk DIDN'T come up into the car.

As it turned out, there was a cop car two cars behind the person coming toward me. Somebody who had pulled over told me that a truck had plowed right into the back of my car. Fortunately the third car that had been coming toward me was a police car, which was why there was already a cop there when I sat up. It looked like a Crayola truck had exploded... there were chubby markers everywhere. By the time I realized I was ok, my mom was running out of the Generation Station because she realized it was me.

We waited around while they cleaned up and did paperwork and stuff. The other driver was on the other side of the road and we never crossed over to talk to each other. I actually thought about going to talk to him because I felt bad for him. Most of us are guilty of going too fast on 213 at some point, and we've all been distracted while we were driving. That whole stretch of road is pretty dangerous. After awhile my mom took me to Trinity for a minute, where we prayed with the people getting ready for the rotating shelter, and then went to the hospital. They basically gave me mild prescriptions, and told me that I'd feel worse over the next couple days.

So today I'm sore. My neck won't turn very far, and I have a bump on my head. I don't feel too bad though. My body feels tired, and people keep telling me that tomorrow will be worse. So, I'm going to go take my medicine and hope for the best.