“Have you ever had a car wreck?” she asked.
Boy, had he ever, I thought. Our six-year-old daughter had directed the question at her father, and I listened with raised eyebrow for his response. Wow. He didn’t disappoint.
“I sure did,” he answered. “A really bad one!”
And yes, it had been a really bad one. One of those accidents that obliterate the vehicle beyond recognition, the ones where EMS arrives and know they’ll find someone dead.
Except he hadn’t died.
It was quite miraculous, actually. My husband (before he was my husband) had been unrestrained, and his vehicle had flown fifty feet or so into the air. Heck, I’m the worst at calculating distance, but I do know they found where his vehicle dinged over halfway up a power pole before it descended back down to the ground. I do know they found his body sitting in the passenger side, despite the fact that he had been driving. And I do know he should not have survived that accident. They found his front teeth sitting on his chest and a gash about a centimeter from his carotid. God spared his life, and I had always joked with him that it was so he could marry me.
He continued, “it was so bad that I should have died, but God needed me to meet your mom so I could have you.”
And there it was. The one thing every Christian parent needed to know, and more importantly, needed to impart.
“God has a plan for your life,” he finished with a smile.
He spoke to our middle child, our most unique daughter. She was overly sensitive, and when she bawled about basically anything, this one part of me wanted to scream, “quit your crying!!”
Long ago I realized she would make my job a challenge. I think maybe God gives you a pass with that first one.
He’s like, “she’s a new mom. Let’s take it easy. Gabriel, go catch that kid before it rolls off the changing table!”
When my second daughter arrived I realized she wasn’t as easy to figure out, and since they didn’t come with instructions taped on the back, I did a lot of praying. In all that praying (you know, the kind you do in tears after all the yelling), I felt like the Lord told me something really important.
