Crushed by a car? A transformation?

It was still warm when I got home. A note on the counter announced my wife had taken the twins to work. They would be home at 6:30. I glanced at my watch. I was 5:30. If I hopped on my bike now, I could do 25 miles before they got home. Tomorrow was the State of South Carolina Masters Ten-Mile Time trial and I knew I would be competitive. I planned for an easy ride tonight, and then dinner with the family. I’d soak in the tub and sleep an extra hour, all to prepare for tomorrow. At 11:35 when the horn blew at the starting line, it was twenty minutes of pain.

I didn’t make it to the race. In fact, I didn’t make it home. With three miles yet to go, a 4,000-pound rolling lump of steel and plastic doing 60 mph veered and hit me. The driver said he reached into the back seat for something, and didn’t see me. I’m guessing he was on his phone. He heard a bump and whirled around to see me flying like Superman. Thankfully, he dialed 911. During my hospital stay, I learned this is the rarest of calls: most people who hit someone just keep driving, leaving the evidence in the rear view mirror.

When emergency personnel arrived, they found me crumpled like fireplace bellows. I landed on my head and right shoulder, resulting in broken bones, shattered teeth, and a bleeding brain. Life support sustained me for two weeks, and I was comatose for five. At the hospital that night, the surgeon who put me back together held my wife’s hands.

“The first hurdle is 48 hours,” he said.

“You mean, if he lives or dies?”

“That’s about it.”

I was transferred to Atlanta, where doctors hoped I would walk in a couple of years. When my wife asked about me working again, the doctors hesitated. “Let’s talk about going back to work after he learns to walk.”

I did walk, though. In three weeks. It wasn’t pretty, but I ran in five and returned to work in five months. Hospital staff started calling me the Miracle Man. I shrugged my shoulders and laughed, having no clue why I recovered so well.

I would never volunteer for what I went through with my family and friends, but I have a newfound assurance that G authors my history. Not that G caused the accident, but I am sure He brought our entire family together to learn things we needed to learn. By sharing this, I hope you can learn my lessons the easy way, through prayer, reading, meditation, and practice. I learned them through life support and a wheelchair. They’re good lessons, but I don’t recommend the method.

Two years later, these are the five key points I’ve understood:

1. Start today with the important things. I lived my life like most of us: busy all the time, and it took a car to convince me I was wrong. During all that busyness, all that doing, I forgot about the being. I neglected important things like a daily sacrament and a focus on my daily walk with the Father. I carved out time for my family, but daily devotions were nonexistent. They became servants of busyness. Now, in the Gospels, I notice that even Jesus — the living G! — spent regular time alone to recharge and connect with the Father.
2. In the same vein, I’ve got a reawakened desire for a relationship with G. I’ve always liked study and writing and they’ve never been a chore for me, but it’s easy to supplant a walking relationship with the living G with reading another book or attending Wednesday night services. Remember, a disciple is a follower, but we choose what we follow. Do we follow a church or a Bible study or even a pastor? It’s not what we a called to. We are called to be followers of Jesus, filled with the height and depth and length of the Spirit of G.
3. I’ve learned about building a family committed to each other. On the night of my accident, my wife called each of the older kids to tell them what happened. In each case, and from all over the United States, they hung up the phone and got in a car or on an airplane. My wife’s family came to help, too. Everyone had the same vision: to take care of the twins, to keep the house running, and to allow my wife as much time with me as possible. In Atlanta, a nurse told me on the night before I left that our younger girls — the twins — were the best-mannered kids she had ever seen. “Don’t you ever mess with that,” she said. “You do, and I might come looking for you.” I was a little scared.
4. Never, ever doubt the power of prayer. We might not see it working, but it’s always our job and privilege to take our burdens to the Father. When I left the hospital in Atlanta, my releasing doctor talked to me about visiting my surgeons when I get back home. “I don’t know what they did,” he said. “But, Dennis? This isn’t medicine; this is magic. I have no answer for how you healed so completely and so quickly.” I shrugged my shoulders but, later, telling my wife, she reminded me that, “You had four states, about 27 churches, and probably 800 people praying for you every day. That’s how.” She’s right. Would that we prayed like that every day? How different the world would be!
5. This applies to everyone: G is the G of history, and He’s not done with you yet. We don’t have to understand it or understand the purpose, but G uses us every day for His purposes.

The take-home message? When it comes to the most important things, talk is easy. Doing is hard. Don’t wait until you’re mowed over by a car to remember this.

“The LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Amen and Selah.