A day I'll never forget

August 16, 2005. It was a normal, hot summer day. I was going in to the gated employee parking lot at work around 7 p.m. I had turned in wide so that I was slightly more than an arm's length away from the device that opened the gate. A split second passed where I thought about putting the car in park while I swiped my card, but I decided it was too much trouble. I leaned far out the window to swipe my pass to open the gate, the car still in drive with my right foot on the brake. The next thing I knew my foot had slipped off the brake and the car was rolling down the sloped parking lot. There I was, half-in, half-out of the car, my left foot dragging on the pavement, trying unsuccessfully to get back in the front seat so I could press the brake. The car was headed right toward a concrete median. Oh good, this will stop it, I thought. When the car rolled right over that median, then right over another, I knew for sure this was going to end badly. As I rolled down the parking lot, all I could do was to get myself completely into the car and hope I didn't die when it finally came to a stop.

A few seconds later, the car hit a median on the other side of the parking lot and stopped. Surprisingly, I was still alive and conscious, the windshield hadn't cracked, and the car was still running. So far, so good. I thought I had gotten off easy. Then I noticed the blood. Blood was gushing out of my head. I had never seen so much blood come out of me. It was all over my shirt and it smelled strong and it scared the hell out of me. I got out of the car and thought about what to do. My first thought was that I needed to find someone to help me, quickly, in case I passed out. I applied some pressure on my head and tried to get across the parking lot. I felt some pain in my right leg and arm as I walked. In the confusion, I had also lost one of my shoes and my glasses. I was in pretty bad shape as I hobbled over to the sidewalk where one of my co-workers spotted me and ended up driving me to the hospital, but right then I knew I was going to be OK.

As you would expect, I spent a few hours in the emergency room that night. I had some stitches put into my head and also had an MRI, which showed that I did not suffer a concussion. I came home with some large bruises and a cut on my lip. But I was going to be fine, no permanent damage done, other than to my car. My car was already old and rickety, now it was wrecked, too.

I was grateful to be alive and lucky the accident wasn't worse. However, in the days after the accident I still I felt a lot of shame about it. I didn't want anyone else to know, but of course, everyone found out about it- my family, friends, and co-workers. I didn't want their sympathy or attention, mostly because I didn't want them to see how stupid I had been. Over the next few months I also ended up having to buy a new car and pay a few thousand dollars in medical bills, more consequences of something that shouldn't have happened in the first place. I wanted so badly to erase the accident, to go back in time to that parking gate and tell myself to put the damn car in park.

But of course that's not possible. As much as I hated it, this was a lesson for me in the school of life, a past-due reminder that I am not God. Which is basically what all humiliations are, but this was a big one. I'm human, therefore I am always one accident away from ceasing to exist. There's really nothing like that moment of not knowing whether you are going to live or die. Sitting in the front seat of a car that is going to crash, you don't know when it's going to stop and how hard it is going to crash, whether you are going to fly through the windshield or pass out and lie there until somebody notices. At that moment, my life was completely in the hands of God (or fate, the universe, or whatever else you might call it). At that moment, I could have died but for some reason I didn't.

I definitely don't face life-or-death situations like that every day. I don't sky-dive or bungee jump or climb mountains. But whether I think about it or not every single day my life is in God's hands as much as it was that day. Anything can and does happen, even in a tame, relatively boring life like mine. If any good can come out of such a bad situation it was being brought low in order to see how dependent on God I really am. Who knows why I made such a stupid mistake and why I survived it. Maybe there is no reason, it was all just random, a combination of my stupidity and the laws of physics. And yet to me it was a lesson, to be more careful, of course (note to self: when in doubt, always put the car in park), but also to realize that ultimately I'm not in charge of the things.

It's eight months later and a few scars are the only physical things left that to remind me of the accident. But I still think about what happened a lot, especially when I'm driving. I think about how one stupid mistake can end it all. It's a scary thought, but it's also something that makes me appreciate every day that some life-altering random mistake or malfunction doesn't happen, every day that I get to work safely and come home to a safe, warm house, every day that I can enjoy life as a healthy and relatively happy person. Those are things to be thankful for and in a weird way I'm glad I had this experience to make me realize it.