Everything can change in the blink of an eye
- Bob Hanna: Someday
- September 2, 2020
- 997
The couple was returning home from a casual evening of dining out and shopping. It was 10 p.m. and dark, but the road was the same one the driver had traveled since he was able to drive many years before.
As they came to a slight left curve, the driver noticed the headlights of the oncoming car was crossing the center line headed right at them. He had just enough time to yell, “Here he comes!”
Swerving to the right to avoid a head-on collision, the oncoming driver hit the left front corner of the couple’s car, completely crushing the whole left side including the driver’s door. Their vehicle went off the right side of the road, up an embankment and flipped over, coming to rest on the driver’s side.
Hello from the land down under. No, not Australia, the other one, Kentucky. It truly has been a crazy journey trying to pack up a lifetime of memories, both old and new. It has been so uplifting to receive encouraging messages from friends and even friends of friends. Special thanks to all the neighbors and family members (too many to list) who came and spent hours of grueling, back-breaking labor to load and unload our furniture and boxes. It was quite a caravan of vehicles making the journey south. To our church family, we felt the prayers for safety and overcoming the “glitches” in the process.
We still do not have everything to the new house yet. Because of a misunderstanding in a contract with one of our moving companies, the majority of our boxed items were shipped in two containers to a Lexington warehouse waiting to be delivered, only to find the area where our new house is was not an area they would deliver to.
Our realtor suggested another moving company that would not only pick up our things, but also bring them and carry them into our home. I met two strong men at the warehouse on a beautiful morning. Unfortunately, we had more “stuff” than they had truck.
But let me tell you those two men worked like I’ve not seen in some time. As the afternoon humidity rose, we kept them hydrated and stuffed with homemade brownies (thanks Mark and Janice) and finished late that afternoon. Another trip is planned to retrieve the last of our container.
In the blink of an eye, life can take a detour or even end without warning. As stated in the previous article, life is.
The story at the beginning happened September 2011. Taryn and I had just purchased our new Subaru Outback three months previous to this. At the intersection of Prairie Lane and state Route 83, a drunk driver changed our life forever. At the point of impact, the airbags deployed, temporarily rendering me unconscious. I remember waking up just as the car flipped onto my side. My side of the car was completely stripped from the headlight to the back door. The state highway patrolman said he believed the features Subaru built into the car saved my life.
I looked up and saw Taryn hanging by her seat belt above me. Two young girls helped us to climb out of the car through the back hatch.
Other than a hyper-extended elbow, which daily reminds me of that day, we walked out with minor injuries. The drunk driver was not injured.
We understand how blessed we were to survive such a crash. Many, each day, are not so lucky. As we look back, we realize God still is not done with us. In the spirit of our Someday philosophy, we open this new book of our lives, knowing he has a purpose, an agenda for us. We have named our new home Sanctuary Hill to honor his place in our lives.
In the blink of an eye, God will one day call us all to our heavenly home if we are prepared: no moving trucks, no boxes of “stuff” to pack, no heavy lifting, just a pair of open arms welcoming us to live with him forever.
God bless.