“Hunt for the good,” is what one of my former pastors used to say on a regular basis. Sometimes we can get so bogged down by life, we forget that God is everywhere, even if we have to search a little to find Him. Have you ever been through a tragic event only to realize later that there were God sightings all over it?
Illusions, Book 2 of the Apple Hill Series, was inspired by my daughter’s near fatal car accident. Since I’ve shared this little tidbit previously, you may already know it. Most every scene in the hospital came straight from our real-life experiences. But the real God-incidences happened before I even knew about Nikki’s accident and after her recovery.
It was December 18th—the last day of school before Christmas break. Nikki had been working two jobs and commuting about an hour to Sacramento to attend school. She had turned 18 only a few weeks before, so she was fairly young to be finishing up her first semester of college. It was a clear, cold day, and she’d left early to take the last of her finals.
As Paul Harvey used to say, “Here’s the rest of the story,” pieced together from the accounts of those on the accident scene.
Nikki was turning off of Highway 49 and onto Highway 16 (which will mean nothing to you if you’re not from the area) when she was t-boned at the driver’s door. The car flew across both lanes of traffic and into the ditch. By all accounts, she should have been killed, so the fact that she suffered only trauma to the head was a miracle. She was unresponsive, and the highway patrol officer on the scene could not recover any identification. What he did find, however, was her cell phone. So, while she was medic-flighted to the hospital, Officer Vaccarezza launched an investigation to discover who she was and how he’d inform her family.
This was before cell phones needed a password to access them. He clicked through the contacts until he found “Dad.” What he got was a voicemail message where my ex-husband (who was not an ex at the time) left his full name. Officer Vaccarezza remembered that his daughter’s eighth grade teacher had the same last name. Miracle number two.
Not wanting to leave a message of this magnitude on a cell phone, he decided to drive up to Valley Springs to the middle school where I taught and see if there was a connection. There was. This was the man who told me Nikki was in an accident, and then called the hospital himself to be sure she was still alive before I made the trek to a parent’s worst nightmare.
But that’s not the end of God’s hand in this miraculous journey. The following October, I received a phone call from a woman named Carol. She was apologetic and tentative and introduced herself as the person who had hit Nikki in the car accident. She’d been working up the nerve since the accident to call, but she feared the news would be too devastating to take.
“She’s doing very well,” I told Carol. “Even so, you have nothing to apologize for. Nikki was the one who went through the stop sign.”
“It doesn’t matter,” a tearful Carol said. “She’s just a child. I was told at the scene that even if she survived, it’d be a miracle if she fully recovered.”
I couldn’t convince Carol that Nikki was fine, although she’d always have residual effects of the trauma, so I encouraged her to visit Nikki and see for herself. The two of them became friends and worked together to get a traffic light installed at the intersection where the accident occurred. I’d never actually met Carol myself since they always got together while I was at work, but I knew her friendship with Nikki was healing for both of them.
One year after Nikki’s accident, my ex-husband told me he was leaving to live his “own” life. I was devastated. Life had just gotten back to some semblance of normalcy. We’d been discussing a way to get Nikki off-campus housing so she wouldn’t have to continue to navigate a complex system of bus transfers to get to school. Christopher, my son, was pushing to move with her, in the middle of his junior year, so he could attend a high school in Sacramento that offered an amazing music program. My ex ended up renting an apartment near his work, and both Nikki and Christopher went with him. For the first time in my life, I was living alone—lost and devastated. That’s when I fell to my knees and surrendered my life to Jesus.
Fast forward several months. I’d started seeing Chris over the summer. One day, I was at the grocery store with him when a bubbly, older woman greeted him. Chris introduced me as “Nicole’s mom,” which struck me as odd. Why would this woman even know who Nikki was?
“This is Carol,” Chris said. “The woman who was in the accident with Nicole.”
It was then I found out that the injuries Carol sustained in the accident motivated her to find a chiropractor. That chiropractor was Chris. Since I’d been a patient of Chris’s for years before we started dating, he knew everything about Nikki’s accident when Carol first came to him. It very well could have been conversations with him that led her to call me the year before. Which led to Carol and Nikki’s friendship. Miracle number three.
A few years later, when Nikki got married, Carol was at her bridal shower and wedding. How often do co-accident victims become good friends? Only when our amazing God is in charge.
God-incidences. Knowing that the King of the World cares about every little detail of my life, and those of my daughter, gives me hope beyond measure. No one else will ever love us the way He does. We just have to have eyes to see and ears to listen.
If you or someone you love has sustained a traumatic brain injury, there is help. Contact the Brain Injury Association of America to get the help and guidance you need.
Until tomorrow…
Enter here for your chance to win a $10 Amazon Gift Card.
