Precious Fractions

It’s been a distressing two weeks. On October 17, while taking Bailey to school, a driver in a white Honda Accord ran a stop sign and slammed right into us. The greatest blessing is that Bailey walked away without a scratch. She was shook up pretty bad though. I’ve got a badly bruised shoulder. The Pathfinder was a total loss. I don’t ever recall getting hit this hard. There were no tire marks from her car, meaning she didn’t slow down a bit…a direct hit at 35-40 mph. Fortunately, we were hit in the left front side of our Nissan…a fraction of a second later and we would have been T-boned.

The driver said the sun was in her eyes and she couldn’t see the stop sign and she was on an unfamiliar road. She readily admitted she was at fault. In the end, her insurance company paid off my loan, paid my sales tax, title cost and gave me the down payment amount that I had put down on the Pathfinder so I can use on a new vehicle. When it is not your fault, the negotiations definitely weigh in your favor.

Bailey is now 13 years old and this is her 4th automobile accident:

1st: She was and infant. Her mother flipped a mini-van on the interstate. She was unharmed…just hanging upside down in her car seat.

2nd: She and her brother were just leaving my place. Andy was driving and noticed Bailey did not buckle up her seat belt (we’re very safety conscience). He reached over to buckle her up and he accidentally turned the wheel…a direct hit into a tree. Bailey smashed her head into the windshield. She did not go through the glass. A fraction more of force and she would have, but she did leave a bubble in the windshield. I hate to imagine what would have happened if her head went through the glass. It was bad enough with her head full of glass.

3rd: She was in the back seat of her mom’s car. Andy was in the passenger seat. They were driving back from Nashville on I-65 south...going about 75 mph. This accident happened at mile marker #11 near Pulaski. Witnesses say a lady in a brown Nissan Maxima was easily going over 100 mph and weaving in and out of traffic. She clipped their car and they went spinning. They landed in a tree. This is the miracle: Bailey was in the back taking a snooze (with her seatbelt on of course). Seconds before this happened, Bailey woke up suddenly and sat up in the middle of the backseat. She sat Indian style with her feat in the seat. At that very moment, they were hit. If Bailey had kept her feet on the floorboard, they would have been crushed. The left rear tire ended up where Bailey had laid her head to take a nap. A branch did penetrate the soft tissue of her throat right where your vocal chords, trachea, etc. hang out. The doctor said a fraction more and she would not be here today.

And now the fourth.

Quite frankly, I’m tired of her being the target of so many accidents. Our singing class Wednesday prayed that Bailey will never be in another car wreck for the rest of her life…she’s had way too much.

I am very grateful to God for keeping Bailey in her seatbelt and for holding our Pathfinder back and preventing a far worse accident. I’m grateful to God for keeping Bailey fastened in her car seat when she was an infant, for reducing the centrifugal force of her head as it crashed into the windshield in her second wreck, and for holding back Bailey from being hurt worse from the tree branch in her third. I'm so thankful for the precious fractions of life God has blessed her with.

Would you mind saying a prayer tonight for my girl? It’s tugging at dear old dad’s heart.