Counting Your Blessings

Sunday evening at 5:18pm it was a beautiful day, sun was shining but little did I know, things were going to change drastically. 

I knew that I should pull over to rest.  I was fatigued and blinking slower and slower as I drove down the interstate at 75 mph.  Five miles over posted limit does make a difference.

In the blink of an eye, I saw I was headed off the road, I swerved to miss a mile post but that wasn't the end of it.  I began to fishtail on the road, two or three times I cannot remember.  The whole time, my cruise control was active.  I am very blessed that I did not roll my very top heavy car.  I knew that I could not regain control of the vehicle so I decided the best way to crash was to go into the ditch. 

I went into the ditch at 70 mph, striking a drainage input that stuck up in the ground, and landing just a single tree shy of the river below.  All of this I was not aware of until after I was told about it.

In the vehicle with me were some of my personal belongings that I had worked hard to obtain.  Some of which are a desktop computer, laptop computer, kindle, and iPod touch.  Along with other belongings it was just shy of $5,000 worth of stuff. 

It was a slap in the face at first.  I was so concerned about my stuff, as the emergency personnel were looking over my injuries, I kept asking what was going to happen to my stuff.  My car.  It was all I had, all I worked hard for. It was very important to me. 

God knew how important it was to me.  And I have a new perspective on things now.  Sometimes it takes something severe to happen for God to change your priorities.  But I now understand that this accident was probably the best thing that God could have ever had happen to me. 

Here are some pictures.  I will add pictures of the NEW (old) car that my future father-in-law Burdell Kuhl gave me after we learned that mine was totaled.  What a blessing he has been in my life.  My mom as been all that and more, she was paying my car insurance and it always was a joke of "when are you going to start paying for your own car insurance".  Well, thanks for paying for collision coverage mom!  I now have a chance of getting at least $1,000 for the car.  Maybe I will now pay for my own insurance. 

Just so you all know, the flames of the engine were close to 20 ft above the car.  It was a big fire and praise the Lord I got out of there safely!

The cluster on the windshield is my engine block.  When I hit the drainage intake, it knocked my engine loose when they tried to tow it out of the ditch.      
Close up on the engine block.
If you can tell right behind the drivers seat are the remains of my desktop computer and monitor.

There they are up close, the cluster of cables are my keyboard, mouse, and 50' ethernet cable.

This is the back end.  Apparently my bike rack broke off the trunk and flew into my back window.  They had to tear open my trunk to clear any fires that may have been there.


Passenger side front, my front fender is in there, and in the bottom right if you can make it out is my Concordia laptop.  I pulled it out and it was mostly intact with some glass shards forced into the metal bottom cover.  And of course, charred to a crisp.  Wonder if I'll be charged?



Sorry for the graphic nature of this, but I had to put it on to display just how little damage I walked away with. 


All in all it was a great lesson in counting your blessings...  Thanks God :)