Last Thursday evening, on my way home from my daughter’s house, a driver turned left on red and almost crashed head-on into the side of my car. I was talking to my other daughter and her fiancé (through my car’s speaker of course) when I saw that a car was barreling straight toward me. I said, “someone’s going to hit me!” and, I thought “I can’t die now.”

I jerked my wheel to the left and sped up enough that he ended up only catching the back, right side of my car. I stopped right in the middle of the road, before driving off to the side. Another car pulled over in front of me. An incredibly kind woman, named Denise, walked over to me and said, “I saw the whole thing, are you okay?”

I was okay physically, but emotionally I was really shaken up. She said, “You must have a lot of guardian angels watching over you, you could have been killed”.

My husband left our daughter’s house a few minutes after me. He didn’t see the accident because of the timing, but he pulled up behind me. Denise then told him what she saw and that I must have a lot of guardian angels. My daughter arrived next and Denise told her the same thing too.

I gave her my contact information, and when I got home I had a text from her that ended with “I’m glad you are safe 🙏”. Part of what I responded to her was “You are one of those guardian angels” (they come in all shapes and sizes, and this one was a beautiful, petite brunette whose life touched mine in a way I’ll not forget).

I’ll never know why the other driver didn’t stop; why it became a “hit and run”. Maybe he had an emergency and was rushing to get somewhere. Maybe….he was afraid.

Like my car, if we’re “scratched and dented” we can usually be put back together but, like a car that’s beyond repair, we can become “totaled”.

Sometimes, if we don’t fix the small dents (hurts), they slowly rust (eat away at us) until the damage is irreparable.

Many people have been hurt so much in this life that they only see their damaged “less-than” selves.

Fear of driving down a road because you might be hit again is one thing, fear of walking through life because you might be “hit” again is a completely different struggle—one that many live with daily.

We don’t know what irrevocable damage has been done to another human, even though the exterior seems to be perfectly fine.

What happens when you see someone barreling toward you, knowing that you can’t get out of their way fast enough? Do you keep trying to move to a safe place? Or, do you brace yourself for the impact, knowing that (as always) you’re going to be hurt?