Volume One – Tragedy!

Description

It was a beautiful Saturday morning. The kind of morning that seemed peaceful and ordinary, never giving us any indication that our lives were about to change forever.

My mother had gotten all of her children ready for a family trip to Key West, Florida. Everyone was getting into the car, and my mother made sure we were all inside and buckled up. I was only two years old at the time.

As my mother prepared to leave, my father was looking out from inside the house. He walked toward the car and told my mother that the tires on the car were not in good condition. Something inside him caused him to stop and take me out of the car.

I was only two years old. I could not possibly understand what was happening or why my father had decided that I should stay behind. At that moment, it may have seemed like a simple decision. But that decision would ultimately change the course of my life.

My mother continued on the trip with my brothers and sister.

About two hours later, tragedy struck.

They were involved in a horrific accident.

One of my brothers was left hanging from a train trestle. Another brother was thrown from the vehicle and lost his life. My mother and my sister had to be cut out of the car by rescuers.

The family trip that had started on a beautiful Saturday morning had become a nightmare.

As I look back on that day now, I realize that my father was not being selfish, and he certainly was not showing that he didn’t care. He reacted to something he saw and made a decision that, at the time, he probably could not have understood the importance of.

He took me out of that car.

That one decision spared me from experiencing the tragedy firsthand. I was only two years old, but my life was protected in a way that I could not understand then.

For the rest of my life, I will be forever grateful to my father.

Sometimes, we look back at the moments in our lives that did not make sense at the time and later realize that there was something greater happening behind the scenes.

What seemed like a simple decision was much more than that.

It was protection.

It was purpose.

It was a blessing hidden inside a tragedy.

I believe that something greater was working in my favor that day.

My father may have thought he was simply protecting me from a car with bad tires. But looking back now, I believe God was protecting my life and preserving my purpose.

I survived a tragedy that I was never supposed to understand as a two-year-old.

And perhaps the greatest part of the story is that I am still here.

This is where my story begins.