Thirty-five years after cheating death

Thirty-five years ago this week… “Four persons, including a Kansas woman and her two small children received injuries of varying degrees when a truck tractor pulling two semi-trailers careened out of control Tuesday morning on Interstate 40 and struck a small foreign-made car head-on.”

Thirty-five years ago this week my mom and dad, in their mid-twenties, had loaded all that they had into their two small cars to start their post-graduate school life in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My one-year-old brother slept in his car seat, me asleep in the hatchback of our brand-new Nissan Sentra driven by my Mom, as Dad led in another car a few hundred feet ahead.

It was the early 80s and truck driver safety regulations had not yet evolved to require adequate sleep breaks. The driver had probably been pulling his rigs all night and by the time 6:30AM rolled around he had gotten drowsy. Heading down Interstate 40, just east of the Washita River bridge, the truck crossed the center median. Mom remembers thinking, in that brief second before the impact, ‘Why is that truck taking a left turn?’

My memory of that moment consists of a few scant details. I know my dad watched the entire horrific collision in his rearview mirror. When my own children were one and three I finally gained some understanding of what he must have endured in those moments – walking up to a car containing your young wife and two babies, crushed to an unrecognizable heap, dreading what you might find. I remember that he lifted me through the broken window and placed me in the grassy median. I remember my brother sitting beside me, probably bleeding from the head injury he’d suffered, though I have no recollection of blood that entire morning.

My mom, who was trapped in the car for over an hour before the fire department used the ‘jaws of life’ to remove the roof of the car and extract her – suffered deeply gashed legs, badly bruised face and broken arm but was miraculously alive. She remembers simply asking one question of my dad, over and over, “Are the kids ok!?!” The sensation of being trapped, hurting, and not being able to hold your crying babies must have been excruciating.

The emergency crew determined my brother needed to be life-flighted to Oklahoma City. It would be 24 hours before he would see another familiar face, as my Dad stayed with my Mom and me, and in the absence of cell phones it took several hours before our Kansas City family would hear the news and make their way south to the Intensive Care Unit where Christopher would grab my Grandma’s neck and not let go for days.

I rode along in the ambulance with my Mom. In the small-town hospital my few scrapes were examined, and it was determined that I had escaped virtually unscathed. Mom’s arm was set, her gashed legs bandaged. The next day the newspaper headline read, ‘Quartet cheats death in car-truck smashup.’

Thirty-five years ago this week we all should have died. A semi-truck, barreling down the interstate, crossed a grassy median and hit our car head-on. I did not have on a seat belt. The roof collapsed on my brother’s head. The steering column crushed my mom’s legs. The car was unrecognizable. The highway was shut down for hours. And yet, we lived.

Thirty-five years ago this week, at three-years old, suddenly awakened from my un-belted sleep by an abrupt jolt I came to know one thing for sure – there is MORE. It was a deep knowing that I didn’t have language to express for many years. But when I was asked, at twenty-five, about the start of my faith journey I found myself suddenly back in the crumpled hatchback of a 1984 Nissan, gasping in the unknown of what-just-happened!?! And every crevice of fear that had been cracked open by this life-changing moment was filled with a knowing that no matter what there was MORE. Did the MORE save our lives that day, or does the MORE also visit the child who doesn’t make it out alive – filling her with peace, too? I have wondered about this a hundred thousand times, as I gave the wreck far more of my thoughts growing up then I ever let on. But the MORE has always stayed close and brought me deep comfort. Even as we recently received difficult medical news for our own young daughter a few weeks ago I could feel this knowing, “Katie…” it whispers, “You are not alone, I am here, there is so much MORE.” More to come, more to love, more to trust in and hope for and MORE than I could ever imagine.