Whitney Wednesday: The Day I Almost Died

I was driving home after a fun filled day of shopping with my sister in the suburbs of Chicago when the rain began to drop on my windshield. My sister decided to stay in Chicago for the night with her husband and I decided to make the drive home by myself. A decision I quickly started to regret as the rain began to pound on my windshield to almost white out conditions and my wipers couldn’t keep up.

I was barely going 50 miles an hour, my front tires felt like they were sliding and I remembered that my tire treads on my front wheels were getting a little bald. Anxiety beyond control just completely overtook me and I still had 2 hours of driving to do. I was on the verge of tears but choked them back because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to see and I couldn’t afford less visibility.

I was pleading with God to make the rain stop, that I had two babies at home that needed me, and I couldn’t die today.  Yes, it sounds dramatic, and it probably was but I was terrified that I was going to crash and there was no reasoning with me. An hour into this scenario and the rain was getting even worse. I realized that this rain was going to continue so I prayed that God would help control my anxiety and just get me through this storm.

Almost immediately I felt like God was telling me to look up, so I did. I raised my eyes above what was happening right in front of me and saw this clearing in the sky far out ahead of me. It was completely cloudless with the most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen. It was so completely clear it looked like I was looking at the edge of the earth from space. It was seriously so odd and so surreal. I hadn’t noticed it before because I was so focused on the road.  

A sweet little peace washed over me and even though I was still anxious and white knuckling the wheel, I knew that there was hope. It was still pouring where I was, but I could see that it was going to clear up soon. I kept telling myself, “Just keep driving towards the clearing. This storm won’t last.”  I think God was trying to teach me this lesson for my everyday life because this week has been a difficult one already and it keeps coming back up in my mind “just drive towards the clearing.” 

It’s embarrassingly easy for me to stress out over the tiny problems right in front of me, and try to control the situation (like white knuckling the wheel. It didn’t help anything and now my hands hurt. It never ends well), but giving it to God and having God change my perspective to see the bigger picture helped me to realize that God is working everything out for my good. Sometimes the storm is a means to an end and I just have to wait it out. The blessing is just beyond the storm. In the meantime, it strengthens my dependence on God and not myself, and that alone is worth the rain.