The Car Accident and The Prayer

The Car Accident and The Prayer 10/28/2010

http://www.blissful-wisdom.com/the-car-accident-and-the-prayer.html

The car accident happened about 6 days after I had returned from a weekend retreat in Seattle, Washingtion in 2004. A semi-trailer truck had nailed my small, green Volkswagon hatchback while driving to work one morning. I was out for the count with major whiplash and shattered glass in my head, but nothing critical. Fortunately, the Mack truck had nailed the passenger side of my vehicle on a Sunday morning, because on most other mornings my daughter Daelyn would have been sitting in the passenger seat, getting a lift to school. She would have been injured far worse than I.

It is interesting, because I recall praying at the retreat, praying that I might carry some of my mother's burden, because she had always been the provider in my life and she was in need of healing in 'her rusty years' (as she once put it). She had given so much while raising five kids on her own. In my gratitude, I was overcome with an intense desire to shoulder some of her pain. After shedding a few tears, I got up from that prayer and went off to serve some food to the retreat participants. I was looking forward to plating up the food with my daughter, Daelyn, who accompanied me to these retreats each Spring. The prayer was forgotten.

At the age of 76, my mother had been in need of a hip replacement. Her prospects didn't look good. Long wait lists seemed to offer little hope of relief. And yet a window of opportunity finally came about 6 weeks after my car accident. I thought nothing of my earlier prayer when my mother was finally sent to the emergency ward by a conscientous homecare nurse. The nurse said that she could actually hear the crunching of disintegrated bone matter in my mother's hip as she was walking about that morning and, because of that, my mother was rushed to the hospital and permitted to jump the queu for immediate hip replacement surgery. The amazing part was how the doctors had my mother up and walking within five days of her surgery.

I recall something my physician, Dr. Faulkner, had said to me immediately after my car accident weeks earlier. He went right to the point when he said: “Bill, you've got to ask yourself just why it is that you attracted this injury into your life. Just what is the message you need to hear at this time in your life....that a semi-trailer truck had to put you out of commission for awhile?”

I went home and considered his questions and after awhile came to the conclusion that I was just plain burnt out, and needed a rest. But oh, what a hell of a way to get a rest!

Whether the prayer had anything to do with the car accident is just one of those things I'll never know.

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