God is awesome...I survived! And I'm barely injured!

So all week long I've had the horrible feeling that I or someone I know would be in a car accident. First my friends and I went to the crash race in Indiana last weekend, then we see this Mustang get completely slaughtered in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot, then I turn on the radio and they're talking about bad car accidents... I just kept seeing things about car accidents everywhere... I started to figure ok apparently God is trying to tell me something.

And He was.

Today at 8:30 this morning, I was on I-80 East going 70 mph in the far left lane. I see the car far ahead of me do a mad swirve and I instinctively figured that for whatever reason, I should be swirving too. So I started to and as I do this I see what we're swirving from is a HUGE whole tire in the middle of the lane... probably from a semi since it was so flippin big. I was not able to miss it entirely, I clipped it... which sent me out of control. I flew to the right across 3 lanes of traffic, spun completely around until I was facing oncoming cars, then flew BACK across those 3 lanes of traffic to the left and slammed into the concrete barrier... And I did all of this without getting hit by any of the other cars all going like 70 mph.

And somehow through of all this, I kept complete focus the entire time... it was almost like hey... I've been expecting this all week, it's not a surprise. And it was all in slow motion. You hear people say this all time, but that's really how it was. What all happened in probably a matter of 15 seconds give or take, seemed like it might as well have been an hour.

When I lost control, I said to myself out loud, to just go wherever the car wants to go. I hear when you lose control to never fight it, to drive in the direction the car wants you to... and so I did. And I almost got it back at about halfway through the madness, but somehow lost it. So as I turned around, I couldn't see any of the cars coming at me because at this point it was way too fast, everything was literally a blur. I just again... out loud... told myself "hold on, here it comes, here it comes" I gripped the steering wheel as tight as possible and braced myself for the impact. Which... the seconds before this happened were the scariest seconds of my entire life. It's one thing to get hit when you're not expecting it, it's another to absolutely KNOW ok... you're going to crash.

Anyway, I did. And when it was over I looked up and the cross I keep hanging from the mirror was flipped over it and hanging right in front of my face. I actually grabbed it, kissed it, and said "Thank you, God!" Then I looked down and both of my shoes were off... no clue how this happened. And then I look out of the window and a man is running towards me from his car that he pulled over, already getting 911 on his cell phone. He made sure I was ok, he took care of the police/emergency calls and had me call my family and Shane and he stayed there with me until the ambulance came... what an awesome dude. I would have gone into complete panic mode without him.

So the ambulance, a fire truck (coming to make sure nothing would like explode), and the Illinois State Police all showed up for little ole me. Which of course slowed down all the traffic and I felt bad cuz I hate being the reason for slow traffic. lol. And it didn't help things when they brought the stretcher over to me to take me to the ambulance. (at this point, we didn't know how bad my knees were or weren't). So I had my first ride in the ambulance, they just took me over to a big parking lot off the expressway to check things out and see if I even needed the hospital. I ended up just having to have ice on both knees and my neck is horribly stiff. The ambulance dude said it will be a looot worse tomorrow. He also said, my car is done for and when I do get another one... do NOT get a Saturn from any year. He's seen a lot of accidents and the Saturns all just crumble like paper. Even mine... which though it's a 95... was very heavy, very hard metal. He also said the car he sees surviving the worst accidents are VW's. I laughed cuz I've been wanting a Jetta for like 2 years now.

Buuut I won't be affording that any time soon. I have no idea what I'm gonna do or where this money is gonna come from but I need a car.

But new cars are doable, me coming back from the dead is not. I am SO happy to be okay and to be alive. I said that those seconds before the impact were the scariest seconds of my life... but the seconds that follow when I realized I was ok were the best seconds of my life. I must have looked like a dork to the man running at me with his phone as I sat there with a huge smile on my face.