Belief.

Back to Chasing. 

This week are were back at it with our Monday night summer group.  If you couldn’t tell, I have loved this summer group and I have an amazing group of girls to grow with.  This week’s topic, believing was really timely for me.

It’s not a secret that my time in college was a ‘dry season’ in my walk with the Lord.  In fact in my small group we say ‘when I took a vacation from my faith’.  I don’t say that to be flippant.  But the Lord’s grace has covered even those years when I knew better but I didn’t act better.

The summer before my senior year of college I was interning at the Boys and Girls Club in inner city Indianapolis.  It was my last week of orientation/training and I had just left for the day to begin the 45-minute trek up to the burbs, where I was staying in my parent’s home for the summer. I got in the car and headed home.  A few blocks away from the club I was making a turn in an intersection when I was t-boned by a man going 75 in a 30.

My memories of the actual accident are scattered.  I remember the sound it made when he crushed my car.   Then I remember being pulled out of what was left of my car – several blocks down a cross street where my car had eventually come to a stop after shattering every window, losing both wheel axels, and all of the fluids.  I’m sure I was in some sort of shock even as we waited on the officers.  People kept asking over and over if I wanted to sit down.  Finally after a quizzical look from me a guy turned me towards a parked car and showed me my reflection… I was covered in my own blood.

One of the first things I remember being told after that accident (by the police officer) was: ‘Miss, it’s a miracle you’re alive’.  Miracle sure was an interesting word.  Not only was I alive, I managed to survive that crash without a broken bone or a single scar.   In fact, I didn’t even go to hospital.

This week I realized that was 6 years ago this summer. 

I realized this as I was pulling into the Target parking lot on my vacation and I set my head on my steering wheel and cried.  God’s grace is so precious.  See, if the Lord hadn’t protected me on that day I would have missed the chance to really live for Him.  I knew the Lord then but I didn’t love Him.  Not like I do now.

Soon after that accident I began to get my life right and I pursued the Lord as never before.  I realized that my time to ‘come back’ may not be as long as I had once thought and I decided I couldn’t afford to keep putting it off.  Because of that accident and the Lord’s gracious love, I won’t have to go home to meet Him without ever having really lived for Him.

I don’t live in fear of dying or even of car accidents (that second part took a little longer).  But if he gives me 6 or 60 more years I can’t wait to live them for Him.  See for this strong-willed fearless girl, it took a miracle to get my attention.  But that accident broke me and the Lord was there to put me back together.

I pulled it together and finished up at Target and I spent my drive home having a chat with the Lord.  I cannot put into words how thankful I am that He gave me a 2934839280423th chance.  That I have had 6 amazing years of getting to know Him, love Him, and serve Him.  What a great and underserved honor it is.

In our bible study this week Jennie wrote, ‘How we live our lives will flow out of what we believe about God’.  Oh Jennie, how right you are.  May my belief grow stronger every day and my life reflect that.  I have never doubted for a day since that accident that God is real.  But occasionally I go back to that day in my mind and remember that my Savior has saved me more than once.  And He keeps on saving me...that illuminates my ability to have unbelief.

Love,

B