“You are completely at peace.”
How Divine Intervention Saved My Life
Everyone’s heard of life-changing miracles but few have actually experienced them. I have, and here’s my story.
On November 22, 1993, exactly 30 years after President Kennedy’s assassination, I had dinner at home after work and got into my minivan to go work out at the YMCA. It was about 7pm and the temperature was around 40 degrees but the evening was dry and cloudless.
Not far from my house in southeast Charlotte, North Carolina, I was approaching a sharp curve on a residential street going about 35 miles an hour when I heard a voice as plain as if it were coming from someone sitting next to me that said, “You are completely at peace.” Instantly, I went completely limp as chills ran up from my toes to the top of my head.
I was just thinking, “Where did that come from?” when I saw the headlights coming straight towards me from around the curve in the road. They swerved to my left as I tried to shake off my temporary paralysis and put my foot on the brake but the next thing I knew there was a screeching crash and I was spinning around before rolling backward into the woods below the road.
I had been hit head-on by what turned out to be a drunk driver going 50-55 miles per hour. The police said I left only about 20 feet of skid marks before impact, undoubtedly because I was a rag doll as a result of my miraculous encounter. Since this happened before airbags were required, the only thing that saved me was my shoulder belt and my temporary paralysis.
Not that I wasn’t hurt. My right wrist had been snapped in two and was dangling from my arm, but I dismissed it as being fixable because all I could feel from my knees down was searing, incredible pain and I couldn’t move either leg.
And then there was the absolute silence of the forest around me. I could see the white car of the person who had hit me as people stopped to see what was going on. Then the ambulance came and the EMT was there but couldn’t open my door because the impact had triggered the automatic door locks. I had a long ice scraper next to me, but I had to grab it with my left hand to reach across to the passenger side to hit the unlock button there so the EMT could open my door and try to pull me out.
Of course, she couldn’t move me at all, so she began cutting off all my clothes and put a reflective space blanket over me since the temperature was in the 40s. I knew if I allowed myself to begin shivering that I would go into shock so I focused all my attention on clenching my teeth to keep them from chattering. This focus kept me from noticing my dangling right hand or the pain in my legs so I hardly noticed as the Jaws of Life removed what remained of my windshield so they could peel back the roof of the car and put a chain around the engine to pull it off of my legs.
Once the engine was pulled away, the EMT could cut my sneakers at the heel and pull my legs free, one at a time. I remember being thrilled that they were still whole and that no bones were broken but the lacerations were extensive and required surgery on both knees to clean them out and see how much damage had been done to them.
The remarkable thing was that I never felt fear even when I saw the headlights directly in front of me. The peace I had been given by that mysterious voice gave way to determination to keep myself out of shock since I somehow knew how easily shock could reduce my ability to survive my harrowing experience.
Because I was so focused on clenching my teeth, I didn’t notice the crew that was working to dismantle the car from around me until suddenly I looked up and saw stars in the clear night sky and felt the pressure easing off of my legs. As the EMT pulled each leg out, I was thrilled that I could rotate my feet, which meant that my lower legs were still attached to my body. As it turned out, the engine wall had pinned the toes of my sneakers and crumpled enough to give my legs and knees deep lacerations but miraculously no bones had been broken.
As they strapped me onto the gurney, all I could think about was arriving in the Emergency Room and seeing my husband and daughter. I pictured that scene, with the bright white light above me and a team of doctors and nurses tending to my wounded legs and arm. The pain was still intense, of course, but I was elated to have survived and tried to console my husband and daughter. I was going to make it through my surgery and be just fine.
The next morning I was visited by the man who was in the car right behind me and saw the whole thing. It turned out that he was a physical therapist at the trauma hospital where I was taken and, when I told him about the voice I heard just before the crash, he said that my temporary paralysis likely saved my life. Not too many people survive high speed head-on collisions but I was in a minivan and the other driver was in a compact car, so that weighed heavily in my favor.
I spent the next six months regaining the use of my right arm and trying to teach my knees how to bend normally. It would take a full year, however, before my left leg remembered what it was supposed to do and its ongoing pain after that was what led me to acupuncture and my subsequent introduction to energy medicine. I realized that the Divine Intervention that had probably saved my life had given me an obligation to learn why I had been saved. Five years after my accident, I learned about Reiki energy and began my energy healing journey to help others heal. It is now my mission in life to help others and I have learned that it is possible to achieve personal peace by helping others to achieve it.