The following article describes my healing and personal growth after my husband Bill and I were in an automobile wreck in which we were propelled 50 feet off the side of a mountain .  Some of my experiences as described in the article influenced my decision to work with victims of trauma from Hurricane Katrina.  The article was featured as the Thrivenet story of the Month in May of 2000,  (The link is also posted at the end of this post if you would like to read the entire story.

The day that my fiancee and I signed the final papers to purchase 40 acres of undeveloped land, we drove up to the property in his 18 wheeler truck. The drive took over an hour because we had to drive up 5 miles of dirt road after leaving the paved county road.

We were both really excited; especially Bill who had wanted to buy this lot for years. We walked the entire 40 acres deciding where the best view was, where we would put the mobile home, the sheds, the water tanks. It was getting to be late afternoon and he had taken the truck to pick up some iron from his friend's property below us and I was getting the BBQ ready to cook some steaks. Bill dropped the load he had gotten but told me that he had to go back because some of the iron had fallen off the truck and was in the middle of the dirt road. I decided to go with him since the coals had to get hot first.

As we left our property, the truck lost its brakes. The truck gathered up speed because of a steep hill. Bill made it around a curve only to find his friend Ron in the middle of the road picking up the iron. He swerved to miss Ron, hit an embankment, and went airborne for approximately 50 feet. The truck crashed into a small canyon going 60 miles an hour. 

After waking up from the coma and hearing again that it was a miracle for me to be alive and even a bigger one that I had no brain damage, I finally decided that there must be more to life than living and dying. I remember saying "Okay God, if you want me alive this bad then I better go do what I'm suppose to do." I finally got off the fence and made the decision that it wasn't a question of IF but WHEN, and I never wanted to do these lessons over again.

When I look back on who I was before the accident-no scars, slim, active, no handicaps, able to sing and dance, but with such emotional and spiritual confusion-and compare that with how I am now-heavy, scarred, not able to be active, difficulty walking, using oxygen to do anything but sit, no dancing or singing-if given the choice to be who I am now or who I was before, I choose me now without hesitation!  I have provided a link if you are interested in reading the entire story.  ThriveNet Story of the Month May 2000