The moment I knew I was meant to do more with my life came at the most inopportune time. My 2001 Jeep Cherokee was laying on its side, the driver’s side, and I was half trapped, half suspended mid-air on the passenger side between the pull of my incredibly strong seat belt and the car’s center console. My brother was apologizing profusely and repeating over and over, “Are you alright? Are you okay? Are you hurt?” I should have been paralyzed by fear, but for a few seconds everything stopped and this overwhelming feeling of appreciation for my life and my brother’s life came over me. I was joyful, but poignantly aware that I cannot and should not die without doing more in life, without loving those in my life more passionately, without recognizing and celebrating more notably my faith in a supreme being, and without having more of a positive impact on the lives of those around me.

Let me reverse several miles and describe the events leading up to this moment of clarity. Jeff and I were in our 12th hour of driving for the day and we had just crossed the border between Texas and New Mexico. The conditions had been pretty intolerable for the past hour or so with snow flurries that completely eradicated any and all visibility. Jeff was driving cautiously, but I was definitely bordering on unease. I said a quick prayer to God and asked that he help us make it the last 250 miles to Albuquerque safely.

Wait a second. Brake. Hard. Turn around with me and notice this strange and eerie picture of pure irony. Somewhere in Oklahoma I was trying to take pictures of the roadside scenery, but the best of my efforts were being thwarted by the rain, clouds, dirty windshield, and poor lighting. Instead of capturing nature, I shot something more ominous – the warning sign on the passenger side visor. Take a look…

This picture was taken around 4:30pm and my accident was around 7:00pm. Who knows what I was thinking when I took this, but there is certainty and truth in the fact that I was completely unaware of what was to befall me very shortly.

Speeding up to the minutes before the accident, if you were to observe the scene as a third-party you would have seen a quirky cute guy with the hood of his blue sweatshirt pulled over his head and his white ball cap on top of the hood. You would have also seen a visibly exhausted young woman slightly reclined and fidgeting with her brother’s iPhone to avoid having to visually confront the vicious snow and monstrous trucks right outside the front windshield. You would have watched as the Jeep, awkward on the road in the same manner as a teenager is awkward in his/her own skin, creeped over to the left hand lane to pass a truck in the right hand lane. You might have been proud of the Jeep for showing such bold courage in times that usually call for fear, or you might have felt trepidation and a sense of foreboding doom. A few seconds later, you would have seen the Jeep inching back to the right hand lane and meeting an icy demon on the way. As the Jeep skidded on the ice, you would have seen the young man try to steer the car to the left and lightly tap on the brakes. You, no doubt, would have noticed that despite his best efforts the Jeep rotated 240 degrees to face traffic as it careened into the ice-covered grassy medium and flip, practically end over end, at least two complete times, spewing engine parts in the process, before it stopped abruptly on its side.

But you weren’t inside the vehicle or the passengers’ head, so you couldn’t possibly know that while the car was flipping and the bang of the side of the car hitting the ground was followed by the jolt of the top of the car smashing into the ground, only to be repeated at least 6 more times; you couldn’t possibly know that all the while the people inside were surviving. I was there. I know.

When it became glaringly clear that the car was going to flip, the iPhone slipped out of my hands and all that passed through my mind was the need to protect myself, to wrap my arms around my head and brace myself for something nearing death. I was ready to play black jack with the devil. I was ready to lose the battle of life and win the war of something more eternal, but God had other plans. He wanted me alive and he sent his angels, in the form of truck drivers, to rescue my brother and I from the remains of the green Jeep. But before their arrival, the trivial matters that normally consume me were no where to be found; in their place were the simplest and purist thoughts of my entire life.

Life is about people.

In a future entry I’ll share how Jeff and I were extricated from the deformed Jeep and the ensuing events that helped me redefine the very definition of my own life.

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