Well I've written about most of the happenings this past week involving my middle son's graduation from VMI in VA. Now comes the rest of the story only this involves my youngest son David.
Some of you know David from his blogging time here on JU. He has since moved away from that, being much too busy with college life and work plus trying to keep Aly smiling (which is not a hard thing to do).
He and Aly came to most of the events planned for the grads and their parents. At one point on Sunday they headed back to Lynchburg to take care of last minute end of school stuff before they head home for the summer. David also had to work a double shift that day. He got out early about 8:30 and then had to help Aly move her furniture into her new home for next semester. Of course David was not happy about doing this after working all day, but he did and about midnight or so they finished but not before she had him run to Walmart for a doorknob.
Since Lexington is about an hour or so away from Lynchburg and it was well past 1 am it was too late for the trip to our hotel. So with two floors in her new apt she offered a couch for David to sleep on. They have agreed they would never put themselves in a compromising situation both making the decision to wait until marriage. The gentleman that he is, he declined. He said he would sleep in her car. She would not give him her keys, because she felt so bad, so he settled in on the sidewalk. Once he makes up his mind. That's it. No changing it. After arguing she gave in and he slept in her car and she went inside. So they basically got two or three hours of sleep because they had to pick me up at 8 am while my husband went to Goshen to pick up Brian's girlfriend for the commissioning.
Ok so now we've got two very tired kids but they made it on time and the day went well as I already blogged about. The next day would be the final day of graduation. After that Aly wanted to start their roadtrip to Chicago. David was going to drive her there and then fly home. Well he felt they should leave after a fresh night and start on the road Wed morning. We knew it was going to be Aly who won this battle. She did and so they started on their way about 3:30 an hour or so after graduation was over.
So here we are about 8 pm or so in the hotel packing up ourselves getting ready to head home in the am. We get a call from David. They had a very bad car accident. The car is totaled. He didn't say anything about Aly and he sounded awful. "No Aly is ok" he said when I asked. They both had bumps and bruises. David was bleeding from the head and his arm was swollen from putting his arm out in a protective way in front of her and he got slammed with the airbag.
Somehow he managed to get them into a hotel after calling a cab. They checked in and he was trying to figure out the sleeping arrangments. He said he would not sleep in the room the same as what had happened at her apartment. Only now he had no car to sleep in. She had already called her Dad and both her parents were very ok with David staying with her (double beds) but David being as he is was still refusing to stay in the same room, and I know he was exhausted. I told him that they needed to keep an eye on each other. These are extenuating circumstances. They were both in shock still.
Tonight I head the whole story, and it's quite a story.
It had been raining hard but had stopped minutes before the accident. They had just gone through the toll booth and had gone maybe 50 meters was David's estimation when he lost control of the car. He spun around and hit the cement barrier I think on the left. After hitting that hard, he crossed four lanes into the opposite barrier hitting the other side. While they were spinning around both of them were praying aloud for safety. When the car stopped, almost at that exact second a couple of semi's whizzed right past them. If it had been just a fraction of a second sooner they would have been involved in much more than this single car accident they had. Another vehicle also sped by them and immediately put on his brakes to help them. This happened about 6 pm still quite a busy time of the day for traffic.
The police and ambulance came, but all they had were cuts and bruises and no other car involved. No limbs broken. David looked at the situation. The car was totaled, the whole front end damaged. A tow truck was called as well as the cab. He was shocked to see then had they gone about another 20 or 30 meters or so there would have been no cement barrier. Instead what they would have found was basically a ravine, and very steep. They would have gone down quite a ways and most certainly would have been killed.
The first thing Aly said when she understood what had just happened was this: "David, God must have a plan for us." She told me she felt God and saw God in all of this.
I know exactly what she means. I also was involved in a car accident a few years back. After getting out of my car and seeing the other car in a ditch with his front end a mess, I looked and I didn't have even a scratch on my car. I was asked by the people coming out of their cars what I thought of that. I said it was a God thing. He's gotten me out of more than one scrape.
God must have a plan for me too.