When I was a child, I had a trust in the universe that I didn't question. Maybe it was my own intuition, the trust I had in the people around me, or maybe it was the lack of responsibility. I remember interesting "supernatural" occurrences happening in my life and questioning why they were happening but never questioning if they actually happened. I know what I experienced. I remember an out-of-body experience very vividly when I was about 8 years old and saw my grandfather in the doorway of my bedroom one night. He died before I was born but he was there. I always felt connected to my grandmother, who died exactly 11 years minus 1 day before I was born, but there was an unexplainable feeling of closeness and understanding. Her youngest child is my mother. My mother's biggest trauma in her life is the loss of her mother when she was only 15. At nearly 80 years old, it is still a painful and present experience for her.
As I got older, my intuition felt more like a best friend, someone I could always trust. Of course, there were times that I completely ignored my "best friend" and went and did dumb things anyway. Like the time, I was sent home early from work because it was starting to snow. Being 17 and a new driver, instead of driving home, I went to pick up a friend. We were driving around in the snow when I lost control of my car and flipped it on its side into a ditch. It was a slow flip and did absolutely no damage to my car but it damaged my pride and my parent's trust in me. This was the first of 6 car accidents that I would have.
Here is a quick rundown of the next 5 accidents:
at 20 years old, a man completely blows through a stop sign, hits my still not paid off "new-ish" car, his car flips 360 degrees and lands back on its tires. My car is totaled. He was high.
At 26 years old, a lady rear ends my car with my almost one-year-old child in the car. All 3 of us were left stranded by the Waterbury police department after they had both cars towed away. this was pre-everyone-has-a-cell-phone-time. The lady who hit us is profusely sorry and has her mother come and pick both her and us up and takes us home. My car is repaired, and her car is totaled.
40 years old a kid cuts me off crossing 3 lanes of traffic doing a U-turn. All 4 kids were in the car with me, heading to the beach. The right front quarter panel is damaged. My car is repaired, can't remember what happened with his...but clearly, his fault.
40 years old, 6 months later, driving at night, I turn left, crossing in front of an oncoming car with no lights on. Both cars are totaled.
41 years old, almost exactly one year later, a man runs a stop sign and again totals my car!
At this point, I'm thinking, WTF universe! What is happening!? I'm now a bit of a nervous driver. I have PTSD and hate being a passenger in the car because if I'm driving, I at least have some sort of control of the situation.
July 31, 2011 (I'm 42), our youngest daughter is in excruciating pain and needs to go to the hospital. We suspect appendicitis. At 2:00 in the morning, I'm driving to the hospital. My husband is in the front passenger seat and my daughter is directly behind him. We come to a red light in the middle of Hartford, CT.
I stop and wait for a green light. The light turns green but I don't go. My husband says, "GO! What are you waiting for?!?" He's nervous. Our child is in a great deal of pain. Just then, a car comes speeding up over the hill flying through his red light! I watch in disbelief, knowing that if I had gone on my green light that both my husband and my daughter would have been directly hit and most likely killed.
I am now 53 years old. I have not had a car accident since. I am grateful every day for the 6 car accidents that preceded that night. Without them, I may not have had the fear/wisdom/practice/divine intervention/miracle....call it whatever you like to not go on the green light. This was, for me, the wisdom of the universe. I now completely understand why I needed to experience the accidents in order to be fully prepared for that night.
This was not the only miracle of that night, but I'll explain that in another blog.