A week ago, a highway patrolman stepped through our front door with our 16 year old son in tow. I stood there speechless in my pajamas. It was 8:30 at night and my husband was in Florida visiting his dad who is fighting cancer.

“I was in an accident,” said our son, standing there in front of me looking shell-shocked and scared. When I put my arms around him, his heart was hammering like a machine gun. “What happened?” I asked.

The highway patrolman explained our son was driving too fast, hit a 25 mile an hour curve, and braked hard flying into that turn on a back country road.  “That’s when he lost control of his vehicle and the accident occurred,” said the officer.

And God’s mercies unfolded further from there. Our son wasn’t hurt, though this wreck could have killed him. Our 20 year old daughter happened to be home that night, able to watch her four little brothers while I accompanied our son and the patrolman back to the scene of the accident to take care of the car. A 1986 Toyota Supra. My dad’s midlife crisis car. Both our daughters had been given this hot rod when they turned 16. It wasn’t my idea. We once had an old minivan. That’s the car we should have kept for our teenagers. The Supra was way too speedy for a young driver, I said. Now the proof was in the pudding.

Actually, not the pudding, the ditch. There sat the Supra covered with so much dust the car looked brown instead of maroon in the highway patrolman’s headlights.

A million stars shone overhead. I looked at all those stars while waiting for the tow truck to arrive and recalled the night I was born again. The stars had looked so bright and beautiful that night too. The veil of heaven rended by my thankful heart. Why does the specter of death make us feel so alive? The knowledge that my son could be dead, but stood beside me barely bruised rocked my world. 

Our son was lucky in a lot of ways. I use the word “lucky” because that’s what the officer said. Not only was he lucky to have walked away from his accident, but just a half mile down the road another twenty-something kid crashed his car an hour before our son. A tow truck from the scene of that accident saw all the dust from our son’s accident and reported it to the police who went to help our son. There was no cell phone service where the accident occurred so our son couldn’t have called anyone.

The other kid, driving too fast as well, totaled his car and walked away from his crash, too. “It was only because of God I survived,” the kid told my husband two days later, when by chance, both boys were back at the scene of their accidents taking stock of it all. Our son and this other boy, both Christians, give God the credit for being so lucky.

I don’t believe in luck. And I know some precious Christian kids who have died in car crashes. The truth is, God is merciful whether He gives life or takes life. But believe me, after getting home that night with a battered car and a shaken boy, it took me hours to fall asleep. I told God thank you so many times He probably got sick of hearing from me as I lay there staring at the ceiling dealing with “what ifs” till the wee hours of the morning.

The next day, still wrestling with “what if’s” I did some writing. I’ve been working on a fiction novel for several years. In this story, a Christian couple experiences a car crash that takes their baby boy’s life and the mother’s ability to ever bear more children. The truth is, I knew a couple this happened to years ago. They were Christians, Scott and I were not back then. And the way this couple’s future unfolded after their accident touched me deeply. God got them through the crash and gave this couple beautiful children through adoption. Children that even looked like the parents. And this couple never stopped giving God the glory. Not when He took a child from them, and not when He gave them two more years later. Gorgeous little babies gifted through adoption.  

And I long to live my life this way: Knowing God. Loving God. Glorifying God. So today, I give God the glory. I am so grateful our son is still with us. I’ve hugged him a hundred times this past week. I walk by our boy with his nose in the refrigerator and I hug him. I pass him in the laundry room throwing his clothes in the hamper and I hug him. I find him in the school parking lot and I hug him. I no longer care if this embarrasses him in front of his friends. I’ve hugged my son more this past week than I’ve hugged him in years and this humbles me.

I’ve come to the realization I don’t hug my teenage son enough because he’s trying to become a man and hugs from mom aren’t as cool as they used to be. But since his wreck, I can’t stop hugging him. I told him this is his punishment for getting in that accident. “You’re gonna take my hugs ten times a day!”

A curve in the road changed me. I’m a son hugging machine now. And a woman overwhelmed by the mercy of God.