Miracle in Denver

As promised, here is the second story regarding my father, who always says, "I've never been in an accident." This story, I'm positive, involves unseen angels and a God who took the steering wheel for about ten seconds.

It was a snowy day in Denver several years ago. My parents had come from NE for the weekend, as well as my aunt and uncle from WY, and we were going to spend a weekend up in the mountains skiing. My brother was already married, and his wife was eight months pregnant with my first nephew. Everyone gathered at my brother's house on that Friday night deciding where to eat dinner. We decided on the Olive Garden, and in order to help the environment, we decided all seven of us could squeeze into my dad's truck.

Dad was the driver. Kevin and Ginger sat in the front seat with dad. Collin, Katie, mom and me were crammed into back seat (and remember, Katie was eight months pregnant), so it was tight. None of us could put on a seat belt.

We drove about two miles down the road to the restaurant, ate and headed back to the apartment. By this time, the snow had increased, and since it was getting later, the temperature had dropped and the roads were slick. But what can go wrong in just a few short miles? I mean, really, we were so close to the apartment, we figured it would be an easy drive back to the place.

WRONG! Little did we know that we were about to begin an adventure. We turned south on the road that took us into the complex. The road was about 100 m long, and it ended as a T intersection. At the stop sign, you had to turn left or right, depending on which building you lived in. If you didn't stop at the stop sign, eventually you would crash into an apartment building. However, before hitting the building, there was a deep ditch full of gravel and rocks. There were also multiple trees and a fire hydrant in this said ditch. AND, before even hitting the apartment complex or going through the ditch full of rocks and "stuff," that was ONLY if the cars parked on the road didn't get in the way first. See illustration, drawn by yours truly.

Oh, and did I mention that the road to the stop sign is downhill? So we has a pretty bad combination here. It was snowing. It was icy. There were seven of us crammed in the truck. It was downhill. There was an obstacle course straight ahead. AND DAD WAS DRIVING.

As we turned south on the road heading toward the stop sign, we all begin to notice that rather than stopping, we're actually picking up speed. We went from 15 m.p.h. to 25 m.p.h. within a matter of seconds, and we were getting closer and closer to the intersection. Mom was yelling at dad, "Doug, hit the brakes!" Dad was yelling back, "I did hit the brakes. We're sliding. I can't stop." My uncle was telling my dad to turn off the truck. Perhaps if the truck was turned off, we'd magically stop. None of us had our seat belts on, and we could see that we were headed toward a MAJOR car accident.

Our biggest concern at that moment was Katie, who as I mentioned was eight months prego. We were frantically trying to get a seat belt across her tummy, while everyone else was screaming and in panic mode. We all knew that there was no way we're going to stop in time, and we foresaw ourselves hitting at least one parked car that was straight ahead of us. There were two cars that were parallel parked straight ahead. The car to the right of us was an old junker. The car on the left was much nicer, so dad decided to try to hit the lesser of the two cars. We could see tire tracks in the middle of the two cars, indicating that a car had been parked in the middle but must have recently left, leaving a space between the two parked cars.

God had his hand on that steering wheel that day, and angels moved a parked car, we are all sure of it. As dad tried to veer us more toward the right to hit the junker, we somehow miraculously missed both cars and slid right through the middle of them. We rammed through the ditch into the pile of rocks, narrowly missing a tree. We were still going a good 20 m.p.h., and we were now headed right toward the apartment building. Dad turned the wheel sharply to the left and we missed the building by inches. We were still driving through the ditch full of rocks. He made a full circle, again narrowly missing another parked car as we came back onto the road. We were now heading in the direction we needed to go anyway, so dad casually drove us to the our apartment building and parked the truck.

We were all speechless. Not only were we all alive, but we had missed a total of four parked cars, a tree, a building and driven through a ditch full of rocks. And the truck had not a single scratch on it. We carefull climbed out of the truck. We stared at each other. We had to go back to see what had just happened.

We walked back to the scene of the miracle. We could see our tire tracks, and we were in such shock that we couldn't even speak. Between the two cars that we had driven through, there wasn't even enough space for a mini cooper to have gotten through, that's how small the space was. But our giant truck had made it through the space. As we looked in the ditch, we noticed that they were not rocks down there but in fact pieces of cement and giant boulders. Between the space from the road to the building was only a few feet, so the fact that dad was able to avoid the building was another miracle. As dad came back onto the road, we almost hit two cars but came through a narrow space that brought us safely back onto the road.

Another near death experience at the hands of my father. He says the only reason we survived that accident is because he was driving. I think God might have had a little bit to do with that one.