Mercy

I was twenty years old. The year was 1988. I was a super skinny, super tall girl with long curly hair who rode a motor scooter everywhere she went. That is until today. Now I had four wheels instead of two. I lovingly caressed the hood of my 1974 Toyota Corona Hatchback. (No, not corROLLA. CorONA.) This old car was going to take me places my little Honda Spree could never go. For one thing I could drive to work in comfort now and not have to worry about "helmet hair" anymore.
I loved my little car but soon discovered it had some potentially dangerous drawbacks. One thing was that when it rained the engine would die. No matter where I was, if it so much as sprinkled, I was out of luck. One time it was on Wycliffe Ave in Dallas, right in front of the Anatole Hotel. My new best friend, Tyra, without thinking a thing about it got out of my car and proceeded to push us up the hill in the rain in her flip flops. I will never forget seeing her face in the rain behind the car as long as I live. They just don't make true friends like that anymore. But that was much later. I digress.
Another thing about the car was that when the engine died, so did the lights. This was particularly dangerous at night as I soon found out.
I was working in a t-shirt shop at the mall. It had been a slow day (they all were at that mall) and it was about 930 PM. I was tired. I pulled out of the parking lot and out onto the highway in front of the store. As I entered the highway my engine stalled and died. It wasn't raining so for a second I was thrown for a loop. I looked at the gas gauge and realized it was completely, totally empty. I had forgotten to buy gas on my way to work. My next thought was of complete panic. I had no lights. On the highway. At night. I looked in the rearview and saw a truck headed straight for me at sixty miles an hour. I knew without a doubt that I was going to die. I knew it was going to be bad. I huddled up in the steering wheel, closed my eyes and thought more than said a prayer. "Jesus, Here I come. Just please don't let it hurt too bad." I heard the long squeal of brakes behind me and braced for the impact. What should have been the tearing, crashing sound of metal and glass was instead-complete silence. I tentatively opened my eyes. I saw somebody running for my car. He threw open my door and leaned in. I could see his eyes, huge with fright and astonishment in the lights of his truck beaming from behind. "Julie?!!" he said, his voice even more astonished than his eyes because we knew each other from church.
"Dale?!!" I replied, just as surprised as he was. "Are you all right?" he asked me. I told him in a shaking voice, "I ran out of gas, my lights don't work when the engine isn't on." Without a second's hesitation he and his friends began to push my car out of the traffic and over to the gas station across the street. They even insisted on filling my tank. What I didn't know, as I drove away from the gas station was how close we had both come to death or at the very least a terrible car accident that night. I had never seen how close his truck had come to my bumper. I saw him a week later and was telling someone about the near accident in his hearing. I said "He must been a foot from my car...", when Dale stopped me and corrected me. "A foot? No, Julie, it was an inch. One inch" he said. That got my attention. I forgot about the person I had been telling the story to as my eyes were riveted on Dale's fingers, measuring in millimeters how close we had come to disaster.
I never saw Dale again after that night. It has been twenty two years since that day but I can still see his face in the headlights of his truck as he threw open my door. We both knew. Absolutely without a doubt. That God had intervened in our lives in a very, very real way. It still gives me pause and makes me bow my head for a moment to thank God for His great mercy.