I almost died once. Actually, I’ve almost died, been killed, and/or seriously injured multiple times. I was in a village in Nicaragua when a flash flood came out of nowhere. The road that separated us from the bus was more like a ravine than an actual road. Eager not to be stuck overnight, I, along with 30 other missionaries, sprinted almost a mile through the flooded road. In some places, the water was as shallow as my calves, but in other places, it went up to my waist. This would have been no big deal except lightning flashed all around us. It hit at least three trees within 25 feet of us. I was blinding by the white sparks in front of my eyes as lightning struck right before me. Even our missions director who was there with us that day said someone should have been either seriously injured or killed. Yet we all survived with no harm done to us.
A little over a year ago, I fell off a 20-foot boulder and got a concussion. A week later, I fell down a flight of stairs and received another concussion. Two concussions in less than two weeks? I should have had some sort of brain damage, but I didn’t. It was a miracle.
Last summer, I worked on the streets of Birmingham, serving the homeless by myself. I visited camps in the middle of the woods and under bridges. Too many times, I could have been taken advantage of. It never happened once. I laid on broken glass under a bridge while filming an interview, yet I didn’t get cut. I was swarmed by mosquitos while visiting a homeless encampment in a woodland area by the tracks but was never bitten. An abusive husband stood in front of the church at Five Points, yelling at his wife. He was a drunk, and he was likely going to try to hit her again. Seeing what was happening, I put myself between the two. He could’ve hit me, but he never did.
A few weeks ago, I was alone when I had a knife pulled on me. After I managed to coax the boy into putting the first knife down, I grabbed it and threw it behind me, far out of reach from either of us. Rather than that being the end of it, he reached behind him and pulled out a bigger knife. It was only by the Grace of God that I finally convinced him to put that knife down.
Over the past few weeks, I can’t help but see just how much God protects every single one of us, how often He divinely intervenes into each crazy circumstance we are in. Many of these experiences I’ve gone through have been terrifying. Seriously, having a boy who is as big as you point a knife at you is horrifying and will give you PTSD. But through all of this, I have become more convinced of God’s character as our Protector. Will bad things happen to us? Sure. In that Nicaraguan flash flood, my iPod became a waterPod. When I got that concussion, I had a terrible headache and had to miss a few days of class. When I had that knife pulled on me at work, I had to quit my job and lost a lot of money as a result of it. But look at what could have happened. Time and time again, I could have died.
But I didn’t.
God didn’t let it happen for He is Sovereign.
He is my Protector.
He is Our Protector.
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