Miracle Story #4
- One Million Miracles
- Dec 28, 2016
- 3 min read
"February 6, 2008. Almost 9 years ago. It was my 50th birthday.
Everything was going real good. I felt real good that day when I left. It had been a good day. I was on my way to my regular run, which was Clinton, Oklahoma. I did it every night. It was absolutely freezing cold but the roads were dry. Cold, windy, horrible outside as far as temperature and the wind goes, but dry.
I’ve been driving trucks for 38 years. A lot of miles. Coast to coast and just all over. I often wondered what would happen if it happened, because I’d seen wrecks that happened that way. It’s a bad thing. You don’t know until you get into that situation what you’re going to do.
It was about 1:30 in the morning and I was just west of Oklahoma City when it happened. I was heading westbound and he had pulled his SUV onto the wrong lane of the highway, which sent him eastbound in the westbound lane. The highway patrol estimated him as going at least 100mph when he hit me head-on.
By the time I saw him, I hardly had any time to slow down. I hit the brakes. I tried to get over to the right lane but there was another truck on my right side, so I couldn’t get over. So I just got on the brakes, probably running 30mph by the time he hit me. I was trying to get into the center median to keep him from hitting me but the highway patrolman said there is just no way you’re going to get out of someone’s way when they’re running over 100 mph.
They knew alcohol was involved. Absolutely. He had been drinking since early in the morning and his wife later confirmed that he had been drinking all day. And this was 1:30 in the morning.
It knocked my front axle out, my rear axles and everything. The rear ones, all the way in the back, were just knocked out sideways. The front rear axle was really knocked sideways, it was basically almost gone. He hit me so hard that it totaled the truck.
I was hauling 45,000 pounds worth of Pepsi that night and as I was sliding across the interstate and went down into the median, there was a sign there. It was a highway informational sign. The truck actually hit it and it bent over to about a ninety-degree angle and was coming straight at my head. And just before it hit the windshield my hood, for no reason, just popped up and knocked the sign over on top of the truck, which kept it from coming through the windshield.
I never even left the driver’s seat. I barely even felt the impact, actually. I never had a bruise or a cut. I never even left the seat. Nothing at all.
A bystander ran up to my truck after it all settled down and asked, “Are you okay? Are you okay!?”
And I said, “Well yeah.”
And he said, “There’s no way you’re okay!”
And I said, “But I am.”
I believe it was my guardian angel. It wasn’t the first time something had happened to me. There have been other instances over the years, but not exactly like that. I know it was my guardian angel that watches over me. I think we all have them. I’ve got a good one.
There was a reason why this happened. I believe it was to save somebody behind me. I really, truly think that God allowed it to happen to protect somebody behind me, somebody that he didn’t want this to happen to. It was an SUV that hit me and it hit me really, really hard. It took the front axles out of the truck, like I said.
He put a stop to it and I was the person he used at that time. It was hard, especially when his mom and his wife came to the accident scene. They lived right near it, close to the city.
It’s hard for me to talk about it. I pretty much want to forget about it, but, it’s hard to do. You have a certain amount of guilt, of course. But I still think it happened because God wanted it to happen that way. He was protecting somebody.”
© 2016 by One Million Miracles. All Rights Reserved.
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My name is Dale, and I live in Wichita, Kansas.
In the midst of a head-on collision with an intoxicated driver, I AM miracle story #4.
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