The Miracle Mile: A Sojourner’s Tale

A few years back, Krista and I were visiting with her family just outside of Springfield, Missouri. We made the forty-five minute trek from Bolivar to Ozark separately and I drove back alone. I had to work the grave-yard shift at Wal-mart. We wrapped up dinner, I said my good-byes, walked out to the car with Krista.  We embraced, she walked back inside.  I turned the key, drove down the long gravel driveway and then hit the winding roads, periodically igniting Ozark in a blanket of brake lights. Springfield loomed in the foreground and I was headed for a little town about 30 minutes on the opposite end of itʼs ambient horizon.

Kansas Expressway cuts straight through the city limits and empties out into what we lovingly referred to as Lucky 13. Highway-13 had a reputation for taking the lives of far too many students at Southwest Baptist University, most of whom would tell you, “The only thing to do in Bolivar is go to Springfield”.

Unfortunately, there is not much to do in Springfield. So, those students would resort to spending late nights at one of two kinds of places: IHOPs or bars. Some have connected the latter of the two to the majority of 13ʼs fatalities.

For me the drive was pleasant, the wind whipping in through my windows as I sped through the s-curves, all the while blaring a little Five-Iron Frenzy. The night was young, with ten hours of stocking shelves and straightening the menʼs department in store.

There is an anomaly on 13 that we at SBU deemed the “Miracle Mile”.  A sign marks “8 miles to Bolivar” and not even a quarter of a mile later a second sign marks “7 miles to Bolivar.”

Somewhere between mile eight and seven, I heard the sound of gravel as my tires veered from the pavement. I was jolted back to consciousness, strange because I was unaware I had drifted out of itʼs realm. In an attempt to correct my mistake, with no grasp on my true bearings, I swerved back to the asphalt. Only, I skipped, as a pebble on a pond, to the shoulder that paralleled the first edge.

I jerked the wheel the opposite direction, sending the car into a spin, surpassed the edge of the road, slid into the ditch, rocked back and forth on itʼs banks, and flipped my Kia Rio over a cement culvert.  My arms went limp and my hands slammed against the ceiling.  I landed with all four tires on the opposite side, still in the ditch, and rolled toward a field, uprooting a barbed-wire fence-post which came to rest on the roof of my car once I finally gained full consciousness and pressed my foot to the brake pedal.

A new miracle occurred within that mile, on that night. No airbag, no other cars involved, no injuries, only survival. The cement culvert dented the frame of the car and came within inches of crushing my skull in the process. My car, which I later found out was rated the least safe automobile on the road in 2002, was totaled. In shock, I stumbled out of the car, climbed out of the ditch and walked until another vehicle crested the hill and pulled over. They lent me their cell phone; I called Krista, my manager and then the police.

After having my car towed and dropped off at my house, I went to work. The next day started with whip lash and numerous explanations to my house mates of the previous nightʼs accident. Apparently they were worried all night while I was safe at work.  They had no idea where I was or what had happened.

There are times in life when we fall asleep at the wheel spiritually. We may not even realize it when it happens. More often than not, these hazed moments are the ones that I find myself overcorrecting. God grants us grace in our tired attempts at perfection.

Why do we feel the need to fish-tale ourselves into a ditch to achieve something we know to be unattainable? Why do we feel the need to take control and grab the wheel from God? And why donʼt we let others in on our life and share our failures with those that love us?  Wake up O sleepers!