Miracles Still Happen

**These words were written 4 days after Avery’s accident.

May 4th, 2023

In typical fashion I find myself escaping with words on a page. I have tried to have them on my tongue, but the emotions just keep coming from my eyes as words escape my speech. 

It is day 4 (I think), she’s asleep in a chair. We are waiting for a room on the floor to finally leave the ICU. It has been both Heaven and Hell. It has been anguish wrapped in the miracles of God’s glory. It is a far cry from the scene of Monday afternoon. 

We say phrases like “life is fragile” and “days are short”, but the delicacy of days and life somehow collide in the space of seeing your child in danger. Somewhere between the urgent call and 15 minutes it took to get there, my mind ran a million different directions. When I arrived my imaginations were replaced by reality. My baby girl trapped in a car screaming. It was like a scene from a movie. Car parts scattered everywhere. Flashing lights from an assortment of emergency vehicles. Me, a desperate parent, running toward the wreckage. A police officer doing his job reassured me they were doing everything possible. I stood helpless watching, waiting.

Time stops, rewinds, and speeds by all in a blink. Every instant is frozen in my brain. Her screams to get her out haunt me. The mangled mess of the vehicle sitting still in the middle of the road. The blink of flashing red, blue, and white lights burned deep in my memory. All at the same time are the past moments of what had led us there. The first time I held her after she was born. The day before when I squeezed her close and kissed the top of her head as finished Sunday lunch at Tres. The last year where we had worked hard in therapy to recover some broken pieces of our relationship from previous trauma. And time in that same moment takes wings and flies fast and far away.

I watched as the EMS vehicle sped away. My daughter in the back with her last words to me “daddy come with me”. I briefly stepped out and they were gone. As I gathered myself and pieces of life that came out of the car, I drove off with uncertainty. Holding tight to my belief that God does miracles and the simple words of a man I had never met tell me she was going to be okay. In this moment, this was the definition of faith – attempting to have hope and certainty in what was so unknown. 

From the twisted metal of the vehicle is the message of a miracle. God’s protective hand. I do not want to make a mess of theology. Yet, the word for the Holy Spirit in the Greek language is wind or air. Every air bag deployed in the car. They did their job.  Yet, even with top technology, it is hard to explain how protected Avery was. My best description is the “pneuma” of God – the air, the wind, the breath – surrounded her. Am I saying there was a Heavenly air-bag that deployed? With one look at the vehicle, I am not sure there is any other explanation. The Holy Spirit of God was in that car with her. And I will say with certainty that is how she survived.

We will have to navigate a period of recovery. Her body will hurt. The places where surgery was done will take time to heal. But today, she’s alive. Today, she will hobble a few steps with a walker. In a few days she will navigate life on crutches. In six weeks, she will fully walk on two legs again. Despite difficult days lying ahead, today I rejoice for the deployment of something miraculous in that vehicle on Monday. Miracles still happen.