What A Gift It Is, To Receive The Answer To Why

​I was barely 15 at the time. I didn’t have a driver’s license, but I knew how to drive.

In my mind, I guess that qualified me to be a driver.

Her name was Jenny Shor. We worked together at a local restaurant. I suppose it’s more accurate to call it a small truck stop.

Jenny was one of the glamorous teen truck stop waitresses. Me? I slaved away washing dishes, and occasionally—on a good day—I got to flip the burgers.

Either way, Jenny Shor was way out of my league. But that didn’t stop me from having a giant crush on her. Some days, that felt mutual.

It was a slow Saturday night. The assistant manager, a young guy in his mid-twenties, wanted to send one of the waitresses home early. Jenny wanted to volunteer, but she didn’t have a ride.

"She doesn’t live far away," I told the manager. "I’ll give her a ride."

Wisely, the manager quickly pointed out the fairly obvious facts—that I didn’t possess a driver’s license or an automobile.

"I could use your car," I suggested. "I have plenty of driving experience," I pleaded (and grossly exaggerated), "and it’s just a short trip up the road."

What could go wrong?

To this day, I don’t know if that man was stupid. Or maybe he was remembering one of his own teenage crushes. Or maybe he was so intent on not paying an extra waitress on a slow night that he’d do anything to get one off the clock.

I don’t know.

But the man handed me the keys to his fairly new Ford Granada.

We neared the intersection where the parking lot met the highway—me, the nervous teen driver doing everything I could to look like an aged and experienced man behind the wheel, and Jenny Shor in the passenger’s seat, just happy to be going home early on a Saturday night.

There was construction taking place on the highway. Orange cones and signs obstructed my view of oncoming traffic. I tapped the gas a little. Then the brakes. I inched my way out of the parking lot, trying to be certain no vehicles were coming.

I guess I got impatient and finally went all in on the gas, accelerating onto the road.

An 18-wheeler drove through the front end of that Ford Granada as if not giving it a second thought. I can still hear Jenny’s scream as she escaped the car and ran off into the night.

I sat there, looking through the shattered glass of the windshield.

Smoke.

The smell of gas.

So very little of the front end of that car remained.

I was frozen.

I remember the sirens. I remember the Ohio State Highway Patrolman asking me if I was okay.

I was frozen.

I was eventually helped—or pulled—from the car. We went into the restaurant to write up the report. The patrolman said he’d need to call my dad.

"You can’t do that," I said. "He’ll kill me."

(That response had been—and would remain—a theme in my life over the years, largely unknowingly.)

Nothing did kill me that night. The highway patrolman was the most mystified of all by that.

He told me he wasn’t sure how we both were not dead. He told me that if I’d hit the accelerator even a half-second earlier—a mere half-second—there would be no wondering left to do.

I would have been the bullseye for the front end of that 18-wheeler, he assured me. Partly to remind me of my luck, I think. Maybe partly to warn me that luck runs out someday.

There would be many times in the years ahead when I would wish I had been that bullseye.

There would be many more times when I would wonder why I was not.

I sat there last Saturday with my sixteen-year-old son, Ian—our participation in this safe driving presentation a requirement for him to get his driver’s license.

I looked over at Ian, staring blankly at the PowerPoint on the screen, and I couldn’t help but go back to that night.

That fifteen-year-old me. That crash.

And how that crash, at that time, was only the latest in a series of close calls and rebellious decisions in my life.

I looked at him and couldn’t help but be overcome with gratitude that he is not the teen I was.

He is not a master manipulator.

He is not a liar.

He is not a teen with wild impulses fueled by alcohol and drugs.

I looked at him, knowing that neither of us, in this moment, knows what life will hold for him.

But I do know that I am grateful for what life has not held for him up to this point.

I looked at him, knowing that I could not be more grateful I did not die that night. Maybe as grateful as I had ever been.

The me—frozen, staring out that shattered windshield—could have never imagined Ian through those shards.

For many reasons, nothing as beautiful as that child seemed remotely possible in that moment.

I looked at him.

I stared at him.

A stare that felt almost forced by God.

A stare as if I had no choice but to see God show me why I did not die that night. Why I hesitated that half-second before hitting the accelerator.

It is the curse of life to have to spend so much of it wondering why.

It is the gift of life—though a gift offered too sparingly for our liking I suppose—to receive the answer.

To get even a hint of knowing the why.

It is amazing—life—how eventually something as traumatic as a near-death experience and something as mundane as a safe driving presentation become so powerfully connected. As if one in the same.

It is amazing the lengths life will go to in order to connect the question of why to its answer.

Today, I find myself grateful for every second and every day of that length.

Today—thank you, God.