Changing Moments

I was reading brenda's blog Luna C and she wrote of a changing moment in her life when she felt she had the choice of staying here, as it were, or checking out, during a car accident. I emailed her and told her I'd had a similar moment and she tagged me to post it....so here it is.
About 17 years ago I was living in a small town on the coast (here in oregon) about 25 miles from where I worked. The road I had to take, since there were, and are, no alternatives, was Hwy 101 or the coast hwy. as it's called here. The speed limit on the hwy. outside of the small towns is an insane 55 miles per hour....this speed makes sense on a freeway where entrances and exits have separate roads and the driver has time to either slow on their way off the freeway or speed up when entering it. No such roads exist on hwy. 101, so you're driving along at 55 mph and someone pulls out of a motel or restaurant driveway going 5 mph and you have to stop before you rear end them and kill all of you! Basicly, that's what happened to me. I was driving home...it wasn't dark out and it wasn't raining, thank goodness, but a young man pulled out in front of me anyway. As he was about 50 feet ahead of me there was no way I could stop before I hit him so I tried to go around him. In doing so, I ran off the road and rolled the car and amazingly ended up about 30 feet off the road, right side up and aimed back in the direction I had been coming from! I did have my seat belt on so I walked away from it with just a bruised knee and lots of very sore muscles. What I remember is driving directly at a telephone pole and not seeing any way of controlling the car so I just bowed my head and held on to the steering wheel and basicly gave my self up into the hands of the universe....there was a brief period when I don't remember much and then I was looking up and the car was full of dust and dirt but there wasn't a scratch on me. But I had the strongest feeling of having been "held" in loving hands and brought through the accident because I wasn't ready to go yet. I think in that brief blank period, I made that decision. Even though we don't live in that town anymore, I never pass that spot without saying a brief thanks to whatever part of the universe helped me that day.
The young man wasn't alone in the car...he and his girlfriend and their dog were also all saved that day because if I'd hit his car at 50 mph, none of us would have survived the crash. I give thanks for them too.
A couple of months later I began to bead on a daily basis...