My miracle this morning

I've been in two accidents in my life, both times I was hit from behind while stopped and both times I had the exact same thought... one minute difference in leaving for the journey can make all the difference in the world but there's no way to know ahead of time to wait before leaving or to leave sooner.

But I also think that everything has a purpose, even the seemingly bad things. There have been many instances in my life when I've later been very thankful for previous bad experiences. For example, My whole life I've had terrible troubles with my ears. After three sets of tubes and permanently perforated eardrums (my right eardrum was ripped out entirely from pressure from drainage from an ear infection in my youth), I've had more ear infections than most ENT specialists have ever treated. I used to think I was dealt a bad hand on that one because in addition to all the ear infections I couldn't join my peers in swimming or any other water sports since getting water in my ears is a guaranteed ear infection and runs the risk of causing permanent deafness. Anyway, as a result I've become keenly aware of ear infections and know for days ahead of time when I'm going to get one. Sucks to be me, right? That's what I thought until I had a son, and it turns out that my son is autistic (even that turned out to be a bless btw, but that's another story)... anyway, part of the way his autism manifests itself is that he's got severe apraxia of speech (he knows what he wants to say, but can not get his mouth to move properly to form words), in addition he doesn't cry or fuss or carry on when he's in pain like any normal child would. One day about a year ago I knew that my son had an ear infection just by the way he was tilting his head, he wasn't crying, fussinng or anything, but I could just tell by the way he was holding his head because I'd been through it so many times before. My wife said I was crazy and that he was fine, after all he was even playing and laughing and all that like normal, but I still knew he had an ear infection and I took him to the hospital despite my wife's objections. It turned out that he had severe ear infections in both his ears, and had I not noticed what I did because of all the suffering I'd been through, he might not have gotten treatment for days or weeks, and the infections could have spread and even killed him. How thankful do you think I was then for every bit of suffering I had been through? I never would have imagined that God was blessing me through the suffering whie I was going through the suffering, but that was His plan.

Unlike us, God knows the future, he knows when we should leave a minute sooner or later, he even knows when getting into the accident is in our long-term benefit even though we would have no clue as to how that could possibly be at the time or even for a long time afterward.

Thanks for the post and contribution, sorry I got a little long-winded.