But That Was 51 Years Ago!!
When I was 16, I was in a car accident hitting a telephone pole in a not so good area of Detroit very early in the morning when I was going to work at Truck City Restaurant. It was just getting light out. No one was around. I hit the steering wheel and console and passed out. Next thing I knew, a very large man in a bloody apron was carrying me out of the car into a meat packing plant. I was hurting so much that I wasn’t even afraid at that point. He gently placed me on a stool and asked me to call home. I gave him the number, and he handed me the phone after my dad answered. I had the only car and was relieved when my Godfather picked me up. He was a very loving man toward me. I ended up needing a lot of dental work as I broke off my front teeth. Fifty-one years later I’m still going through a lot of dental work because of those teeth I broke off in that accident.
The Louise Penny books with Chief Inspector Gamash have become my latest reading obsession. I’m on book six of twenty-one. Series are my favorite. She is great at character development, so I’ve fallen in love with Gamash and Ruth with her duck Rosie. In the book “The Brutal Telling” I read this which I edited a tad:
“There is no hiding from your conscious – not in new homes or new cars, not in travel or frantic activity, not on tip toes or bended knee, not in a new career or in meditation, not in children or in good works, not in a big career or a small cabin. Your conscious will find you. The past will find you. The past always does. It is vital to be aware of actions in the present, because the present becomes the past, and the past grows and gets up and follows you and finds you.”
Oh so true! Not only in the situation with my teeth – now trying implants and a permanent bridge after many other procedures over the years – but also with many other situations from the past – some good – some not so good. I tell teenagers to be aware of what they are doing today, because the past will find them many, many years later.
Fortunately, God is in our past, present and future. God’s got us in the palm of his hand. When we think we have nothing, we have God to cling to. Hebrews 13: 8 says – “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Jesus never changes; His character and love remain the same through all our days. Thanks be to God!
