My Brush With Death

Jacob and I were traveling home from the Wake Forest basketball game last night when I decided to take a short-cut through some back roads that my pastor Mike showed me a couple of weeks ago. Now these roads aren't off the beaten path but they also aren't known for being in the safest of places. So as we are cruising down the road at a steady 45mph a sound similar to a gun shot going off in our car caused me to slam on brakes and swerve into a parking lot on the other-side of the road. It was then that I realized that it wasn't a shot but a very large object slammed into my hood and windshield. I spun the car around quickly to see what I had hit fearing as hard as that "bang" was I may have hit a person. It was then that I saw 3 teenagers standing on the side of the road. As my lights made contact with them they took off. It was now clear that I didn't hit something, something hit me.

I drove slowly up the road to see if I could find the culprits but no such luck. So I pulled back into the parking lot and examined the damage. I found a large deep dent in the hood of my Explorer and my windshield is cracked/chipped in three places. It had to of been a brick or an extremely heavy large rock they threw. I called the police to report the incident and they sent someone right out.

When the cop arrived he was very nice but very angry at those kids. He kept saying over and over how blessed I was and that a hit like on my windshield and not my hood probably would have made me wreak and would have seriously injured Jacob and myself if not killed us. As he took my report he said he had arrested a kid last year along that same stretch of road for the exact same thing. Which leads me to ponder, "What goes through a person's head that makes them want to throw large objects at moving vehicle?" I know I have no idea what it's like to grow up in the hood but what happens in a persons childhood that makes them think these senseless acts of vandalism are good ideas?

Once I got Jacob home and knew he was alright, I went back out to look at my now smashed hood. The main point of impact is right next to where the windshield-washer spray comes out. So it really was a inch from hitting my windshield and missing my hood completely. I fraction of a second later and I hate to think what would have happened. There is a huge part of me that wants to drive back over there today in the daylight and search for those kids, knowing it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I don't want to hurt the kids or even make them pay for the damages. I just want to sit down with them and find out why. Why did they throw that rock/brick? What caused them to want to do that? What is their home life like? Do they have anyone on their lives teaching them right from wrong? Is there anyone around them that can make this be the cap of their misdeeds and help steer their lives in a direction that isn't headed for jail and prison?

This summer we started picking up some teens that would qualify as troubled youth and bringing them to church every week. Sometimes those boys drive me crazy and I wonder if we should even keep bringing them. They're loud and disrespectful and most weeks need an adult watching over them every second to make sure they don't start fighting, sneak off, or steal something. But as I thought back to those 3 teens I saw ever so briefly in my headlights, I knew that those boys could just have easily been the three that come to our church every week. It's given me a new passion to love those boys and do all I can to prevent them from going down the same destructive path the brick throwers are going down.

I really could cares less about the damage to my car. I'm more thankful that my son wasn't hurt. And I'm very sad that the bick throwers probably don't have anyone in their lives that can help prevent them from making this same stupid mistake again.