“Nooooo,” I scream. I lift up my arm as if I can brace myself for the inevitable crash, and then there is a sickening shriek of metal and the wallop of the air bag as the truck somersaults through the very spot where she was standing.
When I come to, I’m covered in the diamond dust of crushed glass, I’m hanging upside down, and I can’t move my legs.
It is perfectly silent, except for the soft strike of snow against the upholstery. I don’t know how long I’ve been knocked out, but it doesn’t look like dawn’s coming anytime soon. I could freeze to death, trapped here. I could become another one of those snowy white mounds, an accident no one even knows happened until it’s too late.
And right after that:
The truth hurts, more than the burning in my left leg and the throb of my skull and the metal digging into my shoulder. I could disappear from this world, and it would probably be a better place.
I hear the crunch of tires, and see a beam of headlights illuminating the road above me. “Hey!” I yell, as loud as I can. “Hey, I’m here! Help!”
The headlights pass by me, and then I hear a car door slam. The policeman’s boots kick up snow as he runs down the embankment toward the overturned truck. “I’ve called for an ambulance,” he says.
“The girl,” I rasp. “Where is she?”
“Was there another passenger in this truck?”
“Not… inside. Truck hit her…”
He runs up the embankment, and I watch him shine a floodlight. I want to speak. But I am wicked dizzy, and when I try to talk, I throw up.
Maybe it’s hours and maybe it’s minutes, but a fireman is sawing through the seat belt that’s kept me alive, and another one is using the Jaws of Life to cut the truck into pieces. There are voices all around me:
The policeman is suddenly in front of me again. “We looked all over. The truck didn’t hit anyone,” he says. “Just a tree. And if you hadn’t turned where you did and gone off the road, you’d be at the bottom of a cliff right now. You’re a lucky guy.”
The rush of relief I feel comes in sobs. I start crying so hard that I cannot breathe; I cannot stop. Did I hallucinate Zoe because I was drunk? Or was I drunk because I keep hallucinating Zoe?
The snow strikes me in the face, a thousand tiny needles, as I am moved from the wreckage to an ambulance. My nose is running and there is blood in my eyes.
Suddenly, I don’t want to be this person anymore. I don’t want to pretend I’m fooling the world when I’m not. I want someone else to have a plan for me, because I’m not doing a very good job myself.
The ambulance grumbles to life as the EMT hooks me up to another monitor and then starts an IV. My leg feels like it is on fire every time the driver brakes.
“My leg…”
“Is probably broken, Mr. Baxter,” the EMT says. I wonder how she knows my name, and then realize she is reading it off my license. “We’re taking you to the hospital. Is there someone you want me to call?”
Not Zoe, not anymore. Reid will need to know, but right now, I don’t want to think about the look in his eyes when he realizes I’ve been drinking and driving. And I probably need a lawyer, too.
“My pastor,” I say. “Clive Lincoln.”
I am nervous, but Liddy and Reid stand on either side of me with smiles so wide on their faces that you’d think I’d cured cancer, or figured out world peace, instead of just coming to the Eternal Glory Church to give my testimony about finding Jesus.
It couldn’t have been more transparent for me if the answers had been tattooed on my face: the lowest of lows for me was that crash. Zoe’s apparition had been Jesus’s way of coming into my life. If I hadn’t seen her there, I’d be dead now. But instead I swerved. I swerved right into His open arms.
When Clive had come to me at the hospital, I was drugged with painkillers and had a brand-new cast on my left leg and stitches in my scalp and my shoulder. I hadn’t stopped crying since they’d loaded me into that ambulance. The pastor sat down on the edge of my bed and reached for my hand. “Let the Devil out, son,” Clive said. “Make room for Christ.”
I don’t think I can explain what happened after that. It was simply as if someone flipped a switch in me, and there wasn’t any hurt anymore. I felt like I was floating off the bed, and would have, if that cotton blanket hadn’t been holding me down. When I looked at my body-at the spaces between my fingers and the edges of my fingernails, I swear I could see light shining out.
For anyone who hasn’t accepted Jesus into his heart, this is what it feels like: as if you’ve resisted the fact that your vision’s gone blurry, and you need glasses. But eventually you can’t see a foot in front of you without knocking things over and bumping into dead ends, so you go to the optometrist. You walk out of that office with a new pair of glasses, and the world looks sharper, brighter, more colorful. Crisp. You can’t understand why you waited so long to make the appointment.
When Jesus is with you, nothing seems particularly scary. Not the thought of never having another drink; not the moment you sit in court during your DUI charge. And not right now, when I will be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
After leaving the hospital, I started attending the Eternal Glory Church. I met with Pastor Clive, who sent out a prayer chain letter so that all these people I didn’t even know were praying for me. It’s a feeling I’ve never had before-strangers who didn’t judge me for the mistakes I’d made but just seemed happy I’d showed up. I didn’t have to be embarrassed about dropping out of college or getting divorced or drinking myself into a ditch. I didn’t have to measure up at all, actually. The fact that Jesus had placed me in their lives meant I was already worthy.
The Eternal Glory Church hasn’t got its own building, so it rents out the auditorium from a local school. We are standing in the back, waiting for Pastor Clive to give us the signal. Clive’s wife is playing the piano, and his three little daughters are singing. “They sound like angels,” I murmur.
“Yeah,” Reid agrees. “There’s a fourth kid, too, who doesn’t perform.”
“Like the Bonus Jonas,” I say.
The hymn ends, and Pastor Clive stands on the stage, his hands clasped. “Today,” he bellows, “is all about Jesus.”
There is a chorus of agreement from the congregation.
“Which is why, today, our newest brother in Christ is going to tell us his story. Max, can you come on up here?”
With Reid’s and Liddy’s help, I make my way down the aisle on crutches. I don’t like being the center of attention, usually, but this is different. Today, I’ll tell them the story of how I came to Christ. I will publicly announce my faith, so that all these people can hold me accountable.
Clive leads me to a chair on the stage. It must come from a classroom; there are tennis balls on the feet of the chair to keep it from scratching up the linoleum. Beside it is what looks like a meat freezer, filled with water, with a set of steps leading up to it. I sit down on the chair, and Clive steps between Liddy and Reid, holding their hands. “Jesus, help Max grow closer to You. Let Max know God, love God, and spend quality time with His word.”
As he prays over me, I close my eyes. The lights from the stage are warm on my face; it makes me think of when I was little, and would ride my bike with my face turned up to the sun and my eyes closed, knowing that I was invincible and couldn’t crash, couldn’t get hurt.
Voices join Pastor Clive’s. It feels like a thousand kisses, like being filled to bursting with all the good in the world, so that there isn’t any room for the bad. It’s love, and it is unconditional acceptance, and not only
