Accident?!?

We were so excited for my husband Pete’s brother. His wife had just given birth to a baby boy after hurtful years and years of not being able to have children until we began to pray for them with each other, with our prayer partners, and with our church. Knowing what it’s like to have a baby, I volunteered to go and get the new mother anything she would like to eat after such an ordeal. So off I and my prayer partner Reshone went (she was with me because she wanted to share in the joy of an answered prayer, too) to get some orange pop for Joe and his wife.

As we carefully pulled into the parking lot of the nearby Thriftway grocery store, I spied a parking space at the front of the lot which was a blessing because the lot was jam-packed. (I guess a lot of people were having babies that day...) Reshone and I were carrying on our normal non-stop blabbing when my Renault was suddenly struck on the front passenger door by an old beat up yellow Chevy which then pulled back up into its parking space again...“like a rock” as the song goes. Reshone, creating a little drool puddle, was a little shaken but pretty together, considering her side of the car is what was whacked. Though my Huggies were still dry, I was the one who was pretty shaken since I was the one driving.

With a car in front of me and one in back of me and many more passing from the other way, I was completely boxed in and couldn’t just pull away from the scene. Frustrated, I looked over at the Nova again and noticed that all its windows were completely steamed up like a teenager’s dream date but now gone bad by one accidental flick of the gear shift. So while I was figuring on parking and then getting out and getting any necessary information after all the cars around me pulled away, Reshone began to raise up the right side of her hip when holding onto the dashboard and roof in sheer panic exclaiming, “Vickie, get the car outta here.She’s gonna ram us again. Auhhhh!!” With even more determination than before, the big yellow bomb charged into Reshone’s door, again, this time making her side of the car airborne as if to shove my car out of the way.

It was as though the driver were saying, “What is wrong with these people; don’t they have jobs, or homes, or lives or something? Why won’t they move outta my way. I’ve gotta get home so I can take my pill!!!” Hearing faintly in the background the Jaws theme, “Thud, thud! Thud, thud! Thud, thud! Thud, thud!” I made a shrieking noise, (thinking we were going to be completely tipped over) jerking for the steering wheel, grabbing on it for dear life, thinking this old rust bucket had it out for us.It all just seemed so surreal to me that my blond roots began to kick in, spacing me off into naw, naw land as I thought, “Houston, we have a problem!!”

Then Reshone screamed, “Drive, Vickie, she’s coming to get us again,” to my and Reshone’s amazement and stark raving fear because, instead of it pulling up to the space and parking again, the loon backed off about only two feet from my car and then rammed Reshone’s door, once again, though with full force, causing my car to lift clean up in the air even further this time. As I glanced over at Reshone’s arms-a-flailing, I realized it was as though the lead-footed fog on the brainiac were taunting us this third time, “I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog, too!!!!!”

While my car was still in mid-flight and while Reshone was clinging to the ceiling, I barreled out of my car in a red rage and stomped over to the driver’s window, banging on it with white-knuckled vengeance until the driver oh-so-cautiously rolled down her window just a crack so as to get a peek through the fog to see her victim eye to eye. I proceeded to rant and rave in loud syllabic bursts and in utter exasperation, “What in the @#& do you think you are doing?!?!?!What is wrong with you???” Then I shrilled out, “Youuuuu bashed my car up THREE, count them, THREE stinkin’ times!!!!!!!”

A morbidly obese woman perhaps in her late 40s—with the thickest glasses I do believe I have ever seen in my entire life—matter-of-factly replied while holding up two fingers and while still gunning the gas pedal, “Only Twice!!” One would think she would have copped a clue after the first time…meanwhile she’s still trying to push my car over, I guess, by momentum. Hello!

After all these years, I still just about blow a cork every time I think of this woman’s blindness yet still driving though clearly should not have been. It would have been so different if she just would have owned up to what she did to me and apologized and have at least actually taken her foot off the gas pedal when she told me it was only twice in her deluded state. Instead, I got the shaft as she minimized the situation and kept victimizing me by holding down the gas pedal.

What never ceases to amaze me is that this goes on quite frequently with regard to offenses in the Christian community because of sheer nearsightedness just as she ran into me because of her nearsightedness, i.e. blindness. There are no apologies made...only minimizations of unjustifiable inflicted hurts in order to cover one’s tracks while the offended Christian retreats in his or her misery and suffering. The ones who do the attacking also never realize that it isn’t just the person they are attacking, it is Jesus who lives in us they are attacking. These unreconciled offenses should never ever happen with us since Jesus’ Truth lives in us. For we should always remember that, when we inflict hurts on people and never apologize or admit it to them and/or Him, this disrupts our fellowship with the Lord as our subconscious holds us back in guilt of this sin, not that it holds the Lord back from us.

Then on top of this unreconciled unconfessed inflicted hurt, the so-called “superior Christians” come and victimize the victims more by saying they should stop sinning by being in “unforgiveness” as if the one who was sinned against is the guilty one. It causes a catastrophe of a spiritual wreck by those who claim to be able to see but truly don’t. This is just like how the nearsighted woman first rammed into me without even thinking something was wrong then bashed into me the second and third times with so much force that it crippled my car. In any sense, this is not at all logical but instead amplified what I deemed to be complete delusion on her part.

Rather, the perpetrators should run to those whom they have offended and apologize and/or admit it to the Lord what has been done. When we do this apologizing, we need to take full responsibility for our actions in complete and unabashed truth, not looking for a way to make us not look so bad by coming up with excuses and or defame the other person in the process. We need, instead, to be open and not hide one thing or to try and cover up ourselves or the “accidents” we cause as God sees and hears and knows everything and won’t rest until He finds and reveals what is keeping us from Him, averting another “spiritual accident” in ourselves and others in whom Jesus lives from occurring.

Copyright © 5-27-1998 Victoria Tribby