King's Corner: Are you ready for that moment?

King's Corner column for February 7, 2025

I escaped a head-on collision by the narrowest of margins this time three years ago.

 More than an hour before sunrise I left my dad, Mark King, sleeping and set off down Hwy 50 toward Fallon. Just past the Silver Springs roundabout the road turns into a two lane highway, one lane each direction.

 Soon I could see the headlights of a car coming my way as we both approached at 65mph. It suddenly swerved into my lane. I swerved into its lane, lightly touching as we passed at full speed.

 It flew off the road and went quite a distance before the soft earth stopped it. I couldn’t believe how close a call it was.

 I doubled back and found a teenage girl sobbing and shaking. She’d drifted off the side of the road, caught the soft shoulder, overcorrected, and shot across the highway right in front of me. She’d seen my headlights in her face and thought “this is it” before I swerved.

 I would have thought the same if there’d been any time to think.

 She’s from Silver Springs. We called her grandma to come. I got her car back onto the highway, parked it to the side, and calmed her sobbing. As her Grandma arrived, I left.

 I drove a short way down the road and pulled over to look at my front bumper on the passenger side. There was barely a dent, but there was quite a bit of paint the blue-green color of her car. Later, when I took it to the paint shop for repairs, they suggested I buy a lottery ticket.

 Shortly after that I found a news article and saved a copy. It said that before that day was done, that same stretch of road claimed a victim. Fortunately not us.

 There are moments in life when we have no time to plan; we have just a split-second to act. And everything in our life up ‘till that point has either prepared us or hasn’t.

 Six months earlier my step-mum, Luanne, died of cancer. Dad needed help. His vision wouldn’t let him drive so I moved in. I immediately took her Chrysler Pacifica in to have the dents pulled out of the corners. Up until then our family had a wonderful tongue-in-cheek phrase to describe her control of the car: “Parking by Braille”. She also tended to hit stop signs and other stationary objects, and occasionally fall asleep at the wheel. Her husband Mark was a reluctant passenger.

 Dad was grieving for weeks after she passed until one day I said, “I lost the bet.”

 “What bet?”

 “We were all running a pool on which of you would go first. I’d bet you’d go together with her driving.”

 Dad suddenly roared with laughter and said, “That would have been my bet too!” And from then on, the worst of his grief was past. And he was more comfortable as a passenger when I was driving her van. Like I was on that morning while he slept at home.

 If I hadn’t come back home that day, what would he have done? If that teenage girl hadn’t come home, what would her family have done? Fortunately I instantly turned into the other side of the road, and thank God no one else was in that lane. And so we both got more time with our families.

 And you’re driving these same roads. There may come a moment in your life when eternity has its high beams headed straight toward you. There’s no time left. What happens next depends on all the life decisions you’ve made to this point, in both a physical and spiritual sense.

 Have a chat with God about that today. Get His attention before He gets yours.