The Divine Appointment and Divine Interventions

There are times in my life where my path was changed or altered for the better and those stories are what you will find here.

This is a car accident that took place on a remote section of US 33 south of Lancaster OH when I was in college.  I worked part-time for FedEx while I was in college assigned to the LCK ramp at the former Rickenbacker Air Force Base.  Most of us were part-time employees and I work the late shift working something like 9pm-1am, longer during the Christmas season.  One Friday night, early fall I think, after getting off late I headed south on US 33 to spend the weekend with my girlfriend who was attending Ohio University in Athens OH.  It was late, and I was tired, but I was sure that I would have no problem getting there.  So, I began my journey down 33 sometime around 1:30 am and was able to make it just south of Lancaster before I got really tired and pulled into the rest area.  I got out, walked around a little and soon felt like I would be good the rest of the way to Athens.  It did not take long for fatigue to set in again and soon I was having trouble staying awake, staying in my lane and I finally feel asleep.  I woke up in the grassy area off of the right side of the highway headed for a bridge at 60mph+, now I was awake!  I tried the brakes but the grass was wet and they seemed to have no effect, I was going to have to ride this one all the way in so to speak.  When I left the roadway I was very close to the bridge and really had nowhere else to go except straight ahead.  This type of bridge has support columns on both sides of the divided highway and the ground rises from close to the bottom of the columns to the bridge deck at about a 45 degree angle.  My choices, both limited and unpleasant, were to try to veer off and probably hit the columns or just ride it out and try to go between the columns and the bridge deck.  I chose the latter.  My car and I went up the embankment, under the bridge deck and shot out the other side (airborne) and then fell back to the ground like the giant steel rock that we were.  Miraculously, I did not hit anything and was unharmed.  I can tell you that while airborne there is no need to steer (anyone seen Romancing the Stone?   Same concept except in the air not the water).  My car however; did not make it unscathed.  Right away the only obvious damage was the blown out rear tire, unfortunately I had already used the spare a few months back and had not replaced it yet.  It's somewhere near 2am, I'm literally in the middle of nowhere without a spare tire and this was 1990, long before everyone above the age of 8 had a cell phone.

Now, God has already spared my life by making this accident something that I could walk away from without any injuries but he was not done yet.  As I'm standing by the roadside wondering how much more overdue I would need to be before my girlfriend called out the National Guard to find me when a small box truck pulled over.  It was the Parkersburg Delivery Service truck that we loaded often at the FedEx LCK ramp and then would make his nightly run back to Parkersburg WV.  Not only did God send someone to help me, he sent someone that I was familiar with.  The driver offered to take me in to Nelsonville to a gas station that he said was open 24hr and thought they might sell tires.  Now I've not given this much thought over the years but what are the chances of there a:being a 24 gas station in Nelsonville OH, b: them having a tire to fit my Hyundai and then c: them having someone at what would by then be at least 2:30am who would be able to mount the new tire for me?  I was willing to give it a try so off we went.  Sure enough, the gas station was open, they did have a tire that would work for my car and they were able, and willing, to mount if for me right then.  Then the Parkersburg delivery driver took me back to my car (this would put him 40 minutes behind at least for the round-trip) and then he waited for me to get the tire installed and to make sure the car was drivable (the body was now bent from the crash landing).  Who does that for someone they barely know out in the middle of nowhere?  When God sends you a Divine Appointment, people will go out of their way to help you, I have heard this many times from listening to Joel Osteen and every time I hear him say that, I think "That's what I need, when will that happen to me?"  Now, looking back at my life, I realize my whole life has been filled with these Divine Appointments or just outright Divine Intervention.  This event having been one of many.

I did call my girlfriend when I was in Nelsonville and yep she was getting ready to call out the National Guard, call the hospitals, OSP... but my call averted all that.  I did make it to Athens that night, very overdue, battered and with my poor Hyundai having a noticeable bend in the middle (that car was built like a tank just not an airplane) and with my girlfriend's nerves more than a little frayed.

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     Another of these "appointments" came years later, the girlfriend was now the wife and soon to be mom.  I had been at the SO for almost 4 years and felt somewhat confident that I had a handle on how to do my job.  Early in the shift one night (3rd shift) we had just cleared a domestic disturbance call in west side apartment complex.  After the call the K-9 Deputy and I were in the parking lot talking with the complex security officer when I noticed a car pull into the lot and drive to the far side very slowly and come to a stop.  As we continued our conversation, the passenger got out of the vehicle and started walking our way.  The vehicle left the area and I didn't really think anything of it.  The male passenger was still walking our way but I was sure that he must be headed for the apartments behind us and was intending to just go around us, and our cruisers.  Looking back I'm still amazed that there was no red flag, no klaxon, no emergency flasher going off in my head.  In that line of work, you're taught not to let people into your personal space and how easy it is for a "bad guy" to rapidly close a much larger gap, after you have worked the street for awhile it becomes second nature.  But for some reason I still can't explain, I watched him walk the the whole way from where he was dropped off to where we were (about 250 feet) and it never dawned on me that something bad was headed our way.  He just kept closing the distance, watched by me and unnoticed by the others, until he was right on top of us.  He did not veer off at the last minute, instead he attacked me and the struggle for my sidearm began.  I don't know how long the fight lasted it seemed to go on much longer than it really did.  My attacker had managed to get his hand on my gun (still in its holster, thank God for Safariland) and was not about to let go.  This seemed to go on for several minutes until I was able to use one of the weapon retention techniques that we had been taught in basic, now I graduated the police academy 4 years earlier and had been through yearly self-defence training with the SO yet this was the only technique that came to mind.  Using this technique, I was able to get my attacker off of my weapon and finally get him on the ground at which point the K-9 and the security officer both seemed to come back to life and jumped in to help secure him.  All through this fight both the K-9 Deputy (who was very experienced) and the security officer (also not new to this) both just stood there as if they were in a trance.  It was one of the stranger things I experienced in that life, never before or since have I seen them react this way, they always were willing to "get into the fight" so to speak.  This young man admitted to being on marijuana and to have been drinking earlier in the evening.  He and his girlfriend had been in an arguement and she broke off the relationship that night in the car.  He told us that he asked him to drop him off there because he had wanted to commit suicide and was sure that if he grabbed one of our guns one of us would shoot him.  I could have used deadly force.  I could have used deadly force to end the attack with my backup gun and I have no doubt that it would have been justified. 

For the past 16 years I have always looked at this experience as something that happened to me, that I was the victim of.  It occurred to me as I was writing this that I may have been this young man's Divine Appointment someone who knew there was a difference between being legally able to use deadly force and not having any other choice.