It began as a routine, albeit somewhat late, drive home from my parents. As I was driving near Malad however, the roads began to to worsen. It was snowing, difficult to see, and just the right temperature to be very slick. I passed what looked to be a bad wreck and thought to myself, “I had better slow down”. I did. A few miles later I was driving when I drifted into the rumble strip, mostly because of poor visibility. I dislike driving near, let alone on, the rumble strip, because it is noisy, and it can suck you in. So I corrected. A little too enthusiastically.

I started to go into the left lane so I corrected again. It didn’t respond, so I corrected more. Then I started to slide to the right. As I did so, the car turn perhaps 10-15° so that I was afraid I would slide off the road sideways and perhaps roll. At this point I thought, “I am over-correcting. I need to not do that.” I tried correcting again, more cautiously. Whether it helped I don’t know, but I ended up going off the left side of the road. I was near an Authorized Vehicles Only crossing. I slid off the road at that very spot and then flew through a rather large snow bank and into the ditch. Luckily I wasn’t going too fast and the snow bank absorbed much of the car’s kinetic energy. The car stopped only a few feet from the left shoulder, and only slightly lower than the road.

After a few moments (and a prayer of thanksgiving), I got out of the car to see if there was anything wrong. I couldn’t see anything, except it seemed that the engine was smoking. It was difficult to tell for sure because of all the steam, and snow. I couldn’t smell anything so I assumed that it wasn’t really smoking and started the car. No problem. After trying unsuccessfully to drive out of the ditch a few times I gave up—the left tires were too deep in the snow. I wasn’t sure exactly what to do when two cars stopped. With their help I was able to easily push it out of the ditch and onto the shoulder. From there the car ran fine and I was able to leave.

I was so embarrassed about the whole situation that I wanted to leave as soon as possible. By so doing I neglected to really thank my liberators. As soon as I had driven for a few miles I realized this and wished that I could go back and thank them. Or somehow track them down to thank them. This is what I regret most about the whole business. I don’t think any serious damage was done to my car (though I did bend the frame in one spot). And besides, it’s just a car. I scraped myself on the leg. I don’t know whether this happened in the accident or not, but it’s not bad at all. The worst thing that happened was that I dropped Rachel’s mp3 player in the snow. I picked it up quickly though, and brushed it off. It still works, so there appears to be no harm done. Except that I didn’t thank two cars full of nice people.

As I drove away I noticed a noise, that I suspected might be something dragging on the ground. I wanted to stop at an exit to check out my car better, so I didn’t stop right away. Not too much later the noise stopped, but I thought that I would stop to see if there were any problems anyway. Then a man drove next to me and flashed his lights. He signaled me to pull over, so we got off at the next exit and pulled into a car wash. He indicated that I had something scraping—it was my muffler. I think he was deaf, or at least hearing impaired, since he used signs, and didn’t say much. Having had plenty of time to contemplate my sin I made sure to thank him. Just how much I had to thank him for I didn’t know at the time.

It was an easy fix to hook the muffler back where it was supposed to go, and I wondered why I hadn’t thought to check it before I left. Then I would have been able to avoid further embarrassment. I am afraid that I may not have fixed it if he hadn’t stopped me. That would have proved even more embarrassing an hour later when I was pulled over by a police officer. It’s the second time I have been pulled over, and both times were for exactly the same offense. Both times I was returning to college from a road trip and had a bad tail light. I explained to the officer that I had slid off the road, and that had probably been the cause of tail-light-tape being messed up. He didn’t even give me a “warning”. Had my muffler still been dragging on the ground though, I’m sure I would have had more problems. I was then very grateful to that man, and wished even more that I had thanked the others properly.

The rest of my trip was without incident, but I was able to learn that embarrassment can still lead me to do things that I regret. Pride still has too large a hold on me. Thankfully the Lord sees fit to humble me frequently. If it weren’t for his unconditional love, I would no doubt be a much worse person than I am.

Thank You.