Not Part of the Plan

Our tow vehicle is totaled.

Chad jammed on the brakes, but it was too late.

The impact was deafening. I don’t know if it was us crashing into the car ahead of us, the airbags deploying, or both.

As it was happening all I could think was, NOOOOOO! We’re so close to beginning our new life… we’ve been working so hard…

When we came to a stop we were at an angle, taking up two lanes of the freeway.

“You ok?”

“I think so, are you?”

My adrenaline was pumping; I visually scanned my arms, legs and torso. I didn’t trust I’d actually feel it if anything was punctured, missing, or otherwise out of place.

A smelly vapor that looked like smoke was lazily curling out from where the airbags had burst.

The horn was stuck, emitting a steady unrelenting beep.

We sat there, wondering. What happens next?

It felt like we’d been running a two-year marathon, holding our dream aloft. Then we tripped, dropped it, and it shattered. Pieces scattered everywhere. Afternoon traffic swerved to avoid crushing it completely.

In retrospect, we were lucky. We weren’t towing our newly converted cargo trailer. There was no one else besides us in the vehicle. The party we collided with was not injured, and neither were we.

It’s funny how the mind gets so wound up over specific details, that you sometimes forget to reference the bigger picture.

We’ll recover. We’ll take care of what needs to be taken care of and move forward.

It’s a choice we all have. Life isn’t always convenient and easy; things happen.

And now, we’re put in the position where we have to get another car. This time, we get to choose something safer. Something with a higher tow capacity than an SUV.

I kept having to readjust my brain, reframe thoughts from where they wanted to default (doom and gloom) to a more proactive place of, here’s the situation, here’s what we’re going to do…

I kept reminding myself, the story in which things go exactly according to plan is boring. Personally, I’m drawn to tales of perseverance. Of people who keep working hard despite the inevitable setbacks. Nobody wants them to happen, it’s not something we consciously ask for, but if we can’t pick ourselves up and keep going, we miss it. We miss out.

In the grand scheme of things, we never know if a small accident that everyone walks away from gives us the tools necessary to avoid a much bigger catastrophe down the road.