Thank God for Protection on the Highway!

Tuesday afternoon of this week I was driving home to Bridgman on the westbound lane of I-94. There were actually three lanes in each direction and I was in the center. I had just gone under the Cleveland Avenue overpass and was approaching the one for Glenlord Road when I noticed a large, white, late-model car sideways across the inside eastbound lane. My first impression was that he was parked in the inside lane with his rear bumper in the middle lane and front bumper on the berm. In that split second I wondered, why would he park there on a busy highway? Then I realized he wasn’t parked, but was sliding sideways down the highway.

He had apparently just lost control. The car then went down into the median, hitting the bottom hard and bouncing up, then coming up out of the median onto the westbound lane. Fortunately, I was the only car in that part of the highway, but I quickly realized the scared-looking elderly couple was headed directly toward me. I was doing about 65 miles an hour (I was approaching a road repair area with a 60 mile speed limit) and I hit the brakes hard and quickly steered into the right lane planning to head for the ditch. However, the white car spun around in the center lane and slid backwards past me and into the inside westbound lane first, then across the berm and onto the dirt in the median, where it scattered dust and dirt clods before coming to an abrupt stop.

I looked into my rearview mirror to see the couple sitting there, apparently stunned and unbelieving they could have experienced all that and come out of it unscathed. I was almost as shook up as they seemed to be. I also noticed in my rearview mirror that about an eighth of a mile behind me all three lanes were full of traffic and two of them were at least two cars deep. If the driver had lost control a split second later he would have spun into a seven or more car pile-up and no doubt people would have died. I realized too, if we had collided in a head-on crash it could also have been very bad. As I drove on down the road, safe and with no damage at all, I thanked God fervently for his wonderful protection.

It could have been a very bad day, but instead it was a very good day and I give God all the glory. Praise God! From whom all blessings flow!

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . .and that's My View from Tanner Creek.