these small moments

[Before you read this, know both my dad and Molly are ok.]

My day began when I woke up to a phone call from my dad. He had been in a car wreck and was in an ambulance on the way to a hospital in Shreveport. All his tests came back clear, and he was released to go home a few hours later. Now he is at home recovering and we are just praying it's only whiplash.

Dad was headed to play golf when a car coming the opposite direction swerved into his lane. I'm not sure how he avoided a head-on collision, but in that moment, he jerked the wheel and saved his life. I spent all day yesterday thinking about what would have happened if he had been checking his phone, getting a drink of Coke, adjusting the volume on the radio...but you just can't think about how bad something could have been. We can only rejoice that God protected him in that second and he got his car out of the way.

While we were in the hospital, he was telling everyone who came in our room about the miracle that had taken place. He told each person to go tell their friends and family how God had protected him that morning. It was pretty incredible because my dad has had a lot of close calls, and God must have pretty big plans for his life because He has brought him through each and every time.

As my mom and I were on the way to the hospital, I had to explain to her that, if I had been in Cambodia, I would have wanted to know she was in the car on the way to the hospital to see dad. That I didn't want to be notified two hours later after all the tests were done. That's the kind of thing you have to think about when you live on the other side of the planet and you feel completely helpless during times like these.

Once we got him home and situated with the newspaper and ESPN, our dog had an accident. Molly (who is old and not in the best of health) fell and hit her head pretty hard on the floor. I really thought she was going to pass away on our kitchen floor, but I put her and my mom in the car and headed to her vet, who is located about an hour away from our house. We couldn't just leave my dad home alone so my incredible friend, Kenny, came to our house to keep him company.

We got to the vet and Molly had started to respond to us again. The vet said he wanted to keep her for a few days and he would keep us updated. As of last night, Molly is on the mend, but it might take a while to get back to her state of normal. On the way home, I kept wondering what the third bad thing would be.

Was it when I dumped my tea all over the floorboard of my mom's car?

Kenny and I decided to go see a movie, and for some reason I thought Monster's University was a good choice. It was a great movie, but I think what I really needed was a few hours of distraction in the form of a movie. What we got were all kinds of distractions from everyone in the theatre. The guy to the right of me's reaction of everything was, "That's weird!" I wanted to tell his girlfriend she should go for somebody with a bigger vocabulary. The guy in front of us was making a lot of noise, and the people sitting next to Kenny were eating snacks with loud wrappers and saying things out loud like, "I'm gonna have to open this with my teeth!"

There was also a baby who screamed bloody murder for approximately 23 minutes.

All we could do was shake our heads and smile. You know, after the desire to yell at everyone went away.

After the movie, we went to Kenny's house and hung out with his family. After we told the story of our day, I joked about something bad happening at their house because I was there. I shouldn't have done that because a bottle of wine ended of broken and all over their kitchen floor.

Peaches.

Lord, thank you for getting us through yesterday and for providing moments of laughter and love to ease the moments of fear. We are blessed.

M