I’ll never forget a rainy Thursday morning 23 years ago, January 24, 2002.

As I was driving to Columbia to attend a South Carolina Press Association workshop, my car hydroplaned on the wet interstate, spinning and spinning, around and around. I realized I had no control of the vehicle, and I yelled out, “God!” The car suddenly came to an abrupt stop. The car had left the interstate, had gone up a hill, and had turned, head first facing toward a ditch. If the car had not turned at that moment, it could have hit the large road sign or trees. I got out of the car, and I was completely unharmed, although the car wasn’t.

Earlier that morning, there had been traffic in both lanes, but, at the time of the accident, there was no traffic, except for one vehicle way behind me, and that driver had seen what had happened. Although I was calm when I got out of the car, he seemed very shaken up and kept asking me, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” I said, “Yes, thank the Lord.” That driver told me that, while he was watching this all happen, he kept saying, “Please don’t flip; please don’t flip.”

A law enforcement officer waited with me for the tow truck. Many other officers stopped when they saw my car, because they wanted to make sure I was all right. One officer, in an unmarked vehicle, told me, “We don’t stop for wrecks, but I just had to stop, to make sure you’re okay.” One officer told me, “I’ve been working highways for 25 years. You say your prayers.” And, as he put his hands together, like for praying, he said, “You are lucky.”

Everything that had been in the back seat of my car had gone to the floor in the front of the car. And almost everything that had been in the front passenger seat had also gone to the floor in the front of the car. Almost everything – one of my Bibles, which I had taken to church, was still in my car, and it remained in place upon the front passenger seat.

There’s something that I kept in that car and which I still keep in my car that I have now. That is a ‘rock’ I had purchased at a local Christian bookstore, a smooth stone that has engraved on it hands clasped in prayer and the words “The Lord is my refuge, my rock in whom I trust.”

I hope that I never forget that, or that I never forget that day.