The Fifth Anniversary of a Life I Almost Lost

Five years ago today — April 1, 2021 — my life split in two.

Late that night, driving home to Plano, Texas from Houston, Texas, I was involved in a violent car accident that fractured my T7, shattered five ribs, cracked my sternum, broke my nose, and left both of my eyes blackened. The police report estimated the impact at 11:11 p.m. — a detail that still lands with a strange, unmistakable weight.

My life had already been shifting long before the crash. About eighteen months earlier, in Nice, France, I had slipped into the early stages of a spiritual awakening. At first it was subtle — synchronicities, patterns, a sense of being nudged. I didn’t fully understand what was happening until November 2020, when everything sharpened into focus. (which is another story).

On the morning of April 1, 2021, I woke with the clear sense that I wasn’t alone. I had felt presences before, but this one was different — calm, luminous, unmistakably gentle. And then came the message, direct and unfiltered:

“We are bringing you home today.”

It stunned me. I pushed back immediately:

“No. I’m not ready. I need to make some things right.”

And then the presence was gone.

I tried to move through the day, but the message stayed with me. I had to make a quick round trip to Houston — eight hours on the road — and I knew I’d be driving home late. Near downtown Dallas, I started feeling sharp pains in my chest. I worried I was having a cardiac event and scanned for an exit, for a hospital, for anything.

A car behind me was riding my bumper. Without warning, the driver swerved left, shot past me, cut in front, brake checked, and clipped the front driver’s side of my car. We both spun out. I slammed into a concrete embankment in a construction zone, hitting it again and again as the car twisted and turned. The airbags protecting my legs deployed; the ones meant to protect my upper body did not. My face hit the windshield. My glasses shattered. Blood poured down my face.

For a moment I wondered if I had already crossed over — if the morning’s message had been literal. But something inside me said, “No. You can feel your blood pumping.”

The driver who hit me fled. I was stranded in the middle of a major highway, lanes narrowed by construction, cars swerving around me at high speed. I was certain I wouldn’t survive.

And then — out of nowhere — a young Black man appeared at my window. He and his brother risked their own lives to push my wrecked car out of traffic and get me to safety.

For some reason, I had the presence of mind to hand this young man my business card after he pushed my car to safety. He told me his name was Isaiah. A moment later, the ambulance, fire trucks, and police arrived, and when I looked back, he was gone. The car was so mangled they had to cut me out of it. I was loaded into the ambulance and taken straight to the hospital. Even through the shock, I knew I was lucky to be alive.

They began the assessments — X rays, scans, bloodwork. When the doctor finally came in, he said, “You’ve fractured your T7.”

I answered, “But I can walk.”

His reply was blunt and devastating: “For now.”

They immobilized me in foam while they determined whether I would need surgery. I didn’t, thankfully. I healed, slowly. The ribs were the worst — every breath felt like a knife twisting in me. I still struggle with balance, but I’m here. I’m functional. I’m alive.

The next day, Isaiah called. I saved his number. I couldn’t answer the first time because of the pain, but I called him back as soon as I could. We spoke briefly — just enough for me to thank him. Later that day, the police came to take my statement. They wanted to talk to him too, to see if he had witnessed anything.

When they dialed the number, it was dead. Not disconnected recently — dead for months. They tried to trace it. Nothing. I tried calling again. No answer. No voicemail. No record.

That’s when it hit me.

Isaiah.

In the Hebrew scriptures, Isaiah is the prophet who delivers messages of warning and comfort, but more importantly, he is the one who speaks of protection — the one who describes God sending helpers, guardians, messengers who intervene at the exact moment they’re needed. His name means “God is salvation.” In later Christian tradition, Isaiah is often depicted as standing close to the divine throne, a witness to the presence of God, a bridge between the human world and the unseen.

And here was this young man, appearing out of nowhere on a dangerous highway, pulling me out of the path of oncoming traffic, risking his own life without hesitation — and then vanishing as quickly as he arrived.

I realized he hadn’t just helped me.

He had been sent to save me.

And whether he was flesh and blood, spirit, or something in between, I understood exactly who — and what — he had been in that moment.

In the months that followed, I focused on healing. My body needed time, and so did everything inside me. I sold my house, bought my motorhome, and set out on this strange, unpredictable journey that has carried me across states, countries, landscapes, and versions of myself I didn’t know existed.

A few years later, I was telling this story to a friend. I mentioned, almost offhandedly, that I had negotiated with the Divine for more time here on earth. The moment the words left my mouth, a roaring filled my ears — loud, unmistakable — and I heard:

“YOU NEGOTIATED NOTHING. YOU WERE SHOWN MERCY.”

It stopped me cold. It was the same presence from the morning of the accident, the same tone, the same authority. And I understood: whatever happened that night wasn’t a bargain. It was grace. It was intervention. It was a line drawn between what could have happened and what did.

They never found the person who hit me. No traffic cameras. No witnesses besides the two young men who pushed my car to safety — and one of them, Isaiah, had already slipped back into whatever realm he came from. The driver got away with nearly killing me because he lost his temper on a highway. That part still stings, not because I want revenge, but because it shows how fragile the line is between an ordinary night and the end of a life.

Now, on the fifth anniversary, I find myself looking back at that night with a kind of stunned clarity. Everything changed — not just the physical injuries, not just the logistics of selling a house and driving away in a motorhome, but the deeper shift. The sense that I had been pulled back from the edge twice in one night: once by a presence I couldn’t see, and once by a young man named after a prophet who speaks of mercy, protection, and the thin veil between this world and the next.

It wasn’t just an accident.

It wasn’t just survival.

It was a turning point — the moment my life broke open and refused to go back to what it had been.

In the years since the accident, I’ve been guided toward knowledge I never would have found on my own. It has reshaped me. I’ve become a better person — not softer, not saintly, but clearer, more accountable, more awake. None of it has been easy. Every step forward has cost something. But it has been worth it.

I still live with the consequences of my injuries. My balance isn’t what it used to be. My body reminds me, in small ways, of what happened that night. Even so, I’m functioning. I’m moving. I’m here.

I don’t want to end this with some tidy line about fate or the universe or how everything happens for a reason. Life is more complicated than that. But on that night — in the middle of a highway, bleeding, broken, and somehow still breathing — I learned something I couldn’t have learned any other way.

I learned what grace feels like.

And I learned I wasn’t finished yet.