In this excerpt, Gracie Rosenberger recalls the 90-second car ride that changed her life forever. She was fatigued and her mind had a million thoughts going through it. Gracie knew she should have rolled down the window to get fresh air or stopped to get gas.
Ninety seconds
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for Thou art with me; Psalm 23:4 KJV
November 18, 1983 12:30 PM, Ninety miles west of Nashville, Tennessee
Fatigue washed over me. Nine weeks into my freshman year in college, months of maintaining a frenzied pace finally registered … hit like a ton of bricks. In addition to an already full schedule of classes, my decision to declare a double major in vocal performance and piano required lengthy and exhaustive hours of practice. My heavy academic load, along with a strict jogging regimen and a budding college social life, pushed any kind of rest to the bottom of my detailed priority list. Now, driving alone with just my thoughts to keep me company, the weariness crept in relentlessly.
“You know Gracie, you really need to roll the window down,” I told myself.
Glancing at the window, a voice in my brain kept telling me to lower it and allow the cold autumn air to rouse me from the increasing comfort of the warm car. Not heeding the mental warning bells, my hands gripped the steering wheel … as I continued driving while looking glassy-eyed at the road ahead. The highway, bordered by trees with bare branches rising from autumn-browned fields, stretched ahead and merged with the dull gray sky. I tried to stir myself to alertness by returning to composing lyrics to a tune given to me by a friend.
Father here I am seeking you once more,
Giving up to you these burdens, I’ve given up before.
Why must there be a constant struggle in me; a giving of myself?
The song seemed about as cheerful as the landscape.
Oh well, at least I looked colorful and cheery! Glancing down, I smiled at the new Aigner shoes my mother bought for my college wardrobe. Earlier that morning I decided to arrange my whole outfit based upon my new shoes; wonderful new burgundy tights, a fabulous deep turquoise corduroy skirt, an Aigner colored sweater with a stylish large cowl turtleneck, and several pieces of my favorite jewelry … one of which was a gold add-a-bead necklace I had been adding to since sixth grade. To this day, my attire for the trip remains one of my all-time favorite outfits (although it was four sizes smaller.)
As the miles crept by, I noticed the gas gauge was low. With all the running around, I forgot to fill the tank. Scolding myself for failing to stop at the exit rapidly shrinking in my rearview mirror, I made a mental note to fill up at the next one. Being my first time to drive west on this highway, I was unaware that the nearest gas station lay nearly ten miles away.
The gentle humming engine noise of my Honda Accord combined with the dreary landscape to increase the drowsiness that seemed to envelope my body. Feeling my head bob slightly, I quickly shook it off and shifted to the right of a ten-truck convoy, thinking how odd for those tractor trailers to be in the left lane. Speeding to seventy MPH (the speed limit was 55) I passed them in the right lane. Racing around them and then cutting back to the left in front of another car, I glanced again at my fuel level and knew I had to find an exit quickly.
If I just didn’t feel so sleepy!
With no exit in sight, I settled in after speeding past the tractor-trailers, nervously looking at the gas gauge. Staring ahead, the highway seemed to stretch on endlessly, without even a curve to break up the monotony. Relaxing in the warm car and feeling the comfort of sleep moving stealthily over my body, my mind chose to stop fighting it. With blurring eyes, I gave myself permission to rest for “just a moment,” and I lay my head on the steering wheel.
Adorned in a beautiful new shoe, my foot pressed heavily on the accelerator, and slowly urged the car back to more than seventy miles per hour. As I drifted from the left lane, the car behind me slipped by, apparently oblivious to my condition … unlike the men driving the eighteen-wheelers I had just passed, who could only watch helplessly as I rested my head on the wheel. Frantically blowing their horns trying to startle me awake, the truckers radioed each other and coordinated to form a rolling barrier behind me with their trucks; preventing anyone else from being hit by my aimless car. With their constant horn blasts failing to wake me, the truckers watched my car slowly weaving for about a minute and then steadily drifting to the right. Making its way through the right lane, my Honda Accord raced into the roadside gravel. The crunch of tire against rock caused me to stir a little and, half-way opening my heavy–lidded eyes, I vaguely noticed a large green sign with white letters. In a drowsy haze, I failed to react in time to keep the car from charging ahead. With no guard rail to prevent disaster, my car left the road and mowed over a mile marker. Bent by the front of the car, the small sign whipped back into the Accord … slicing through the Honda’s undercarriage and carving out a large section of my right thigh; nearly cutting me in two.
Ramming head-on into the end of the concrete abutment framing a culvert, the front of the little Honda wrapped itself around the eight inch barrier; slamming my body against the rapidly crumpling car. Milliseconds later, internal organs also bowed to the law of physics and pounded into my body as it quickly decreased speed … allowing me to fully experience the smashing impact of high velocity meeting a dense, fixed obstacle.
With no buffer to burn off speed, the frontal impact lifted the back end of the car, and, like an Olympic gymnast, the car twisted and flipped through the air so that the back end of the car crushed into the opposite side of culvert’s cement wall. Already bearing the impression of the abutment in the front of the car, the nearly ninety-degree impact shoved the trunk of the car almost into the back seat.
With the car hurtling through the air, as if in slow motion, the momentum from pounding backward into the culvert flipped the crushed automobile again … and then sent it careening along a fifteen-foot embankment. Rolling into a small ravine that served as a runoff during rainy weather, the Honda finally tumbled to a stop, amazingly right side up. The gully was deep enough that had the wreck been at night, no one driving by would have noticed or rescued me in time.
Disoriented and in shock, I awoke with my body leaning toward the passenger seat, but both of my legs were grotesquely pinned over my right shoulder. Something seemed dreadfully wrong with each of them; particularly my right foot … which was dangling limply at a bizarre angle. Feeling a wet, sticky substance trickling down my face and into my eyes, I blinked through the blood now oozing from a gash on the top of my head. With curious detachment, I noticed the right, front tire crammed into the passenger seat. A strange flashing in front of me caught my attention and painfully shifting my eyes forward, a wave of fear rushed over me — MY CAR WAS ON FIRE!
Although my brain clanged all sorts of alarms, nothing in my body moved. Panic enveloped me, and hopelessness flooded over me. Staring straight into the flames shooting from the engine, I saw a shape of a person. Although the face shone too bright to be distinguishable, I somehow knew the silhouette I saw was Christ. With one last surge of energy, willing myself to speak through a mouth that felt strange and unresponsive … I cried out, “Jesus, only you can save me now!”
Mercifully, everything went black.
It took ninety seconds for my life to be violently and irreparably changed.