Rolling Through Life

Rolling Through Life

I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the LORD never ends! Lamentations 3:21-22

“I hear you need some insurance paperwork filled out. How can I help?”

“Ol’ Bessie needs a new battery and wheels,” Neil said, patting the side of his electric wheelchair. “I’ve about worn these out.”

I looked at the bent rims and worn treads. “Looks like you’ve been traveling.”

“I get around,” he said, smiling.

Neil had been a patient of mine since he was in elementary school. He was a good kid but never one to sit still for long. After he graduated from high school, he’d been a promising college student at a nearby university. But that was before the accident.

It all started with a dare. Neil and his frat brothers were out partying one night, and on the way home, somebody bet him that he couldn’t get his old Ford pickup up to 100 miles an hour. He had proved them wrong, but he was going too fast as he approached Creekside Curve. Unable to stop in time, he had slid off the road and hit a tree. Now instead of a pickup truck, he drove Ol’ Bessie, with a top speed of about four miles per hour.

Bessie might have been slow, but that didn’t stop Neil from going wherever he wanted. In the four years since the accident, he’d gone as many places and met as many people as any other twenty-four-year-old I’d known.

“Describe how the accident has affected your daily life,” I said, reading from the form.

“Since the accident, I need help with everything. I can push the joystick, and I can talk, but everything else is in God’s hands—or in the hands of the angels he’s sent to help me,” he said, nodding to the young woman assisting him that morning.

“I could have lost my life on that curve, and when I woke up in the ICU, I knew immediately that it was Jesus who’d saved me.”

I had heard his story many times, and this was my favorite part.

“I may have lost my previous life, but I gained eternal life. Now I look to Jesus because through him I can do anything. Well, almost anything. I’m still going to need those new wheels and a battery, Doc.”

TODAY’S RX

You’ll go further in life in the strength of the Lord.

Though my plans are not always the same as yours, Lord, I take comfort in knowing that your plans are best for me. Thank you for intervening in my life and keeping me close to you.