~Multiplied~

This morning was like any other morning. Hopping in the car and taking my most loved drive by the ocean to grab a cup of joe. It was pre-dawn and I was racing the sunrise along the shores of this island I love so well. Chirping at my side was a text from my favorite person in the world, and as I drove on to meet him I was aware of the magnitude of His blessings.

Turning the volume up to full blast as the soundtrack of my best friend Kristen’s mixed CD made its musical round, I gave thanks again for the people who love this mess of a fairy-woman-child. And, there, just as Bjork was bustin’ out the best of her lyrical truths, I saw them.

Bright blue they flashed. Strobes of syncopated streaks signaling danger ahead. The universally recognized electric currents of caution chilled my spine, sending waves of foreboding and fear along its now rigid frame.

As I slowed to stop at the officer directing me to the side of the road, I rolled down my window, whispering a silent prayer to the heavens of what I did not even know.  The officer was soft spoken and kind, and as I raised my eyes to meet his own averted ones, I knew it must be bad.

He asked me where I was headed…I answered just a few short miles down the road…and truly I was so close to my destination I could almost see it. He shared that I had just missed a fatal car crash, and that it was going to be at least five hours before the wreckage was cleared and the one road that I was on that connected the sides of the island together would again be re-opened for use. He gave me the option of parking my car and walking to my destination—it seemed the only thing to do.

The gentle officer urgently instructed me that I would need to go right by the wreckage and that it was not something a young woman should ever see. I shuddered at the thought of what sights this man had been subjected to in his many years of public service…shielding those like me who would have been too weak to wield the burden of such real images emblazoned upon their brains and soft spirits. I thanked God for this man, and for those like him who stand in the gap for us.

I parked, took a deep breath, and stepped outside of the safe shell of my vehicle. As I began walking the brilliant blue beams and the shrill screams of the siren’s wails rocked me to the core. Stumbling along the bank of the beach, keeping my eyes trained on the undulating ocean’s waves, I put one foot in front of the other and passed through—all the while the pulse of my pounding heart a palpable percussion of panic and frenetic thoughts. Sadly I wondered who would wake up this morning having lost a mother, brother or sister, and again---I thanked God for the blessings in my life….and like the miracle of the loaves of bread and few small fish, they multiplied in an instant.