not alone

This is going to be long, but I need to tell this story.

If you grow up going to church, you’re told since infancy that God is always near. That He will never leave you and that He will always take care of you. I believed it, but always in a sort of vague, I’ll-never-need-to-fall-back-on-it kind of way. Until Friday.

We were making good time on our way to Nimba. The other car was ahead of us somewhere. The lush, green countryside flashed past our windows, the air was warm and the road, though pitted with potholes and puddles, was passable. Lourens was steering the right-hand drive Venture, I was in the passenger seat, and I had my feet comfortably propped up on the dashboard, a few toes hanging idly out the window to catch the breeze. We were about three hours from the ship, surrounded by the jungle and the silence of the countryside when a white car rounded the bend in front of us. About twenty minutes earlier, I had heard my mum’s voice in my head. Don’t sit with your feet up like that. Get in an accident and you’ll break both your legs. So I had taken them down, and as we stared at the white car, approaching us at close to thirty miles an hour in our lane, I realized that it was probably going to prove to be a providential decision.

Time began to crawl as the scene unfolded in slow motion in front of me. I watched from my seat in the front of the car as Lourens started to slow down and the white car continued heading straight for us. I remembered that I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt because there wasn’t one in my seat, and I thought of all the kids I took care of in the PICU who had been ejected from their cars. I remembered that the first aid kit was in the other vehicle. I saw the other car flash his headlights, a fairly universal Liberian signal to get out of my way, I’m not moving. And still the white car was headed straight for us and there was no way to stop. A split second before we would have collided, Lourens wrenched the wheel to the left, deciding against a similar swerve to the right that would have rolled the vehicle into a ditch and probably left us upside-down against a palm tree. Safe in the left lane, it seemed like we would avoid the inevitable when the white car rocketed back to his right. The fronts of the cars met with a sickening thud. Glass cracked, metal groaned, the white car spun and we came to rest as our engine sputtered and died.

There was a moment of absolute silence. The clock snapped back to its normal speed and things started to happen again in real time. I looked back to see Emily leaning forward, bleeding from her nose. Ben’s head was dripping blood and Hanna and Jess looked dazed. And the first aid kit was in the other car. We grabbed our only supplies, a roll of toilet paper, and gave the bleeders a wad to help staunch the flow. The passenger in the other car was bleeding heavily from gashes in his elbow and knee, so he was taken to a clinic in the nearby town by the next car that passed.

We gathered together, six souls in a circle on the side of the road, and we lifted up our hearts to God. We thanked him for His protection and we praised Him for His hand that was so clearly on us. We asked for wisdom and we asked for strength. What happened over the next eight hours was incredible.

The rest of the day unfolded slowly. The simple truth is that getting in an accident in the Liberian countryside is not an easy thing to deal with. The policeman arrived from the next town, Totota, in a taxi. He took names and statements and set out drawing a diagram of what had happened. The driver of the white car, a taxi, yelled and stormed and screamed about how we were in his lane, with no mention of why we might have been there. I translated for Lourens, who, with his thick Afrikaans accent, wasn’t making much sense to the policeman. It was determined that we would have to bring both cars to the police station in Totota and that Lourens and the other driver would have to stay at the scene until that happened.


At this point, God started to intervene in a steady stream of occurances that left no doubt in our minds as to who was in control. As Ben’s head continued to bleed through the toilet paper, as MSF truck pulled over to the side of the road. The driver wasn’t a doctor, but he let me use his first aid kit and I was able to clean out the wound and bandage Ben’s head. A truck laden with bags of rice was flagged down by the policeman and the driver agreed to take the other four passengers from our car ahead to Totota to wait for us at the police station. While we had been bemoaning the fact that all of our luggage (food, water, most of our money and pretty much all of our clothes) was in the other vehicle, who weren’t answering when we called their cell phone, it turned out to be perfect, because the other four wouldn’t have been able to carry more than what they had as they climbed on top of the bags of rice and headed off around the curve.

Lourens looked down at my leg and pointed out that the side of my knee was purple and swollen to the size of a small orange. I shrugged. It wasn’t bleeding, and we didn’t have anything to make a compression bandage so there wasn’t much to be done. He smiled, reached into his backpack and handed me a t-shirt and a roll of duct tape. A couple minutes later I felt like Rambo and my knee, although still throbbing, felt much better.

We’ve all seen car accidents on the side of the road. Traffic slows down as everyone cranes their necks to catch a glimpse of what happened from the safety of their own cars. Not so in Liberia. This is a community culture; everyone’s business is everyone’s business. Every car that passed while we were on the side of that road held passengers who called out words of encouragement. At least a quarter of the cars actually stopped, the passengers got out and came to inspect the damage, shake our hands, ask what happened and praise God that no one was seriously hurt. We hadn’t eaten since the morning, and someone passing gave us ears of roasted corn. Another woman, a passenger on a bus that needed a tire changed right up the road from us, came to my side, her eyes soft and loving, and handed me oranges and a cucumber. You are looking hungry. Taking my own cues from their actions, I offered oranges to the policeman and half of my corn to the very surprised driver of the taxi. I was unsure whether or not I should really get involved in too much interaction, but I felt a prompting to reach out to them. When the passenger of the taxi came back, I sat him out of the sun in our car and gave him water.

The Swedish UN showed up. Marie and Paer had met our friends in Totota, brought us word that they had dropped them off at a hotel just up the road to wait for us, and surveyed the damage. They got back into their car after promising to send the Bangladeshi UN to help move the cars out of the road and giving us a much-needed bottle of water. The Bangladeshi UN arrived, about fifteen men with guns, and hauled the taxi out of the way. All this time, mechanics from the town had been working on the Venture, trying to straighten out a bent front enough that the car could be towed to the police station. (No easy feat when your tow truck is a battered, blue pickup.)

We had been in contact with the ship and were finally assured that Carlos was on his way to pick us up in a Mercy Ships car. Another carload of friends who were headed out past where we were stranded for a weekend vacation stopped to give us sandwiches and more water. Eventually, around six thirty in the evening, as dark was beginning to draw near, Carlos and Jim pulled up. They took me on to the hotel where I was able to properly care for Ben’s cut and went back for Lourens.

Finally, as we prepared to check into a room in the hotel, Lourens and the guys came back. They reported that the police had released Lourens to leave for the night, provided that he come back the next morning to have the case heard at the police station. The captain thought it would be best for us to come home for the night. Weary from a day spent at the side of the road in the blistering sun and pouring rain, we agreed, wanting nothing more than to be safe and clean in our own beds. We climbed into the car, navigated the rutted road through the dark night, and arrived back to the ship, shining like a beacon in the night.

There’s more to the story. I’ll tell you about what happened on Saturday some other time. Things aren’t finally resolved yet, and I’m dreading my third trip to Totota, which is going to be on Wednesday. Pray for us all. Pray for peace, especially for Lourens. He’s more shaken up by this than he’ll admit, and he’s facing some serious charges by the police.

The thing is, if Lourens hadn’t acted as he did, I would probably be dead. I’m not saying that to be dramatic or to add flair to my story. It’s a simple fact. A head-on collision at a combined speed of probably close to sixty miles an hour in the Liberian bush with no medical supplies and no seatbelt is an equation that ends badly for me however you look at it, to say nothing of the others in both cars. It’s a miracle that no one was seriously injured (athough my leg does look fairly impressive). God’s hand was so evident throughout the day. At one point, as we stood waiting for the mechanics to come with yet another tool that probably wouldn’t work either, Lourens looked at me and smiled slowly. It’s pretty cool, isn’t it? How all these things aren’t happening all at once, but just one after another?


And it’s true. As soon as we realized a need (and there were many throughout the day), God provided for it. We were thirsty and Marie gave us water. We were hungry and the kind woman gave us oranges. We needed to get our friends to town and a truck stopped to carry them. We needed to care for Ben’s head and the MSF car passed by. We needed to bandage my knee and Lourens, the only one who had his bag in our car, had just what I needed.

As I looked up at the sky shortly before Carlos arrived to drive us home, it was clearing from the latest rains. I lifted my heart in praise to God, and saw there, just at the corner of the clouds, a rainbow. A promise. A confirmation.

You are not alone. Walk through the fires, if you will, but I’ll be there. Think you’re drowning? I’m there. It doesn’t matter what happens. I will move heaven and earth to keep you safe, because I love you. And you’re mine.

Mine.