(editor’s note: I shared this story with the blog editor at Kensington and she said it made her hair stand on end. I kinda didn’t get left alone until we got this down – which is a collaborative process I really love. This is the slightly fuller version of what appeared on Kensington’s blog earlier this month.)

Our lively conversation was interrupted by the dull sound of crushing metal and plastic. My car lurched forward at the impact, thrusting us into our seats and forcing the air from our lungs with a guttural shout. 

And then silence.

Oh great. Now we’re really going to be late…

Wait. Am I hurt? Is anyone hurt?

“Everyone okay?”

Thankfully, my wife Jocelyn and friends Mike and Robyn were okay though shaken. We had been stopped behind a long line of cars waiting for a light when it happened.

Okay – get off the road to a safe place.

We pulled into a nearby parking lot. Taking a deep breath, I pasted on a quiet smile as I got out and walked slowly to the other car in the heat of a July evening. I glanced at the damage to my car’s rear end as I walked.

Surprisingly little damage for the sound it made…

…but this is going to be a pain.

A lone woman stepped out of the car – shaken and weepy from the impact. She was mercifully going slow enough that her airbag hadn’t deployed.

She meekly crossed the space between us and apologized through her tears. Embarrassed, she tried to explain but hadn’t yet caught her breath. I broadened my smile and gently cut in. 

“Hey – we are both of the age where we have good insurance. We’ll take this one step at a time and everything is going to be fine. You are safe. Just take a few deep breaths for now. My name is Chris. I’m just going to make a call so we can get help, okay?”

She nodded and walked over by Jocelyn.

I made the call and a sheriff’s deputy was dispatched. Estimated arrival was 20 minutes, so we had time to exchange information, document the damage and awkwardly get to know each other.

Her name was Tracy – local to the area.

I overheard her mention to Jocelyn that her daughter was in an accident that morning and they were both feeling out of sorts. Tracy made pains to not let it be an excuse, but she said they were coming up on the fifth anniversary of her son’s death.

Oh wow – it has been a bad day for her.

The deputy showed up and we took care of the accident report. He took Tracy aside for a little more paperwork while I took a more clear-eyed look at my car.

Though badly dented, the liftgate was thankfully able to close. There was a little damage to the rear fascia and the car was drivable. Tracy’s front end looked about the same – damaged, but really only cosmetically.

Lucky. It’s an inconvenience, but we’ll get through this. 

This could have been so much worse.

I wonder how Tracy’s handling this. 

She and her family have been walking through a lot.

Wonder if she’d be okay if we prayed for her…

I talked over my thought with Jocelyn, Mike and Robyn and they were certainly open to it. We waited at a slight distance as Tracy finished up with the deputy and walked toward me.

I smiled and put it out there…

“Tracy, you’ve clearly been through a lot. Would it be okay if my friends and I prayed for you?”

I awaited the “yes” or the polite “no”. 

I never expected what came next as she looked me in the eye.

“Are you from Kensington?”

What? How…

Confused, I stammered out a “yes”.

“Do you do funerals?”

What is going on??

“I do a lot of funerals.”

“You were involved in my son’s funeral.”

At first I couldn’t speak. How could this even be? It was entirely possible, but what were the infinitesimally small chances? 

When she said his name, a dim memory flickered.

Oh my. I think I officiated her son’s funeral.

“Oh my.”

I opened my arms and we embraced. In the connection of that distant and devastating experience, I felt her weight as she leaned in and sobbed. The grief of her boy’s loss was as raw and stinging as on that black day nearly five years before.

This is Adam. An athletic young man and high school honors student whose life of seemingly limitless potential was snatched away by a fentanyl overdose.

His was one of far too many funerals I’ve done for young people who died in the ascendancy of their lives by an opiate crisis that has taken lives from every neighborhood, every school and every background.

So I cried with Tracy for her loss and the loss of so many beautiful young lives.

But even in the sadness, there was hope as well.

TELL HER.

As she wept, I caught her eyes and said, “We still have help to give! You drive a couple of miles west and there will be a grief recovery workshop waiting for you at our Orion campus in September.”

“I think I need that,” she replied through her tears.

And we all stepped in to pray for our new friend. We even got a selfie to mark the amazing moment that God had clearly intended and crafted.

It’s been over a month since that warm evening in July, and I’m still marveling over it all. Moments like that are rare and demand that we stop and consider what God might be saying. 

I’ve wrestled with that question more than once. Here’s what I’ve landed on so far:

We don’t always see the outcomes of our actions – commit to kindness. 

Not long after we got back on the road, my wife made an observation: “You were surprisingly calm through that whole thing.” 

I still smile at those kind words; but I have come to believe that through the whole incident, God had a specific outcome in mind. As a result, I can’t take all of the credit for my even temper. 

I know myself well enough to realize it could have been quite different. I could have been having a bad day and a rear end collision that was not my fault might have been just the thing to unleash my righteous anger and displaced wrath, ruining the healing opportunity that God had intended.

Thank God that didn’t happen.

But despite the behavioral “win” I experienced on the day of the collision, it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes I look back at my day and realize that my interactions with people were… not what I wanted. I may have felt perfectly justified to toss out an unkind or cutting remark in the moment; but a calmer, braver self-assessment often leaves my behavior wanting, and I am called to go back and make amends. 

There are all kinds of contributors to a failure in the moment – worry, displaced anger, fatigue, loneliness to name a few on an endless list. They push against my will to react with harshness and selfishness. And heading off those tendencies doesn’t happen by direct effort in the moment of indecision.

My desire is to become the kind of person that biases more and more toward a kinder response in whatever situation I find myself. That transformation is the essence of the long, thoughtful journey of discipleship to become more like Jesus. 

I have a long way to go; but God uses moments like this to gently encourage us to dig in further and be transformed.

I had a soul-stirring reminder that choosing to sow seeds of kindness with Tracy and her family by being fully present for them at Adam’s funeral can open up opportunities for goodness and beauty – five years later.

A teachable moment most often doesn’t teach just one.

The collision is behind us now and Tracy and I have stayed in touch. I left her a message on the anniversary of the funeral and she called me back a day or two later. We had a tearful and soul-filling conversation about the sadness of Adam’s passing and the adventure with God he is on now, but also the healing God calls us toward in the here and now.

I shared a bit about what God was teaching me and asked if she got any insight from the experience. Here’s a bit of what she shared:

The Friday of our car accident was the eve of the 5th anniversary of Adam’s death from a Fentanyl overdose. I was approaching his former high school and a litany of “what if” questions began running through my mind. It came down to, “What if I had known the right thing to say or do to help him beat his addiction?”

I’ve thought a lot about what God was trying to teach me the day that I ran into the back of the Cooks’ car. The words that seem to keep popping into my head are just stop with the “what if’s”. It’s not to say that I shouldn’t think about Adam; but rather that I need to learn to get off the hamster wheel of endless “what if” questions so that I can flood my mind with happy memories of him and live a full life in the present. The last thing I want is to live a life distracted by sadness and regret. 

Before we parted, Chris told me about the Grief Recovery class at Kensington. I signed up for it later that evening. 

God – and I’d like to think Adam as well – showed me that it’s time to work on healing. 

Coincidences can actually be Convergences – see them for what they are.

I got my car back from the shop and everything has returned to somewhat normal – and yet the utter unlikeliness of the experience within the natural world still astonishes me. 

I’ve toyed with probabilities in the past, but I cannot begin to calculate the infinitesimally small chances of Tracy and I meeting again at so critical a moment in her journey – especially in such an abrupt manner. I can do nothing but conclude it was not a “coincidence,” but an intentional and orchestrated convergence of people and circumstances to reach one of His beloved in their grief.

I’m amazed that God loves Tracy (and all of us) so much that He would influence our circumstances and our very thoughts to make us meet each other again.

I’m humbled that God would use my small part in Tracy’s story to guide her into a season of healing – and the hope that lies beyond it.

I (and I believe Tracy) will be forever changed by the utter convergence of it all…