Another time I was in even greater danger than this. I was coming from Garoua, going to Yagoua. I had stopped at the government rest house at Golombe. From Garoua to Yagoua it is more than 200 miles and needless to say I was tired by the time I got to Golombe which is about half way. About 2 miles out from Golombe on the way to Yagoua there was a deep cut in the road. It was too steep for the horse to walk down and too far up on the other side; it was too wide to jump over. In such cases we just had to let the horses do as they preferred. In my case the horse chose to walk into the ravine and climb up the other side to get across.
The descending went fine, but trying to get up the other side the horse got into trouble. It was slippery and too steep. Attempting to jump out of the hole, the horse fell backwards and landed on its back on top of me. In this way I carried the weight of the horse instead of vice versa. I was perfectly conscious of it as I was laying there under him. These too were agonizing fractions of seconds as I was lying in the ravine under the horse. I never thought I would get out alive. I was praying much and the good Lord heard my prayer. In some way, I do not know how, the horse rolled to the side freeing my body. After much struggle I was able to climb out of the hole and onto the horses back again.
When I first read this story and got to the part where Grandpa said he never thought he would get out alive, I thought back to a time in my life when I had that same thought... I was 19 years old. It was a twenty-below-zero, Wisconsin, January morning and I was on my way to register for a semester of college in a nearby community. As I was accelerating to merge onto I-94, my car hit a patch of black ice and suddenly I was spinning, and afraid that I would go over the edge of the embankment. When my car stopped on the pavement, I rejoiced, thinking I was safe. And then I looked up…and saw a semi truck headed straight for me. (My car had stopped alright, but facing the wrong way on the interstate.)
Like Grandpa, I had only fractions of seconds to consider this, but I distinctly remember thinking, “I’m going to die.” And...I distinctly remember one of my first thoughts after impact was “God has a plan for my life.” It was obvious to me in that moment that God so easily could have taken me home. In fact He likely had to send angels to push against the semi to keep me here. While I sat in the freezing cold car, going into shock from both the trauma and a broken-in-three-places jaw, I remember feeling special. I had always heard “God has a plan for your life,” and pretty much always believed it. But that day I felt it, and realized so clearly that nothing – not even a head-on collision with a semi – can kill us if God wants us alive. You are reading this, so there’s a high probability you are alive. God has a plan for your life.
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