We have a student in our ministry who's about to start her junior year of high school. Last Friday night she was playing capture the flag with her siblings and some friends and fell flat on her face. Hard. Her front two teeth were knocked out and the three next to those were jammed up into her jaw. She had to have surgery that night. On top of all that, her parents are former missionaries to Southeast Asia who have currently returned to the states because Cara's mom is undergoing a second battle with cancer. Incredible people. Now check out Cara's response to this whole thing. Wow.

A Planned Accident

...The days of my life all prepared before I'd even lived one day

--Psalm 139:16 (The Message)

God is never surprised. And as I rode to the emergency room in the front seat of our mini van with my front teeth resting at the bottom of a cup of milk and a blood-stained rag held up to where they used to be, God was not alarmed. Even as I sat there crying over the 5-tooth empty space in the front of my mouth, I had to chuckle as that verse in Psalms came to mind God let me know that he had known this would happen even before those 5 teeth came in.

He had planned that my two front teeth would come flying out by the roots when I bit the sidewalk and that the other three would be jammed up into my jaw. He had measured and counted each step I would take before I tripped over that curb, and lined up those steps perfectly so that would happen. He had thought out all the variables... that I would play “capture the flag” at 9:30 at night, that I would threaten to go back inside but chose not to, that my team would be one point away from a tie, that Travis would be about to tag Alisa and that I would come running up to her so she could pass me the flag. But that I wouldn't make it past the curb. Eleven years ago when I first moved into this house, He looked down on that place and already knew what would already happen to me there. And even before that, when construction workers poured the cement sidewalk, God knew that the City would plan to place a water meter there. That the top of it would stick just enough out of the ground that my teeth would hit it but no other part of me would be touched.

And that comforts me. To know that however I will look and do look after this... that's how God wanted me to look, that's how He planned it out. For some reason He had planned to put this even into my life... and it boggles me... all the factors that had to come into place to lead up to this. I don't really understand how this happened -- that me, a calm, unrecreational girl would have her teeth knocked out -- but to me that means that this really was no accident. This obscure fall has a purpose in my life and I plan to live this out for all it's worth.

-CARA

This entry was posted by Mike Lovato, on Wednesday, August 23, 2006. You can leave your response.