Crashing into 2024
New year, new star-- Oh. Never mind.
Hello friends!
Happy New Year! Hope your 2024 had a better start than mine…
Because, my 2024 started with a crash and a bang. Specifically, a metallic, crunching kind of bang as another car crashed into the rear passenger side of my car on the second, dark and rain-swept morning of the new year. It wasn’t quite 8a.m., I was only about quarter of a mile from work and it was absolutely the last thing I needed to start off a new year after thinking I’d left what had been a pretty challenging 2023 behind me.
“I’m so sorry,” the other driver apologised, as we exchanged contact information. “This is a rubbish way to start the year.”
“Yeah,” I replied, eyeing the monstrous cave that now graced my rear passenger door, “Happy New Year to me!”
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a traffic collision before—I’ve been in two now (100% would not recommend)—but perhaps the worse thing about them is how you feel like you should have been able to do something to prevent them, even when you hadn’t a hope of seeing it coming… quite literally in this case. One minute I was signalling left, ready to take my exit on a relatively small roundabout, and the next there’s the ear-grinding sound of metal on metal and I’m jolting forward diagonally as something collides with the rear passenger side of my car.
I have no idea what has happened. The hit came from behind me, in my blind spot, so I don’t know what has struck me, how many vehicles have been involved, how serious the impact is nor the extent of the damage to my car. All I know is that I’m screwed. My car is screwed. My plans are screwed. I’m not going to make it to my CPD Wellness day, eat a bacon bap, catch up with my colleagues and crack on with some marking so Year 9 don’t complain to me about not getting their assessments back. It’s going to be endless phone calls to insurers, car repair people, arranging a hire car and doing all if this on top of shock and fatigue and an acute sense of ‘Why me? Haven’t I suffered enough already?’ instead. The day is ruined.
Fortunately, despite having my skeleton rattled and all sense shaken out of my head, nearly twenty years of driving experience kicks in to prevent any further disaster and I manage to pull over out of the way of the traffic that is still streaming past, and switch on my hazard lights. I can’t get out the driver’s door (too dangerous) and I can’t get out of the passenger door (it won’t open). For a second, it is very tempting to just sit there and call it quits. Yep. I’m done for the year. 2024 can move on without me. I’m too tired and now too traumatised for this kind of hassle. I should have stayed in bed. I didn’t want to get up in the dark and drive to work in this crummy weather this morning anyway. Can I just go back to bed and re-set? Where’s a time-travelling ability when you need one? What did I do wrong? What should I have done differently? This is what happens when you actually leave for work on time for once.
Ah, yes. Welcome to the feeling of responsibility that inevitably comes preying, even when you’re not at fault. It whispers softly: ‘You should have seen this coming. You should have done something to prevent this. This is your fault somehow.’
Ironically, I got hit on the part of my journey to work where I always consciously say to myself ‘better signal early here and be extra careful’. Having done this journey hundreds of times before, I know that traffic coming onto the roundabout with the intention of coming straight across it almost never slows down, even though it really should; and I know I’m invariably going to end up with a car or van sitting right up on the boot of my little Hyundai i10, as I take my exit. That’s why I always make sure to signal my intentions early and take extra care when sliding out to the left.
I remember having this exact same thought on this Tuesday morning, especially on my guard as it was hammering down with rain and as pitch-black as the middle of the night. With the dark and the rain and the rush of headlights, visibility was poor, braking distances were halved and in typical British fashion, everyone was in such a hurry to get the hell off the roads and safely into work, they were driving faster and more irrationally than usual.
So…
Crash! Bang! Crunch!
It was probably going to happen to someone, somewhere on the local roads that morning. That morning it just so happened to be me and the poor guy who hit me. My only consolation is that it could, so easily, have been much worse—but by the grace of God it wasn’t. I’m alive. The emergency services didn’t have to get involved. I was able to drive my car home. And I couldn’t have been hit by a nicer person whose first concern was for my welfare and who took charge of the situation very calmly whilst I stood there stunned, rain-soaked and trying to get my brain to come back to earth.
Yes, it’s a pain that my car might be written off, and I might not get enough money from the insurers to buy a replacement of the same standard and value (‘market value’ estimates from insurance companies are a load of tosh, to put it politely).
It sucks that I spent all day yesterday trying to recover from the physical and emotional shock, suffered nausea, anxiety-induced palpitations, and possible whiplash—judging by the increasing pain and stiffness in my left shoulder.
It’s frustrating that I’ve had to take today off work too, to recover, so the nice fresh start to the term I had planned has disappeared and now I’ll be playing catch up (bring on the moaning from Year 9 about their assessments—if I tell them I was in a traffic collision, maybe they’ll show me some mercy?).
I’m also going to have to miss Pilates tomorrow because of my injury. Damn. Pants. 2024 sucks.
It’s really, truly not the start to the year that I hoped for. I feel out of sorts now, kind of jangled up and fragile and unsure if I can manage the challenges ahead of me.
And yet, despite all of that, I believe, without a doubt, that things will get better. It seems a little cliché, but I looked out the window earlier, as I was in full flow moaning about my rotten luck in this newsletter (writing this is basically free therapy) and there was a rainbow arching over the garden in the sliver of blue between the rainclouds. It reminded me that when God makes a promise, He keeps it; and He has made lots of wonderful promises to his children.
So, even though it’s been a disappointing start to the new year, I’m going to focus on this promise in particular:
‘And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.’ Romans 8:28
God doesn’t promise that we won’t have to face trials and tribulations in this life. In fact, He warns us that the opposite is true: no one is exempt from the pain, suffering, heartache, ups and downs, crashes and bangs of this mortal plain—including incredibly inconvenient and slightly-traumatising traffic collisions on a rainy Tuesday morning— but for His children, He promises that every trial we face is within His loving, sovereign plan and it will end well—because we have a precious hope for life beyond the veil, a hope that is for eternity.
And even if things don’t seem to be ‘good’ for us this side of heaven, we can be sure that God is with us through it all, by His Spirit and through His Word; and that because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, we can call on Him in our time of need and he will hear us.
‘The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.’ Psalm 145:18
And…
‘The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.’ Philippians 4: 5-7
So, whatever 2024 brings you, I pray that you will be able to see the good amongst the bad, the joy amongst the suffering, and the wins amongst the losses; that your trials will be underpinned with eternal hope and a tenacious trust in the God who is ever faithful.
For me, that means that today I’m just going to enjoy the incredibly fancy VW Golf I’ve been gifted as a temporary replacement, whilst the fate of my Hyundai i10 hangs in the balance. Honestly, it’s the only chance I’ll ever get to drive something that on the inside looks like it requires a physics engineering degree and a hundred hours of training with NASA to drive.
I am so going to pretend I earn enough money to own it.
So… here’s wishing you a hopeful new year, 23.5 Lifers! Let’s keep figuring things out together.
PJ