A few weeks ago as I was driving home from work on a Friday evening, I found myself caught in the middle of a four-car pileup accident on the highway. Rush hour is hectic enough but add the start of the weekend to the mix and it becomes dangerous on the roads of any city.

I was stuck in stand-still traffic in an exit lane when I heard the screech of tires behind me. I saw the cause of the sound soon after when a blur of silver and white spun across three traffic lanes and hit the right-side shoulder barrier. I saw in my rearview mirror as another car was quickly hit and spun into the left-side shoulder barrier, missing me by inches. My car was already stationary, as was I, but now I wasn’t breathing as I prepared myself for the inevitable impact that I knew was coming with the growing sound of screaming brakes that were headed toward my small car.

While the accident itself happened so quickly, the events that started it are unclear to me even now, but I will always remember bracing myself to be hit. In that split second before, I distinctly remember thinking, “I’m about to get hit and I can’t stop it, but it will be okay.” I was right on both counts: I was hit and it was okay. My car is not okay, it’s totaled actually, but I am physically fine and that’s because I knew God would protect me.

Car accidents happen every day and I’d wager that every person reading this post has been involved in some sort of traffic accident. So, this really isn’t a significant or noteworthy incident. What I do think is unique is my perspective on it. God didn’t stop the car from colliding with me. He did protect me physically and I’m blessed that it wasn’t worse, that I was relatively safe. Shaken up, but safe.

I knew it in my heart in the split second before the accident that I would be hit, but that God is a good Father anyway.

Have you been in the midst of some trial or conflict where you just couldn’t understand why a kind and glorious Lord would subject you to what you faced? I daresay we all have and will continue to find ourselves in the valleys of life again. What I learned from my accident is that I will 100% face danger or pain again and again in life, but God is faithful whether he delivers me or not.

Second Corinthians 12:8-10 says, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

There are numerous instances in scripture when someone cries out to God during troubling times. In my opinion, the most important instance of someone crying out to God for help was in the garden of Gethsemane. In Matthew’s account of this, Jesus prays twice to the Father that the task of saving the world through crucifixion would pass from him. Even Jesus cried out to God for mercy, but twice he also said, “Your will be done.” Jesus knew that whether or not his Father saved him from the violence that he knew was coming, he would still be a loving and faithful Father in the midst of that pain. We are made perfect in the pain of the world, in our weakness, when we choose to see God as good. He is faithful to us whether he delivers us and certainly if he doesn’t, because the cross and resurrection are definitive proof that there is always a greater plan at work.