Last night I drove by my watershed moment.

It happened 5 years ago this week.

Driving from Anaheim to Salem (a 14 hour trip usually) with my then girlfriend, I was 30 minutes from home at 4am when I fell asleep behind the wheel.

I woke up driving through a construction zone hitting pylon after pylon of orange road barriers, only to swerve back onto the road missing a cement guard rail by a couple feet.

Those couple feet saved my life.

Little did I know how much my life would change immediately after that event. It served as a quick reminder that my life was beyond fragile and I was wasting it.

I was wasting it in a horrible relationship where I had made tons of mistakes. It was the kind of relationship that I conveniently leave out of my story quite often.

We broke up 2 weeks later and soon after that I started hanging out with the girl who would become my wife.

I never knew it standing on the side of I-5 cussing up a storm over the wrecked car before the sun had come up in late August of 2005, but God had thrust himself into my story.

Instead of hitting the cement guardrail, I was given a second chance, and those aren’t worth giving up.

—

I listened to this song as I drove by that watershed spot (Exit 238 on I-5 North, just north of Albany, Oregon) last night. It was one of those divine moments when it all clicked about what had truly happened back in 2005.

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Here’s the chorus that struck me last night:

All this time like a vagabond
A homeless stranger, I’ve been wandering
All my life You’ve been calling me to a home
You know I’ve been needing, I’m a broken stone
So lay me in the house You’re building

I think what truly happened that morning in 2005 was more than me just getting out of a bad relationship, it was about God calling me into what He wanted to do.

I only wished I would have listened more closely to Him so I could have avoided the freak car crash.