Incidents and Accidents

Pretty eventful day today.  First thing this morning, Maddie got up - and she was ready for school again.  We said our prayers, and she was off to school.  That's right, she got in the car and drove to school on her own, the first time she's done that since she received her driver's license.  As you can imagine, I was sitting there tracing her movements on the phone the whole time, fretting and praying, even though I know Maddie's a great driver.  I'm a parent though, and I guess it's my job to worry.  But she got there to school, and she had a great day.  It was fairly dull, she said, but things brightened up considerably when she saw Nate and another friend from taekwondo.  And, there's someone else in her class that's from KidPak, so that might fun to know someone else as well.  

Mom and I were at home for most of the day, unpacking and also getting a few things done for the upcoming week at KidPak.  Maddie got home as I was off to the doctor to continue talking about blood pressure and so on - I'm doing a lot better now, and that's great news.

And here's where the day got even more eventful:  Maddie went back to the college, and from there was going back to taekwondo.  Only... she didn't make it to taekwondo tonight.  On the way there, she was hit from behind by another driver.  There was a witness who saw the whole thing, the truck behind her driving too fast to stop in time, clipping Maddie as she was driving on her first day.  Then the truck went into oncoming traffic and off the road into a deep ditch.  

Maddie was obviously shaken, but Divine Providence saw to it that there was a witness who stopped to help, and then Nate's dad just happened to be driving by, so he hopped out to be there too.  The other driver was cited by the police officer, and Maddie was not to blame here at all.  But understandably, she was done driving today.  It was her first day driving on her own, and already... but as with all things, it could have been much worse.  In fact, Maddie had good spirits later on, and she'll be ready to try driving again soon enough.  Maybe not tomorrow, but soon enough!

Nate brought her home a little later on - Mom and I got the car to bring home earlier on after checking with Maddie, who was okay.  Our car is dinged up in the back, but the whole insurance thing will move forward now, and we'll get that all taken care of.

Today I spoke with some old friends from high school, and the reason for my call was part of a theme of the day:  an accident.  This one, however, was much much worse.  It happened in Atlanta, and our friend's wife is facing many surgeries in the coming days.  It was not their fault - again, it was another driver going too fast, this time through a red light and straight into the side of our friend's car.  His son was in the back seat, bruised from the seatbelt but otherwise okay.  And my friend Alan is being discharged today, desperate to spend time with his recovering wife.  It' was all a difficult conversation.  It will take a long time, but everyone will heal - although there were things removed and many, many bones broken.  We'll be praying.

Tonight we watched another umpire do spectacularly bad at the Braves game.  In fact, his poor call directly led to the Braves losing the game, just like what happened two days ago - an umpire made a bad call to score the winning run.  Crazy.  But the team is doing well, and this is just a speed bump.  

We read tonight, and we said our prayers.  We're all pretty exhausted and ready for bed!