Life is made up of moments like a line drawn in sand. There's you before the defining event, and then the you thereafter. That moment for me was being hit by a car when I was fourteen years old. A car had halted and signalled for my best friend and I to cross the main road. I'm still not sure where the second speeding car came from...because I never saw it. I'd been hit with such power that eyewitnesses stated my body flew up into the air before smashing down on the window shield, rolling down the bonnet, and landing in an awkward position on the ground.

            If there was any humour in the situation, it was when my mother and sister drove by the accident in another vehicle. Passers-by had spread the rumor that a girl had been knocked down and died. There was a group around me at the time. But they had only seen my best friend, thinking I must have been somewhere in the crowd as well. Imagine my mother and sister's surprise when they arrived at the funeral they were attending and received a call informing them that I was the person in the accident.

I was transported to the hospital and was able to walk out hours later. A bruise beneath my chin and a tiny cross scar on my left arm, the only evidence of my ordeal. Some might say that was my defining moment. Yet for me, it was my mother entering the hospital room and assisting me in getting dressed. She emphasized: “whatever game you were playing with your soul salvation, stop it now. You are now a walking testimony. God gave you a second chance. Don’t play with it.” The window screen of the vehicle that hit me that day was entirely destroyed. I should be crippled from the waist down. My face sliced hideously. My spectacles broken. But because of the covering of God, I walked away with no cuts on my face and no scratches on my eyeglasses.

Before the accident, I was wearing fake tattoos and fantasizing about what I would do outside the church when I reached the legal age. After the accident, I understood that God had other plans. Every day God in his mercies gives each of us a second chance to rewrite our stories. While we rejoice in the God of multiple chances, in the words of my wise mother, remember this:

Whatever game you were playing with your soul salvation, stop it now. God gave you a second chance. Don’t play with it.