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The day of my last blog post in June I had a meltdown. A big one. I was under massive attack from the enemy and giving into all of his lies. My husband blatantly asked “Olivia, you know the Scriptures and you know what to do, so why aren’t you doing it?” I never like it when he’s completely honest with me, but I always appreciate it. You see, when we get into a funk of emotions we can never see it clearly. It’s like we’re falling in a giant black hole of feelings - bad ones - and we can’t seem to find our way out to stop the cycle. We always have the power and choice to stop but can rarely see that in the moment. This is why it is so important to surround ourselves with Godly people to hold us accountable for what we know and the Truth found in God’s Word.
After my meltdown and after my husband’s bold words that jolted me back to God and to a place of self-awareness, I began to worship. Worshiping God is the quickest way out of our funk. It places our focus back on Him where it should have never even left. As I worshiped, God began to speak His Truth to me. Well, really what happened is that I actually started listening. I knew there was a season of attack coming. I could feel it in my spirit that Satan did not want me to take a break from the blog, which I thought seemed counterintuitive. I would have thought that he would want me to take a break, to stop writing. Then God showed me that my stepping back from the blog to reconnect with Him was way more of an attack on the enemy than my obligatory writing. Satan knew that by spending time with Jesus and getting to know Him more intimately I was a much bigger threat to his plans than continuing to write my posts. My posts and blog were Scriptural and encouraging and challenging to a lot of people, but I had ceased to draw near to Him in the process.
As I was praying, I saw a vision of God cupping me in His hand and pulling me into His chest....His heart. This confirmed I was on the right path. I had heard the call in my spirit, the call of God beckoning me back to Him, to reveal more and more of Himself to me. And, I answered His call.
Unfortunately, Satan was on the move to thwart the intimacy I so desired. About 6 days after my break began, my husband, son and me were driving on the interstate to meet my new niece. Out of nowhere, a rusty, metal tire rim from an 18-wheeler came barreling toward our vehicle, which was going 70mph. There was no shoulder or median, so no way to avoid a collision. We braced for impact and it rolled under us. Our airbags deployed, the steering mechanism went out and we had zero control of the car. The car finally stopped safely (which was a miracle in and of itself). We couldn't see or breathe because of the smoke from the airbags. The electrical system was destroyed so we couldn't pull our car off the highway. We called 911 and police were there with EMT's in minutes and began diverting traffic around us. My son was screaming in the backseat because he was terrified from the impact, the airbags and the experience of it all. Thankfully to God, he had not a scratch on him! The rear airbags did not deploy since it was a front impact, so he didn't have any physical injury. My husband looked himself over and only managed a hangnail. I had burns on my arms and legs from the airbags but seemed fine other than that. Then I looked down at my belly and started panicking and crying. Through the commotion of it all, I had forgotten that I was 32 weeks pregnant. My belly had burns on it and had definitely been hit by the airbag. The EMT's cared for me and said the only thing that concerned them was that I had really high blood pressure....duh, I was just in an accident. They couldn't tell me anything about the baby though. I would have to go to a hospital for monitoring to find out about the baby. I had been pushing on my belly the whole time in the ambulance, trying to detect some type of movement and I couldn't. No movement for over an hour. We decided to go to the hospital. I was transported to the OB unit, where they admitted me for overnight observation. When we arrived at the hospital, I began to feel movement. Thank the Lord!!! The fetal monitoring and blood work confirmed that the baby was in excellent health and had not suffered any injury. I was discharged the next morning and we continued on our way to see our family. Not in our car though - it was totaled.
My car being totaled was a really hard thing for me to process. I couldn't put my finger on why I was so attached to my car. It was, after all, a material possession. I didn't think I was that materialistic, but maybe I was. When we returned home from our trip a couple of days later, the grief hit me like a wall as soon as I stepped foot in the house. As I attempted to process the emotions from the previous few days, God connected the dots for me and revealed to me that my car was my connection to my dad. You see, when he died last year, I received a small amount of money from his life insurance policy. I used this money to buy a used car. My first car that I actually got to pick out myself - it was a big moment for me. I would drive my car around town and think fondly of my dad and how I had this car in a way because of him. Losing the car felt like I was losing him all over again. The one year anniversary of his death was 11 days after our car wreck. I can't explain fully the emotions that were whirling around inside of me, but the grief of the wreck, the thought of possibly losing the baby and saying goodbye to my dad again seemed unbearable.
I knew Satan was going to attack me, but I had no idea it was going to be physically. I am well-acquainted with spiritual attacks, attacks on the mind and heart, lies that he throws at us when we're at our lowest emotional point. But until now, I had not encountered physical attacks that aimed to hurt or even kill me. I was not a fan of this war tactic. I thought the worst was over..... More to come next time.