Today, as I was coming home from a quick CVS/Kroger run, I was rear-ended by a 22-year old young lady. I was waiting at a red light, and she came up behind me and bumped me. Fortunately, I was by myself and driving the older of our two cars. In fact, it’s the 1993 Mercury Topaz that was my grandpa’s before he died a couple of years ago. (No one else wanted it, so we ended up with it. I drive about an hour to work 3 days a week, and that’s about the only place it goes! It get about 30 miles per gallon, so why not?!? It’s not pretty, but it certainly gets the job done economically!)
The young lady who rear-ended me was just leaving her job at McDonald’s and going to pick up her 18-month old son from the sitter’s house. (We chatted while we waited for the sheriff.) I noticed her college parking tag hanging from her rear view mirror and asked her about her studies. She commented on the fact that nothing had gone right for her today.
Even though this wasn’t how I was planning to spend part of my afternoon, it was nice to be able to show this young lady a measure of grace. She was expecting me to be angry with her, and instead we chatted about our children and her future career. She seemed to relax a little. In fact, my parents stopped by to pick up my frozen food (Hubby was just getting our daughter up from a nap — didn’t want her at the scene), and my mom even gave the girl a hug. Hopefully we were able to make her feel better about a bad situation.
There wasn’t any damage done to her car, and the only damage to ours was a back bumper that got dislocated. (I don’t speak “car”, so that’s the only way for me to describe it!) The bumper will need to be repaired by a body shop — or maybe we’ll keep the cash and sell the car as-is to someone. My guess is that the car is worth less than the work will cost! We’ve been saving up for another vehicle, so maybe now’s the time.
Regardless…. My hope is that we can each show grace to someone else each day.
