Today when my weekly email arrived from my daughter Ashley who is out serving a mission the subject line “I GOT HIT BY A CAR”. My heart dropped! I opened the email to find that she had been riding her bike with her companion and as she crossed the road an elderly man was entering the freeway and didn’t see my daughter on her bike. She said the grandpa was driving really fast and he should have hit her directly on but she felt a force suddenly push her forward and the car struck her at an angle rather than head on. The bike was damaged and she was taken to the hospital for x-rays. It was a miracle she was able to walk away from the accident with just a bruised up leg.

Ashley sent me a private email right after her family email in which she shared the following: “I literally walked away with just a bruised knee!! But it was def one of those life wake up calls like…. “Oh yeah, I’m super lucky to be breathing right now!” So super cool though that no joke my guardian angels pushed me forward out of the road!!! Just inches of a difference and I would have been toast!!”

I am SO GRATEFUL that my baby girl is okay and that guardian angels indeed kept her safe from what could have been a tragic outcome. Between my daughter’s near death experience and watching the news coverage of the terrible tragedy in Florida earlier this week I cannot help but think about just how precious our lives are and just how much we need to take full advantage of every day we are blessed with.

It’s so easy to fall into taking life for granted…both our own life and the life of our loved ones. We should appreciate every breath we are able to take and we should appreciate every moment we have with the people we love. We never know when people may be taken from us…it can happen at any time…that’s why we shouldn’t ever pass up the opportunity to both TELL and SHOW people that we love them.

My daughter went on to share in her email that between getting hit by a car and then getting food poisoning she was feeling a little overwhelmed this week, but then she walked into a McDonald’s to refill her water bottle and a young man came up to talk to her and it turned out the young man had served his mission in Mississippi with Ashley’s brother Dalton and his wife Alexis…she stated in her email “It was so sweet to talk to someone who knows my family from back home! Came on a day and moment that I needed it! God is mindful of us!”

Indeed He is! And thank heavens for that. Have a blessed day all!

~Amy Rees Anderson