Faith

I am not a superstitious person. Even though I have faith, I am not all that religious either. There are things that were and are important to me such as having a religious wedding, baptizing my kids, and making it to church at least a few times a year. But I don't believe everything that my religion says and, quite frankly, there are many things I don't even know about it or care to learn.

But earlier this week something made me stop for a moment and reflect, smile, and remember that maybe, only maybe, there's somebody really watching over us.

On Wednesday we were officially informed that our car was being totaled, and that I needed to go get my stuff out of there. I was working from home that day, so I left my house at around 4:00pm and headed to the collision place. I remember it was a really cold day. When I got there the car seemed a lot worse than when I saw it last. Maybe, since they knew they were not fixing it, they did not make much of an effort to put it together after they had to evaluate it all over the place.

Once I got the keys from them I started to collect my stuff in couple big square plastic bags, the reusable type so popular nowadays. I looked everywhere, including the front seat, the back seat, underneath the seats, the trunk, and the side doors. I did not spend too much time deciding what to bring back and what to leave there. I pretty much packed everything. I did not want to leave them garbage, and did not have the presence of mind to sort things right there and then. I'll just take everything, I thought. I'll sort it later when I have more time and my hands are not freezing. When I finally finished I took my two full plastic bags and put them in the trunk of our remaining car. I stood by the truck one last time, mentally thanking it for its years of service and for protecting Lionel, and headed back inside.

Once inside one of the guys took the keys back from me. "We need to keep the key to the car but here, I will give you your key chain and all your tags back", he said.

It was at that moment, when I saw him separating the key from everything else, that I really paid attention to the key chain. I had completely forgotten about it, but it was right there in front of me. It was the shape and image of a virgin. A good friend had given it to me for my birthday couple years back. At that moment I think I just naturally smiled. Did she have something to do with the fact that Lionel was completely unharmed? We'll never know, but I sure like to think so.