I have been challenged by many to tell my story. I am not a very open person and really prefer to keep my personal trials and triumphs to myself. However, I was completely shocked when I learned that several people have watched my every move for the last few months and have made some life changing decisions based on my very own life choices. So here it goes, "In the beginning. . ."
As a child, I enjoyed life as much as the next child. I did well in school, played the violin, sang in the church children's choir, achieved all the levels in Girls in Action and Girls Scouts, loved memorizing verses for Bible Drill, and played every sport available to a girl my age. There was never a dull moment in my childhood that I shared with an older sister, a younger brother and younger sister. We were taught to live by the golden rule and to show respect in order to gain respect.
My mother and father always taught us as children to work hard for whatever we wanted. "Nothing in life is free" was my father's favorite saying right after "Can't never could!" We learned that with a little effort, patience and some ingenuity, anything was within our reach. Each of us children took that with us as we grew up and went our separate ways.
I married my best friend at the young age of twenty and thirty years later I am still happily married to him. We have a beautiful daughter who loves God with all her heart and sets her goals and aspirations as high as the clouds. One day, she will achieve those dreams and her father and I will be right behind her to watch her shine.
In 1991, right out of school, I took a job as a print room operator at a major bank in downtown Atlanta. I spent my spare time and breaks learning to program the reports I was responsible for printing and distributing. Within two years, I had achieved something unheard of at my age. I was promoted to the level of Officer. For eight years I continued to work my way up the corporate ladder building a lifestyle with my husband that we came to enjoy.
Then, on October 27th, 1997, my life changed forever. After spending an entire day at church, sewing costumes for what was the biggest Christmas event on the south side of town, my husband and I stopped at a store on the way home for a few items. As we left the store and headed down the highway in the rain that was starting to come down, another car crossed the highway without stopping at the stop sign.
We had no where to go but straight into the side of the crossing car. There was no time for brakes and no shoulder to run onto. We hit the other car at 45 miles an hour and spun both vehicles into oncoming traffic. After being hit three times and spinning for quite a ways down the road we came to a stop heading the opposite direction from what we were originally going.
I do not remember much of that car accident as the emergency medical team tell me I blacked out during impact. I do know, that I applied my brake even though I was the passenger! The impact from the crash was so great that the engine of the Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera we were driving came back into the front floorboard and crushed my right foot. However, adrenaline will make you do some mighty things.
After we came to a stop, I got out of our car with my husband and checked on all the other passengers of the other vehicles involved. There was a broken leg, a busted nose, a fractured arm, and many bumps, bruises and scrapes. It was not until I had checked on the last one that I realized the severe pain my foot was in. I made it back to our battered car and sat down. It was then that I realized there was something truly wrong with my foot.
The emergency team took my shoe off, cut my jeans off and then cut my shirt off. As I laid on that stretcher with a neck brace and strapped to a backboard in the ambulance beside my husband, I realized that we had been in something far worse than I could have imagined. I heard them say things like, "Anytime we have been called to a scene like this we do not expect survivors," and "I don't know how they made it out alive," as well as "We are losing him. . .!" The last one was referring to my husband who was going into shock from the events that had just taken place. God was not finished with him yet, and he made it through with some bruised internal organs, but he healed nicely!
We learned several days later that our car accident had shut down the highway we were on for four hours that day. The department of transportation also put a light up at that intersection a short time later. To this day, I still have flashbacks of the accident each time I cross through that intersection.
Tomorrow I will share what we found out at the hospital. . .and why it changed my life forever! And while none of this gives advice on time management, it gives you the beginnings to how I became who I am today. Pictured below are the seven most important principles that I use to manage my time both personally and in business.
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