What if?

When my first daughter was born, I hadn't had my driver's license for very long. My husband was always commenting that my driving wasn't very comfortable for my passenger(s). We also live in a city of wreckless and scary drivers (seriously, the DMV doesn't even do an actual road test because they don't want to get in a car with these drivers!). So I was afraid to drive once my daughter was born. I was scared of giving her whip-lash in her car seat, but most of all I was terrified to have an accident with my baby in the car.

I eventually became more relaxed about this. As a SAHM it would have been silly to keep myself locked in the house all day until my husband came home. I accepted the fact that I was probably not the first mother to have this concern, and that all of those women swallowed their fears and put the baby in the car. Well, less than a year ago I was rear ended while sitting still. My daughter was in the back seat, and she started screaming. I jumped from the car and pulled her out of her seat to check her for injuries. She calmed within moments of me picking her up, so I believe she was just frightened...and so was I. I was shaking so badly that I could dial my husband's number correctly. And when his cell phone was dead (ahhh!!), I sounded like a crazy woman to the poor man who answered the switch board at my husband's company.

Well, with little personal injury (and plenty of car injury) I got back into the car and had to pep-talk myself into pulling back into traffic. For weeks after that I felt like I was shaking every time I got behind the wheel of the car. But soon I was relaxed and comfortable again.

Recently my mind has been taunting me with horrific images of accidents and possible results of an accident. As I mentioned earlier, drivers around here are lunatics. So when I see an accident almost happen my mind runs 100 miles/minute with "what ifs." What if that car had hit that guy and is spun into our car and....I get so distracted trying to figure out what I would do if we got into an accident. What if I were trapped and couldn't get my girls out? What if the girls were trapped? Which one would I get out first? How could I make such a choice? What if I couldn't help them? What if I died and my girls were left without a mother? And on, and on it goes.

I know that I need to place my fears in the Father's hands, as He is the One who controls whether we even get into an accident at all. But I struggle. I want to be in control. I need to have a plan for every possible scenario. I'm so arrogant to think that God wouldn't be able to handle it. I know these things, but still my mind starts running.