Why Curiosity Didn't Kill Me

“I could give you a ticket for inattentive driving,” the police officer stated, “but I think you’ve learned your lesson, haven’t you?”
“Yes officer —I have,” I answered.
Some people say that curiosity killed the cat. I am curious. Did curiosity almost kill me? It wasn’t until after my wreck that I thought about the answer. The situation started when I dreamed of running my car into the river. In my dream, the water ran shallower than in waking hours of the day and the current wasn’t as strong. I don’t know how the car got into the river, but that’s where we were. Streams of moisture ebbed its way into the cracks of the door as I frantically tried to climb into the back seat to undo my nine-month-old baby’s seatbelt. I imagined myself breaking the driver’s side window. Water and glass crashed down on me and my baby as my car sunk deeper into the nadir of the river. As we went down with the car, I saw streaks of light flashing down as if trying to pull us up. That’s when the dream ended.
When I woke up, I imagined what would happen if I had run my car into the river. Whenever I saw any kind of running water, I remembered my dream. The river runs about three yards from the main road and follows it, curve for curve, for miles. Nobody went anywhere without coming close to the massive body of water. My curiosity became so intense that I didn’t want to drive anywhere, even to pick up groceries.
One day, my daughter Jewel had been crying for the past hour and she refused to sleep. I decided to take her for a drive to get her to calm down. I told myself there was nothing to fear. Angry tears streamed down my baby’s face as I strapped her tightly into her car seat. After she was secured, I slipped into the driver’s seat and turned the car on. We took off down the driveway, then onto the road the dirt road that connected to the main road. Dust shot up behind us as the tires spit up pieces of gravel. Jewel’s screaming resounded in my ears like a vibrating cymbal. My nerves started to feel like flesh raking across jagged ice cubes.
As we turned onto the paved road, I looked at the meter that measured the depth of the massive body of water. It was higher than average, about nineteen feet deep. It was hard keeping my focus on the lane. My main focus was distracting myself from Jewel’s screaming. I pulled down my visor and took out the first CD I came across. I tried slipping it into the narrow slit of the CD player.
To my luck, my Clarion wouldn’t accept the CD. It acted like it had a bad taste in its mouth and spit the CD out like a child refusing to eat canned spinach. I tried jamming the disc back in when I heard the terrible crunching sound of gravel. I looked up and realized I was missing the next curve on the road. My tires were almost off the edge of the pavement. In a panic, I tried veering to the left toward the river. I realized where I was headed and steered right again.
In my head, everything happened in slow motion. The back of my car fishtailed from right to left. In reaction to the swinging I tried steering in the opposite direction the trunk of the car skidded. The river, still raging, swirled and swallowed as if inviting me to share some dark secret it held at the bottom. Its blackness shook off the sunlight and reared up in defiance. The width of the river seemed to envelope the rest of its surroundings. The river was laughing at me, like a fisherman laughs when he sees a fish swinging off the end of his fishing pole.
To my right was a mountainside. Its boulders jolted up out of the ground, like they jumped off hot coals and froze in the air. A looming mass of rock, covered in scowling shrubs and tangled branches stood barricading my way. As I was in motion, a voice came into my head. The voice was as clear and as real as if someone was really there with me —almost above me. My situation, my surroundings, everything disappeared long enough for a question to come through. All I could see was a light that I could not understand.
“Will you choose the river… or the mountainside?” the voice asked. It was just a simple question, but it shook me. I knew what I wanted to happen.
“The mountainside!” I shrieked in my head.
Everything suddenly sped up. At forty-five miles per hour I hurtled the front end of my car into the ditch. The front bumper stuck into the dirt as my tail end flew over it. For two seconds, my baby and I hung without any force but the air holding us up. Then, we crashed. I felt my weight drop against my seatbelt as we hung upside down. Ironically, music played from the now accommodating CD deck. Dazed, I turned the car off out of habit. I put my arm on the ceiling of the car to hold myself up when I undid my seatbelt.
“Jewel! I need to get Jewel!” I whispered to myself. Shattered glass was everywhere. Neglected junk now lay sprawled ubiquitously on the ceiling. I crawled over the mess and looked at Jewel hanging upside down in her car seat. She had stopped crying and was looking at me. As our eyes met, she smiled. “Yeah, now you’re happy,” I thought to myself as I carefully unhooked her from her straps. While holding Jewel in one arm I tried calling for help from my cell phone. I quickly realized that reception on the back of a mountain wasn’t that great.
I took a second to look around. We had landed in a thorn bush. The prickly branches surrounded us on all sides except one, the driver’s side window. I held Jewel out of the window first, and then tried to climb out without the use of my arms. I slipped and landed on my elbow. The thorns dug into my arm and leg as I tried to pull us back up. Finally, I managed to crawl out of the bush and onto the road. A stream of cars pressed their breaks when they saw me climb out of the ditch. A man in a green Jeep asked if I needed him to call the police. I nodded my head and he drove into town to find a phone.
When the officer arrived, he took one good look at Jewel and me. He examined my car with its wheels and undercarriage blending into the bushes and dirt. While he was talking to the people in yellow hats, I walked over to the river and looked down into the shiny surface. It bubbled and wreathed at my reflection. Did curiosity almost kill me? Yes. Though, as I looked into the water I realized something. My desire to live overpowered my curiosity. My love for my daughter overpowered my curiosity. More importantly, I have a Father in Heaven who gave me a choice. He gave it to me when he knew I would listen to him best. I could live or I could drown in my fear: I could fulfill my purpose here or face the consequences of dwelling too much on dreams. I have responsibility; I have providence. I chose, and choose now, to live. The lesson I was taught will stay in the forefront of my mind throughout my life. No mountain, no river, and no amount of curiosity will shake me away from what God wants me to accomplish— life