The Night Everything Didn't Change

Reflecting on 10 years since our accident shut down I-65

We pulled off the highway to swing through McDonald’s for dinner just south of Louisville amid a violent, driving rain on our way back to Nashville after spending Thanksgiving in Fort Wayne, Indiana with our families.

It was November 29, 2015. I was in my second year of seminary and struggling mightily with my Hebrew class, and I asked Susie to take over driving the rest of the way home so that I could sit in the passenger seat and study my vocabulary flash cards on my phone.

We sat in about 90 minutes of traffic around Elizabethtown due to an accident, but after that cleared, we were able to get going again. For being 7:30-or-so in the evening the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the traffic was mercifully light. According to the GPS we would be home close to 10 o’clock, which was fine with us—we didn’t have kids yet and could handle sliding into the apartment pretty late after a trip back home to Indiana.

We were listening to the newly-released Purpose album by Justin Bieber. The back seat was full with Thanksgiving leftovers like Amish peanut butter, Babee’s chicken and rice, and probably some desserts. My Playstation 4 sat on the floor of the backseat. I had taken it home because back then we still had plenty of free time when visiting home without children, and there was a new Call of Duty waiting to be played over the break.

The Accident

Around mile marker 67, just about a half-hour south of Elizabethtown near Munfordville, the rain had picked up again. “The Feeling,” by Justin Bieber (featuring Halsey) was playing in the 2009 Toyota Camry we had recently purchased from my parents.

Here’s what I wrote about what happened next, back on December 7, 2015:

Susie was behind a car and the “wake” of the rain spitting off of it was making it difficult to see. So, she moved into the left lane and sped up just a bit to get around the car so she could see more clearly. Shortly after moving into the left lane, we hit a deep puddle, spraying water up onto the windshield. Susie couldn’t see, so she attempted to slow down, which caused her to lose control of the car.

“Oh no!” she said through a terrified, cracky voice as we began to swerve. I said nothing (she tells me, I have no recollection), and held on tight: I knew what was coming. I tightened the grip of my right hand which was already on the bar above my passenger window, and clung to my iPhone in my left hand, which was doubling as a music box and a study tool.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight like a little boy does when he thinks you can’t see him because he can’t see you, and I shut my mouth like you do when you jump into a pool, only more forceful. I felt us hit the wall, but listening to the sound of the shattering glass distracted me from our flip onto the roof of the car.

I opened my eyes, and before I could process my aliveness, I looked through my blurry vision out my absent window because I’ve seen enough TV to know what happens next. When I saw headlights out my window, I closed my eyes and my mouth for what I was certain was coming: another car or three.

After what could have only been a few seconds, I opened my eyes again to hear Susie saying nothing but, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” through her tears. Feeling virtually no pain myself, I didn’t even think about the fact that one of us could be seriously hurt. I just knew we had to get out of the car no matter what. My iPhone was still in my hand (yes, it was), so I turned on the flashlight.

Being in our car on its roof reminded me of how I used to feel being in my school outside of normal school hours. It’s some sort of pseudo-reality in which something totally familiar feels totally foreign.

Anyway:

Susie unbuckled herself easily, and I claimed I couldn’t unbuckle my seatbelt. In my disorientation, I thought my buckle was on my right side, but as I was the passenger, it was on my left. I told Susie I couldn’t undo my seatbelt, so she did it for me. At this point, help began arriving at the car. A woman, Lisa, I believe, approached Susie’s side of the car, and a man, Kyle, was on my side.

They were asking how many people were in the car and if we were OK. I feel bad even now, but I feel like I remember them asking this a number of times, and eventually I responded in frustration, “It’s just the two of us, we’re fine, just get us OUT!”

“Turn off the car!” Kyle said, and that’s when I realized why. “Oh no,” I thought, “This car could explode. Maybe it’s already on fire.” Instantly, getting out of the car wasn’t the next step, it was a matter of survival. I began to panic when neither Susie nor I could turn the car off. Both of us just started looking for the easiest way out.

One way or another, my door was pinned shut. However, the window was completely blown out and gone, so I tried to slide my legs out that way. No dice—only about half of the window was not against the ground, so nothing above my knees fit through.

At this time, Susie realized what is, without a doubt, the scariest part of the ordeal for me. As she attempted to maneuver out of her door, Susie realized her hair was pinned under the car. The sunroof of our Camry also blew out in the crash, and somehow, as the car flipped and/or slid, her ponytail went through the sunroof and about half of the hair on her head was pinned between the roof of the car and the ground below it.

Susie screams, “I’m pinned by my hair,” which I relay to Kyle outside my door. People began asking around for scissors or a knife. A few seconds later, someone handed me what had to be something like a six-inch hunting knife, which I had not business handling in my current state. As I was looking at Susie’s hair to figure out the best way to safely do the deed, Susie frantically began yanking her hair. Eventually, she yanked most of it free, opened her slightly sky-facing door, and crawled out of the car. I followed just seconds behind her.

After Susie and I hug and make sure each other is OK, Lisa (a former ER nurse, by the way) is tending to Susie, asking the others who have stopped for more coats, blankets, etc., as it was rather cold and wet.

I use my iPhone flashlight to examine myself a bit, as I talk with the others there about if we hit anyone else and if my face looks OK (relatively speaking). I see only minor cuts on my hands, and my lip was swollen, as I had nearly bit through it. Susie is obviously shaken, but truthfully she was in a worse mental state than she was a physical one.

After what seemed like hours, but was only probably 15-20 mins, Kentucky State Troopers, a couple of firetrucks, and an ambulance all arrived on the scene. Without fail, each safety official who arrived on the scene went straight to Susie, who was surrounded, sitting on the ground with coats and blankets to keep warm in the standard Midwest 40º drizzle of a November night. I stood by talking to those who stopped and examining myself thinking I had to be more injured than I actually was. At one point, Susie was so mad at all of the attention she was getting and the lack of attention I was getting that she sternly said to the troopers and firefighters, pointing at me, “HE WAS IN THE CAR, TOO! PLEASE CHECK ON HIM!”

This happened once or twice with different responders. Each time, they looked at me, and I just said, “I’m fine.” Because I really was, to everyone’s surprise, it seemed.

It was the first night on the job for one of the state troopers. He told me someone wrecked because of that same puddle the night before, and that the construction company working there had been warned. Eventually, when the ambulance arrived, we climbed in, they checked our vitals, and asked if we wanted to go to the hospital. My only hesitancy was that I know it can cost a ton to ride in an ambulance, and it didn’t seem like we needed treatment. But we decided to go anyway. Better safe than sorry, we figured.

Almost all who responded. The EMTs, police officers, firefighters, and emergency room personnel seemed to be looking at us with wide eyes and confusion. A sort of, “You sure you’re really OK? Like, for real?” It was a regular reminder of how fortunate we really were.

We were briefly examined in the ER—we actually wish they would have done more than they did—and eventually a sheriff’s deputy arrived at the hospital to take us to a Super 8 for the night.

Fun fact: about two weeks later, the state of Kentucky shut down that portion of I-65 for a time because they couldn’t figure out how to get it to drain water properly amid all of the construction. I like to think the sternly-worded email I sent to the construction company helped play some role in that decision.

Reflecting on the Accident 10 Years Later

This past Saturday, November 29, 2025, we drove the same stretch of I-65 in the middle of Kentucky. This time with two little girls, a dog, and plenty of leftovers, again, in tow.

This time we drove through mile marker 67 in the early afternoon, under overcast skies. I was listening to Christmas music. Susie was napping. Maggie and Daisy were watching two different movies in their seats. The dog was panting in the third row, looking forward to stretching his legs once we got home.

I do most of the driving to and from Indiana these days, which I’m happy to do. And while Susie was a bit more spooked by the 10-year anniversary of our accident than I was, I would be lying if I said making the same drive on the same date didn’t give me a touch of the heebie-jeebies. I was tempted to put the same Bieber song on the speakers as we drove over the spot, but for Susie’s sake I refrained.

If I’m going to be honest, I don’t think about the accident as much as I would like. What I mean is that I wish I had a firmer grasp on the overwhelming sense of gratitude I had immediately following the accident. Today, the accident has faded into the realm of life of events that I know I experienced but that feel like were part of another lifetime—like playing high school football or moving into college.

It was a violent accident. We basically rode a wave of water up a temporary concrete barricade on the left side of the left lane on I-65 and rolled over onto the roof of our car, landing in the middle of the interstate, and we came out with more mental scars than physical ones. I consider that borderline miraculous.

The most terrifying part of the experience for me to remember is when I opened my eyes after the car stopped moving. I looked out my blown-out passenger window toward oncoming traffic. My glasses were on, but had slid down to the tip of my nose, so all I saw were blurry, astigmatism-ified headlights headed right for us. I still vividly remember closing my eyes and waiting for impact. I remember, too, thinking it would be the last thing I saw. My life didn’t flash before my eyes or anything, but I was aware of what I thought was about to happen.

By God’s grace, traffic wasn’t dense enough for this to happen. No other cars were involved in our accident. Somehow the traffic behind us was able to stop in the ponding water without hydroplaning. The first two people who approached the car were a retired ER nurse and a guy who lived like 10 miles from us (we were still a couple hundred miles from home). God’s hand was so evident in the small details surrounding the accident that night. Not just in our immediate protection, but in so many small graces we experienced in the immediate aftermath. Our church family and employers were gracious and so supportive. I haven’t experienced a ton of hardship in my life, and this traumatic experience still reminds me of how important it is to have community.

Life has changed so much since the accident. Yes, I do most of the Indiana driving now, and we don’t leave super late on Sundays to come home from Indiana anymore. These are small parts of life that have changed. But of course we have children now, too, and a dog, and I can’t even imagine experiencing something similar today.

Perhaps the most impactful fruit of the accident is how it affected Susie mentally. Susie has struggled with some measure of anxiety since she was little, but Susie really struggled after the accident with believing we were actually, physically unharmed. Understandable, really.

Eventually, about eight months later in the following summer, this came to a head with a bout of panic attacks and anxiety that weren’t rooted in the accident, but were triggered by it. Working through Susie’s anxiety together has been a major part of our marriage and lives for the last 10 years, and though it hasn’t been easy, I’m grateful for it—not for the anxiety, but for God’s timing in using the accident to cause it to boil over. The anxiety bubbling under the surface for Susie was bound to spring up sometime and in some way, and that the accident was the tipping point was honestly a grace, at least in my mind. Life has only gotten more chaotic and inherently stressful since then, so to be able to work through the earliest stages of that struggle in that season was a gift.

Between the accident in the fall of 2015 and Susie’s panic attacks in the summer of 2016, we moved out of our apartment east of Nashville and into our home in the suburbs. We joined a church with a robust counseling ministry and developed a relationship with a counselor in Nashville. That Susie’s long-bubbling anxiety came out in full-force in that season of life rather than, say, now, is a blessing. It gave Susie plenty of time to work on her own struggles before we had children, and it led to a fruitful career for her, as she eventually went to work for her counselor, using her gifts and helping others struggling in similar ways.

Of course, I wouldn’t wish for the accident to happen again, but it is fair to say that in the events surrounding and resulting from the accident I have seen God work in some of the most impactful ways in our lives and our marriage, and I’m certain we are better people for the experience than without it.

November 29, 2015 was the night everything could have changed, but it didn’t. But some things did change—in difficult and beautiful ways—and for that, I’m grateful.