.As I was driving my Tesco van along the country lanes towards Buckland Brewer in 2010,

I met a car coming up the other way. I was not going fast at all, but it was a hill and it seemed to be taking both vehicles ages to stop.

Everything seemed to go into slow motion, closer and closer, I thought I had stopped, but then

BANG!!!

Then I felt this pillowy thing and thought to myself “That must be the airbag”.

I thought I had better get out and see if the other people were ok because the passenger was an older lady.

As I undid my seatbelt, I remember remarking to myself how long it was, it seemed to have stretched or something.

So, I got out, the driver was the daughter of the lady and she was fine and wandered off down the road to get a phone signal.

I asked the lady if she was ok and she was alright generally, but I phoned an ambulance as a precaution anyway.

I always played Worship Music when I was driving and Mighty to Save was playing and, because despite all that had happened I had actually left the key in position to keep the music playing, purely because I hoped they would be led to Jesus by hearing it.

Anyway, I kept talking to her, she had been on her way to the hairdressers, she didn’t seem to be the happiest of lady’s generally, but I kept on making conversation crouched down by the driver’s door. I happened to notice my hand which was holding onto the door, it was shaking quite violently. “I haven’t got time for that.” I told myself and promptly ignored it.

The ambulance turned up and I got out of the way so they could deal with the lady.

For some reason, I decided to go and sit down behind the back of their car, I do remember thinking it was a really stupid place to sit, and once sitting down, also realised I wouldn’t be able to get back up if it started to roll back. Someone, I think it was an ambulance person asked me if I was ok, I said yes but then apparently passed out.

I came round and they put a neck brace on me and took me to the ambulance, they had to wait for other paramedics to come to put me on the spine board thing, so I was sitting upright with the neck brace when a policeman turned up. I asked him if he needed to breathalyse me, he looked a bit confused and said “Why, have you been drinking?”.

I said “No, but you have to breathalyse everybody who has an accident don’t you?” I think he said not to worry for now. (He never did actually breathalyse me and the verdict on the crash was no fault attached.) Anyway, I must have clearly been in shock because I would vary from having a perfectly normal conversation to worrying about my satnav and Bible that were still in the van and the infamous breath test and back to normal again. I got them to phone work and I think they even phoned the customer I was on my way to before the crash.

So, strapped to the spinal board it was a long wait before we headed towards the hospital, I felt totally at peace, telling the paramedic about my faith, but then I began to feel a lot of pain, so they gave me Entonox, I went to inhale a massive breath of it, but stopped with my mouth open, it’s a drug, I didn’t want Satan to sneak back into my life whilst my guard was down. So, I just took some normal little breaths of it (not the huge nonstop lungful’s I had when in labour with my daughter). I think they thought I had a brain injury because I think i was showing signs of agitation and so they put on the blue lights and rushed me to the hospital, but I knew I’d be fine and apart from being in a lot of pain, I was - all I had was whiplash.

So, I was signed off work for a week, given some heavy duty painkillers and told to rest which I did, but it came to the day when I needed to take my eldest son to work, we lived in the sticks and there was no other way. I got him to drive there as he was learning to drive anyway, I was a nervous teacher, but anything was better than me driving, which would be awful. After dropping him to work, I was going to church, so I nervously got into the driver’s seat, it was horrible, I really thought I was never going to be able to drive again.

As I made my way from the old Tesco in Rose Lane to Grosvenor Church I saw one of the Tesco managers (it was about five feet into my journey) and I nearly stopped and asked her to drive me there, but I couldn’t because I knew I’d burst into tears.

So, I went into church, and I told my friend there about it and she prayed with me. Church continued and finished and out I went to the car, as I reached my hand out to open the door, my hand touched the door handle and I felt the fear leave me, a bit like a little static electrical shock feeling.

I got in the car and drove it like I used to, like nothing had ever happened, then as I headed home, driving up the hill this time along the country lane by where I lived, almost home, a Land Rover came hurtling towards me, him braking violently, his tyres sliding on the ground sending up clouds of dust, me pulling gently to one side and “stopping on a sixpence”. Him apologising profusely, me with the biggest smile on my face saying it was totally ok and thanking Jesus, because that was the final bit of the memory reset.