Araka Stoval and her boyfriend Hunter were driving together when in an instant everything changed. Their truck drifted off course and slammed into a concrete pillar at nearly 75 mph. The wreckage was nearly unrecognizable. When 21-year-old opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Hunter slumped against the windshield, his face bloodied and his body still.
For a moment, she was certain they were both gone. Then, out of the corner of her eye, something caught her attention. That’s when she noticed something strange outside her window. Through the shattered glass, a man was standing in the road. He had a white beard, a calm smile, and a presence that didn’t make sense out there in the middle of nowhere.
There were no other cars around and no traffic passing by. Yet somehow there he was, looking straight at her. Ara would later describe how the sight of that man kept her from panicking completely. He seemed to tell her without words that help was already on the way. And just as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone.
In the next moment, flashlights broke through the darkness as paramedics rushed toward the wreck. Rescuers couldn’t believe what they found. Despite the speed of the crash, neither nor Hunter had suffered broken bones, lasting head trauma, or internal injuries. By all accounts, they should not have been alive.
Yet, less than 48 hours later, both were discharged from the hospital. Days later, when the couple returned to the crash site, they discovered something else that gave them chills. Amid the shattered glass and twisted steel, Hunter’s Bible was lying open, its pages untouched by the crash. The verse it had fallen on carried a message neither of them would forget.
I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. For Ara, it felt like confirmation of what she saw that night, that a presence had been watching over them when survival seemed impossible.