It’s a funny choice for my “favorite” story of the year, but covering the House Oversight Committee hearing on the first assassination attempt of President-elect Donald Trump left a deep impression on me. The story of the sniper’s bullet whizzing by Trump’s head at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, will be told and retold for decades, if not centuries. And at the Capitol in July, I sat front row for official deliberations concerning the Secret Service’s mishandling of the moment.

Like most, I’m still processing the failures of the Secret Service, which were profound to the point of being bizarre. Each layer that was peeled back only raised more questions. The repetitive stonewalling from Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle took even Democratic members by surprise. We ultimately learned little from the four-hour grilling. I will never forget the looks of sincere bewilderment in the room that day. It was unsettling how little our leaders seemed to understand.

And all the while, I kept replaying in my mind the shot of Trump swiveling his head at the precise moment to escape death. It’s one thing to witness history, but another thing altogether to witness the hand of God working in history so directly.

Take a moment to consider how different things would be if Trump hadn’t turned his head. Would we have been launched into a civil war? Would there have been an election at all? All we can say for sure is that we missed a nation-changing event by that much.

Pertinent questions remain unanswered. We still know almost nothing about the would-be assassin Thomas Crooks. We still don’t know why the Secret Service allowed Trump to take the stage despite Crooks being spotted by law enforcement with a range finder, nor why the roof hadn’t been secured.

I pray that we learn the answers to these troubling questions in the near term.