Friday, February 4, 2011
How to try to describe yesterday….
We got up in the morning still iffy about actually heading out on the roads to drive to San Antonio. I mean, it’s about an 11 hour drive under normal conditions. The conditions yesterday were far from normal. Even on the major interstates, there was still about three inches of solid ice. Around town, some of the residential streets were still nearly impassable.
I’ve never been a big believer in using a “fleece” to ask God for a sign, even though I understand that it is a Biblical concept. I’ve just never had faith for it. (See Judges Chapter 6:36-40 if you don’t know the context) In this case, with our safety at risk, I figured I needed to know whether it was going to be all right for us to make the drive, so I asked for a small sign.
While he’s been in Basic, Taylor has only been allowed to eat what they feed him. When he graduates, he gets a little bit of time to go off base with us and do what he wants, and what he wants is cupcakes. Not just any cupcakes, though. He wants cupcakes from The Cup, a specialty shop downtown real close to our loft.
Some of the downtown businesses have been closed due to the blizzard, however, and we hadn’t gotten any cupcakes. We were going to have to leave early in the morning to get to San Antonio at a reasonable time, so I told God that if there was someone there at The Cup and they would let us in before they were open and they had any cupcakes made that they would be willing to sell us, I would take that as a sign that it was going to be OK for us to make the drive.
We drove around the corner and it happened just exactly the way I prayed. A short time later, just as we were hitting the edge of town, we got a report that the interstate was closed ahead due to a fatal accident. We were going to have to be rerouted onto a lesser highway that was likely to have even worse driving conditions than the interstate.
Even though we had the cupcakes with us as a tangible answer to prayer, I prayed again (like Gideon) and asked God to have the detour take us onto a clearer highway to confirm that it was going to be OK. Almost immediately, the sun came out and we hit nearly clear and dry pavement. God had shown us again that He was with us and keeping us safe.
I’d like to say it was all smooth sailing after that, but it was anything other than smooth. In Oklahoma, we were once again driving on a few inches of ice and at one point, the car suddenly went out of control in a slide. We slid all the way off the road to the right, down the slope of the embankment, then inexplicably back up and back onto the road pointing in the right direction and none the worse for the experience. I imagined it was angels flying alongside and pushing the car back onto the road.
I’ll finish the story tomorrow…obviously we made it, but not without further adventures!
The Restoration Tour 