I have written about this before ~ on the blog I crashed ~ but though it is a good story I don't talk about it much outside the family. It is one of the stranger things that have happened to us as a family. It makes us no holier than any one else but for those few minutes it was given unto me to have the scales stripped from my eyes to catch a glimpse of the war waged beyond our everyday senses in the Heavenly realms & the lengths to which God goes to protect His people.
At the time we had 3 children. Jossie had just turned 4 & our twins were new borns, about 6 weeks old. We had been on a camping holiday down at Yamba & were returning to our home in Toowoomba with our commodore laden down with car seats, children, blankies, bottles of water & snacks & we were towing a trailer laden with one huge tent, a large wooden cot & all the other paraphernalia that goes with an extended camping trip with small children. It was a lot of weight but the commodore was one of the better cars we have ever owned & Dearest, who likes driving, was travelling well.
We weren't all that far from home when Dearest decided the sun was at a bad point & we changed drivers. I don't mind driving on the open road, particularly when there isn't much traffic, so we swapped over & Dearest promptly went to sleep. I scooted up the highway.
To this day Dearest & I disagree about what happened next but as he was asleep for the first part of it I maintain he's far more likely to have details wrong than I am. ☺ I turned off the highway onto a secondary road. I was still doing about 80Ks when I hit gravel & the trailer I was towing began to fishtail wildly behind me. Amongst all the oddities yet another oddity is that just before we came away Dearest had lectured me on what to do if a tyre ever blew & though I didn't know it at the time I had just lost the front passenger tyre. I remembered not to slam on the brakes. I remember thinking the car would slow because there was an incline coming; all I had to do was keep the car on the road. On one side we had a ditch & a nasty drop. On the other we had a ditch & the side of a mountain. Hitting either would not be pretty. Staying on the road was a really good option, but we were all over the road as the trailer swung out wildly behind me & I struggled to hang onto the wheel & maintain some control.
I was just starting to think we might come out of this in one piece when a semi~trailer crested the rise travelling like all the hounds of Hell were on his tail. Time does really funny things when you are in these sort of situations. It seemed to spaghetti out. I had time to asses the situation. I had time to make choices. I saw the next day's headlines: Family of 5 perishes in Horror Crash. I thought, well, at least we're all together. I saw the horrified whites of the other driver's eyes. I knew we were about to die...
And then we were given our miracle. Suddenly I had two angels riding shotgun on my mudguards. As I point out to my children, if you think I had any time spare for a detailed observation you are completely delusional. I know they were really big & really muscled & they had really big swords. They looked like old fashioned warriors & one was black like a Negro & the other was Saxon fair. If they had wings I never noticed but somehow I think they didn't. For the heartbeats it took for our car to pass the semi~trailer they held our car dead straight on the road so we could pass each other in absolute safety. Then they were gone. My trailer was back to swinging wildly across the road & Dearest was awake & horrified & helping me hold the wheel until we eventually slowed to a stop ~ at which point I had a well deserved meltdown!
I am quite sure that we were supposed to die that day. If we had there would be no Liddy, no Star. Our boys would never have grown to manhood to fulfill God's purpose for their lives. I couldn't understand why we had been so wonderfully preserved when so many perish under less out of control situations. It showed me that there is indeed a terrible war being waged beyond our mortal senses & we are part of that battle ground. Now as Liddy prepares to step out onto the mission field & Dino talks more & more of mission work in Africa I begin to see how much of what God wishes to accomplish through our family nearly ended up under the wheels of a semi~trailer that day.
My kids love hearing this story. It has given them a sense of destiny which I don't think they understood. Only now are they seeing that there was a purpose ~ & that purpose has nothing to do with them. They are merely the agents for God's will. These days I think they are OK with that.
4 comments:
It is a very inspiring story and one that I thought about often as I was reading Billy Graham's Angels.
Love it :)
Have forwarded to a friend. Thank you.
wow, amazing! I had a similar incident the day before our wedding day, though I didn't see angels I *know* I was supernaturally protected from what could have been a very bad accident! On my part though it was on a return trip from our make up person (for the wedding) and on my way to her place I remember praying out loud in the car (as I regularly do) and I felt led to pray Ps 91:11 (the scripture you quoted above)...maybe some one else was praying for you that day....?
Post a Comment