My friend Author Sharon Connell (http://www.amazon.com/author/sharonkconnell) shared a travel miracle story.
Kathy, I have a travel story that involves my move from
Des Plaines, IL to Pensacola, FL when I went to Bible school there.
My son and his wife traveled from Pensacola to Des Plaines
to help me move. We loaded the cars with my daughter's bicycle mounted on top
of Ron's vehicle (fortunately, he was an avid bicyclist at the time and had a
rack).
We took off in the wee hours of the morning, a fourteen to
fifteen hour journey to Pensacola. I followed Ron's vehicle from the start. If
I wanted to stop somewhere, I'd flash my lights and he'd pull off the road to
see what I wanted. All went well as we traveled from Illinois, through Indiana,
to Tennessee, until dusk.
We'd been following a cattle trailer pulled by one of those
heavy-duty pickup trucks for many miles. If I remember right, there were about
six to eight head of cattle in the trailer. It was as if we were
playing leapfrog. He'd pull around us, and a little while later, we'd pull
around him. We stopped at the same place for lunch and dinner that the cattle
hauling pickup did each time.
After our last stop, my vehicle started to act up. We were
in the middle of the Smoky Mountains, up and down the rolling hills,
when my engine began to lose power. I also lost the lights. Ron apparently was
in a conversation with his wife and hadn't noticed our car falling behind, nor
did he hear the weak horn when I blew it. I told my daughter, Heatherlyn,
then ten years old, to start praying because we were never going to make it up
the next hill.
I'd been watching the reflectors on my daughter's bike
spin as Ron traveled ahead of us. Now the reflectors were barely seen as
my headlights dimmed to almost nothing. There were no other cars around, and
the truck with the cattle trailer had passed us and moved on a little while
ago. I prayed that my son would notice we weren't behind him anymore, but I had
no idea how he'd find us unless he got off the road, entered the other
direction, and then retraced the journey. I also had no idea how long it
would be, and it was getting dark.
As my car started up the last hill, I pulled off onto the
shoulder, and the engine died. My daughter and I prayed and asked God for His
help. I was at the point of tears, but didn't want to cry and scare Heatherlyn.
When I lifted my head, I saw Ron's car, driving backward on the shoulder,
coming over the rolling hilltop in front of us, bike pedal reflectors spinning
like mad. Praise God!
After I told Ron what happened, he tried the starter on my
car, and it started right up. Huh? Lights came on, and everything seemed
normal. He got out of the car and said he had no idea what was wrong. I said, I
didn't either. He suggested we get off the highway at the next exit so he could
find some light and check the engine. We did that, but he still couldn't find
anything wrong, and the car didn't slow down again or lose the lights.
We decided to proceed with our journey to Pensacola and
trust God to get us there. Ron said he'd follow us for the rest of the journey,
and we took off.
About half an hour later, what little traffic had
accumulated on the road since we reentered had stopped. When we neared, we saw
the highway patrol blocking everything in both directions, and some of the
officers trying to round up cows in the median strip. The truck and trailer
we'd been playing leapfrog with earlier was also in the median strip, the trailer
on its side. Apparently, the driver had swerved to miss something running
across the road, and the trailer toppled over onto the median strip in the
process. No one was hurt in the accident, and all the cows were uninjured.
Another praise God.
Not only had God kept us from being involved, and possibly
injured, in this accident by giving my car a hiccup, but He protected the
driver and the animals.
I'll never forget that night. I used this incident in one of the scenes in my very first published novel. Another blessing. And a miracle.