Nervous about Traveling? Relax, God Has You
Does God really care for me? How do I know? Those are two questions that Christians often ask. One way to answer them is to reflect on the occasions when God has intervened in our lives. I recently had an occasion to share a series of events in my life that I labeled as ‘traveling mercies.’ In this post, I’m sharing that series of Godly interventions in my life, all having to do with travel.
The Campground
My wife and I took our four children on a camping trip to Mammoth caves. One night, we stayed in a campground near Knoxville, Tennessee. Our four kids, ages 6- 10, wanted to explore the campground while Coleen and I set up the tent. We told them to stay inside the campground and let them go. An hour passed and they weren’t back. Worried, we searched through the campground, and couldn’t find them. We started to panic.
Then I noticed, on the state route outside the campground, a car driving very slowly down the road, and our kids walking next to the car. It seems that a barking dog had scared them into running down the road. They got lost. An elderly lady spotted them and asked if she could help. Since they were told never to get into a car with a stranger, they wouldn’t let her drive them back to the campground. So, she had them walk next to the car, and slowly drove them back to the campground. Later, I realized that God had sent that lady to us when we were in a bind traveling. It was the first of many similar occasions where God sent someone to help in a tense travel situation.
Angels in Detroit
My wife and I as well as Kelly, our youngest daughter, had spent the weekend in Windsor and were driving to the airport in Detroit on a Monday afternoon. They were going to drop me off at the airport, where I would take a flight to a speaking engagement, and then continue home to Grand Rapids. It was rush hour on i-94 in Detroit and we were headed west toward the airport.
I was in the middle of three lanes. I noticed a flatbed truck exiting on the right a bit in front of us. As he entered the exit ramp, he slammed on his brakes and the trailer jackknifed and slid across the freeway, I was able to get into the far-left lane, but the trailer hit us in the right rear and slammed us into the cement wall in the median. We rolled up a hundred yards or so and came to a stop. The trailer had settled perpendicular to the flow of traffic, cutting off all three lanes of traffic behind us. Coleen and Kelly were both upset and appeared injured. I was OK but was disoriented. I wasn’t sure what to do, after calling 911.
Then, in the confusion, a couple of nurses showed up. One was black and one was white, and they were still in hospital scrubs. One had a stethoscope in her pocket. They attended to Coleen and Kelly, calming everyone down. An ambulance then showed up, having come the wrong way on the freeway to get to us. We loaded Coleen and Kelly in the ambulance, and I sat in the front with the driver, and set out for Henry Ford Hospital ER. Kelly was attended to in the pediatric ER, and Coleen in the adult unit. I went back and forth between the two. It turned out that neither had serious injuries. But, as I was talking to Coleen about it, we both began thinking about the two nurses. While in the heat of things we didn’t pay much attention, now we wondered how they could have gotten there. They could not have come from the backed-up traffic behind us, as we would have seen them coming. They couldn’t have come from the other side of the freeway as they would have to cross three lanes of rush hour traffic. The exit was blocked off by the jackknifed truck, so they couldn’t have come that way. They couldn’t’ have come from the side of the freeway, as the freeways in Detroit are below ground level and fenced off. All at once it dawned on us. We both had the same realization. They were angels, sent by God to care for us in a time of great need.
Broken down in Nashville
In the days that we were snowbirds, spending the summers in Grand Rapids and the winters in Sarasota, I was driving with our dog and a packed trailer from Michigan to Florda. On Friday at rush hour, in Nashville, I noted that something seemed wrong with the brake lights. Since we had driven about 10 hours that day, it seemed like a good time to get off the freeway and stop for the night. I exited the freeway and pulled into the first motel I found. They would not let me stay with the dog, so I set out to find another. But the car would not shift out of park. The transmission had seized up. I called AAA and after about an hour of broken connections and busy tow companies they finally hooked me up with a towing company that would tow both the car and the trailer. It was now about 7 PM on Friday night.
A few minutes later, a tow truck showed up and Manny, the driver, introduced himself. He immediately saw what the situation was and told me not to worry, he could see that I was having a really bad day, and he would take care of everything. He loaded up the car, hitched up the trailer, and I and the dog settled into the front seat. There was a Bible on the floor between the seats. He was a Christian and used his downtime between tows to read and study.
We set out to the nearest Hundal dealer. When we arrived, the service department was closed, so I went into the showroom to ask someone where I should park the car for the service department in the morning. “They don’t work weekends” was the reply. Manny overheard this conversation and said “Don’t worry. I have a friend who might be able to help. “
He called his friend, who was eating dinner at home and was planning to go back to his garage to work some more that evening. He agreed to meet us at his repair shop. So, we set off to his place. There we met Jose, who had an independent repair shop. We pulled both the car and the trailer inside the shop, and he agreed to work on it first thing in the morning. Manny then took Milo, our dog, and I to a hotel that would accept us both. He insisted on carrying my overnight bag for me and wouldn’t take a tip.
I called Jose in the morning and took an Uber to the repair show. He had repaired the car but said that the wiring for the trailer was all wrong and that I should take the trailer to a U-Haul facility as they had done the wiring incorrectly and have it fixed. I said, “I’ve spent a full day loading that trailer to fit everything in. I don’t want to unload it and reload it into another trailer.”
“Don’t worry,” Jose said, “we’ll help you.” And, with that he loaded two other men into his car and led me to the U-Haul dealer. There the three of them hung around in case I needed help in unloading and reloading the trailer. The U-Haul owner thought we could use the original trailer, and I wouldn’t need to switch trailers. Jose and his two friends left. Then, Don, the U-Haul manager, spent an hour or so redoing the wiring inside my SUV. When I asked him for the bill he said, “You don’t owe a thing. The U-Haul people where you had this done didn’t do it correctly and I just fixed it.”
Then he said, “In Nashville, we don’t prey on our visitors, we take care of them.” I continued my trip to Florida, attributing this incredible experience with these three God-sent people as a God thing.
Flat tire-1
I had a standing session with a client in the western suburbs of Chicago. I would drive over on Sunday night, spend the night, and then work with them all day on Monday. One Sunday night as I was driving to Chicago, I stopped for gas in Bridgeman, a small town near the Michigan/Indiana border. There I noticed the right rear tire was dangerously low. The air pump at the gas station was broken, and the attendant was no help in identifying another gas station. So, I drove around town a bit to see if I could find another gas station and couldn’t. I pulled into a parking lot with the tire totally flat and began to change the tire. The car was jacked up and I slid the spare out of its space. It was flat as well. At that moment, a car pulled up with a man and woman in it.
“Do you need some help” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do”, I said, and told him the story of the flat spare. He knew of a truck stop that would fill up the spare and offered to take me. So, I loaded the spare into the trunk of his car, slid into the back seat, and he drove me to a truck stop. There, they filled the tire up, producing a huge bulge in the side. Clearly, I couldn’t use that spare tire. My couple decided to take me to a tire store to see if I could buy a spare. Once again, we loaded the now bulging spare in the trunk and set out for a tire store. Alas, it was Sunday night in a small town, and they weren’t open.
At that point, they decided to treat me to a McDonald’s meal and think through a plan for what to do next. They had spent about two hours with me. I decided to go back to the car, call my wife in Grand Rapids, and have her come down and pick me and the spare tire up. The next morning, I replaced the spare, and she drove me back to Bridgeman to put it on the car. Reflecting on this event, I realized that God had sent that couple who so selflessly gave their time to a stranger on the road.
Flat tire – 2
I was driving home to Sarasota from Bradenton when the right rear tire blew out. I eased the car into a Walmart parking lot, parked it all the way at the very back of the lot, and started to change the tire. I had the jack in place, but I couldn’t get the spare out of its holder. It was held on by a cable and I couldn’t get the tire off the cable. It started to rain, and I was lying on the parking lot, at the rear of the car, trying to figure out how to get the spare free. At that moment, a young guy walked up.
“Do you need some help” he asked.
“Maybe” I said. “I can’t get the tire off.”
“Let me do it,” he said. “I used to work at a tire store, I know how to do it.” He then proceeded to retrieve the tire and went on to change the tire for me. Just another instance of God sending someone to help when I was in a difficult traveling situation.
Evelyn
Evelyn, Coleen’s 80-year-old mother, had been staying with us, and it was now time to fly her back to Seattle. She was very frail and in a wheelchair. We were all anxious about the trip, unsure of how she was going to be able to negotiate the airport. I prayed and asked God to intervene and smooth her way. He did. When we pulled up to the curb at the departure section at Tampa airport, an older Hispanic gentlemen greeted us at the car. Before we could get Evelyn out of the car, he was there with a wheelchair.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take care of her all the way to the airplane.”
He helped her out of the car and into the wheelchair, all the while entertaining her with a stream of conversation that went like this. “Oh, you are so beautiful. I am honored to take care of you. Are you single? It is a thrill to be able to care for you.”
Just another instance of God sending someone to help in a tense traveling situation.
Nashvile-2
On one of our annual drives from Grand Rapids to Sarasota, we stopped for the night in Nashville. The next morning, as I was on the entrance ramp merging onto I-75, something slammed into the side of the car. I pulled over and discovered that a deer had run into the car, knocking the driver’s side mirror off and denting the driver’s side door. The car was packed full of stuff we were taking to Florida, I was again hauling a trailer, and I couldn’t see out of the rear-view mirror. The only mirror I had was on the passenger side. That wouldn’t be adequate, and I felt really unsafe trying to drive from Nashville to Sarasota unable to see what was in back or on the side of me. So, we drove into Nashville to find the nearest Ford dealer. There, I explained our plight, and the service person had no solution. They didn’t have those mirrors in stock, and they couldn’t put us in front of the que even if they did. As I turned to leave, a gentleman who was at a desk in the back of the room had overheard our conversation and called out to me. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Let me see what I can do.”
After looking at the damage he disappeared into the shop, reappearing a few minutes later with a broken piece of mirror and a spool of duct tape. Within a few minutes, he had duck taped the mirror piece to the housing on the driver’s side. That allowed me to see almost as if the original mirror was still there. He gave me the duct tape in case I needed to readjust it down the road. What did I owe him?
“Nothing. Have a safe trip.” I recalled what Don had said to me the last time I had a travel mishap in Nashville, and thanked God for sending yet another person to attend to us.
All of these events reinforce the love that God shows to his people, and his willingness to intervene in our lives.
WAS-197
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