Oh the power of prayer…I marvel at His mercy!

“What?  Are you serious?  We are stopping 35 miles from home?  What are we going to eat for dinner?  I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed!”  Oh out of the mouths of babes… can I still call them that when they are 17 & 14?

We tried with all our might to get home before the snow, however, we delayed slightly by leaving Orlando on Saturday at 10 rather than friday.  Although, if we had left Friday, we would have run into the sleet and ice that hit the mountains on Saturday.  As it was we saw numerous cars on the side of the road and a semi that had spun out in Knoxville when we got that far on Sunday.

Knowing that we were going to hit some snow, I began to pray and sent out texts asking for travel mercy prayers to those whom I knew would actually pray.  By the time we hit Indianapolis, I saw on the local news channels in our home town that there were numerous spin outs with several multi car pileups.  Not excited to see what was coming, I admit my panic level rose slightly.  Gary and I have differing views of snow and what is drivable vs. “stay at home and wait it out”.  Being that I already didn’t feel good and was in quite a bit of pain due to upping one of my meds, I admittedly was even more anxious. When you add in the extras:  that we were in a 40 foot RV made out of plywood placed on a semi chassis, towing a car, riding with your best friend, your two children and two cats, to say the least I was extremely uncomfortable.

Not knowing quite what else to do, I embraced the moment by washing the dishes as Gary drove and put away all sharp projectile objects, cleared off the counters, pulled sheets off of the bed, changed from my pajamas into my clothes and into clean “bundies” and brushed my hair and my teeth.  After all, my mother always joked that you needed to make sure to have on clean underwear just in case you get into a car accident.  I thought that it would be appropriate to brush my teeth as well just in case recessitation would be in order.   Then I sat in the passenger seat with my phone to capture spin outs, hoping that it wouldn’t be ours.

Thank goodness I didn’t capture anything other than snowy roads, which by the way got so bad that we could no longer see any lanes.  After almost two hours of driving trying to guess what was a lane and going at a speed of 30 mph, we crossed the border into our home state and stopped for the night at a rest area.  Yes…. 35 miles from our house!  It wasn’t pretty yet it was necessary.  We did not have to experience any spin outs and we missed all of the fun others were having closer to home.  Rather, we sat on the couch of the RV watching Duck Dynasty reruns, eating cereal and chips for dinner while truckers began to follow our lead and pour into the rest area.

This will be one final mishap memory in the travel journal of our 2013 Thanksgiving road trip to Florida.   Alongside the memories of the glass gallon of milk that fell out of the fridge (for the second time), monster mosquito bites (thanks honey for grilling for us), the toilet that overflowed during the flush out process (note to self: don’t leave the campsite when you are flushing out the black tank), and the cat crap cleanup…trying to forget that one actually!