Not An Ordinary Day After All

The day started out like a typical Saturday. Roger had a meeting in a small town about 30 miles away, while I had a meeting in a nearby town. After my meeting, my daughter and two grandchildren planned to shop for school clothes. My husband was to travel another 45 miles to play with a band for a small town country music show. He would get home about midnight.

We said good-bye and each drove to our respective meetings. After the meeting, I enjoyed a leisurely meal at a local tearoom with the other group members.

I picked up my daughter and grandchildren, and we proceeded to their favorite department store. The children made their selections, tried them on, and made a final decision.

We stopped at Sonic for the half-priced 2 to 4 P.M. happy hour. We refreshed ourselves with ice cold slushies before continuing our shopping trip.

Two hours and two stores later, we had exhausted ourselves and my checkbook. I dropped them off at their house and drove fifteen miles home.

I stopped at the grocery for milk before heading home. I checked mail, let the dog out, and stopped to check phone messages.

That’s when my day became anything but routine. Three messages from my husband informed me he was broken down an hour away along a secondary country road with his cell phone battery almost gone.

It’s 100 degrees more or less. It was 6:30. He had called at 5:15 the first time. I herded the dog inside and back into her cage, grabbed my keys, and rushed out the door to the car.

I made myself drive the speed limit. I tried to call him, but only managed to say, “Where are you?” before his phone went dead.

I drove and prayed he wouldn’t dehydrate and that he had something to drink with him. An hour later I neared the small community he’d mentioned. I watched the road for a sign of him.

His car was nowhere in sight. I entered the next community realizing I hadn’t spotted him. I pulled over and tried his cell phone, even knowing it was dead. In the rearview mirror, I spotted a tow truck with his car on it. What a lucky coincidence or was it?

Earlier, he’d used the tow truck owner’s phone to tell me to meet him at the Dairy Queen, but I'd been in a dead zone so the call didn’t come through. My plan had been to go to the Dairy Queen for a restroom break before formulating a plan to hunt for him. How did we independently decide to go to the Dairy Queen?

We decided God had been looking out for us even though we didn’t know he had. I usually go with him to that particular show, but couldn’t because of his other meeting. If I had gone with him, we’d both been stranded.

The show doesn’t get over until after 10:00 so either he or both of us would have been stranded at 11:00 at night with no service on our cell phone.

If he’d been stranded alone, I would have been driving up and down dark country roads after midnight trying to find him.

In spite of our calamity and prospective car repair bill, we feel blessed at how things worked out.

It just goes to show you, just because a day starts out ordinary, doesn’t mean it will stay that way.