Socks and a Camera: How Our Lives Were Spared This Week

     This week, we drove 90 miles from our home to visit my sweet friend, Lynnae.  We've been friends for about 13 years, and we try to visit each other a few times a year since our daughters are very close friends.  We also hadn't seen their new baby foster daughter who just turned one year old yesterday!  She's been living with them for 3 weeks now, and they are hoping to adopt her.

     Anyway, we were 15 minutes up the freeway on the way back home later that day when I realized I had left our camera plus a pair of socks there in their living room.  I called them to make sure they'd still be home, and we turned around to go back to their home.

     I accidentally took the wrong exit back to their home and had to backtrack, so it set us behind about 40 minutes on our drive back home.

     Brittany (my 11-year-old) said, "Mom, why do we sometimes forget things like that, and now it has taken a lot more driving to get back home?" 

       I told her, "You know, sometimes things like that happen, and I just have to not get upset.  Instead, I need to think to myself,

       'There must be some reason why I wasn't supposed to be on the freeway at some point on the road at a particular time.' "   

     Brittany said, "What do you mean?" 

     I told her, "Well, maybe there was a car wreck we would possibly have been a part of if we had continued on and hadn't gone back to get our camera."

     "Oh," she replied.

     Forty minutes up the road, and I'm not kidding you, there was a car at the top of the summit/mountain that had flipped and rolled and landed upside down onto the concrete median divider.  The driver was obviously deceased.  Traffic was backed up for about 15 minutes before we could get driving again. 

     I looked at Brittany after we watched the dead woman's body being placed onto a stretcher or gurney.  She gave me this look as if to say, "God knew we shouldn't have been on the road earlier."

     I told the girls, "For some reason, God's timing was not for our last day to be today.  It may be tomorrow, but it wasn't today.  We were supposed to go back and get that camera this afternoon so we wouldn't be a part of this horrible accident."

     It was pretty quiet in the car the rest of the way home.  I spent time in prayer for that woman's family and friends.

     God is so faithful.  And if tomorrow is my day to go, I'm ready.  Not perfect, but ready. 

     I cannot tell you how many times something like this has happened to me, often enough, that when we are delayed by a train, or forgetting something, or a last-minute phone call, I really don't get upset by it anymore.

     And another close friend mentioned another perspective on this whole incident which I think deserves to be mentioned.  Going back for the socks might not have been because that would keep us from being a part of that accident.  The reason we might have had to go back for the socks and the camera might have been so that the girls would see how dangerous it can be to drive a vehicle.  After all, Kelsi will be learning to drive in another 18 months!

     We don't know what tomorrow will bring to us.  We don't know our "day of reckoning."  I don't really want to know when that day will be. 

     But when I have to run back home because I forgot something, or a train slows us down and makes us late no matter how much we prepared to leave the house early, I'm no longer going to get worried about that.  These are things which are out of my control, and instead of worrying about it, I'm going to choose to trust Him who knows every minute of my life.

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