It was Easter morning after a week of many church services.  DH who was pastor of two mission churches, twenty five miles apart in Iowa, said he was so tired, he wondered how he could get through two more services.  I sympathized but then an idea came to me.  When the two services were over we'd leave town for the rest of the day and the next day which was his day off.  He agreed.  I packed up for the five young ones and arranged to get some cash from our bank.  After the services we all got in the car and started on our trip to find "rest for Daddy".  I started driving on a highway to south of Des Moines, and then south into Missouri.  About four hours later we came to an intersection that had a motel.  I went in and aqrranged for a trailor home that the motel owned that would accomodate the seven of us.  DH went to bed in the far end bedroom,  and the children could watch television at the other end of the trailer and not disturb him.  I rememember that the youngest was about three years old and we made a snug little bed for him on the floor of a wide open closet.  This part of the trip went well.

 

The next morning after breakfast we started out again.  This time we had a mission to find the World's largest Cottonwood tree which was advertized along the way.  I was driving  and there was a lot of traffic following the Easter weekend.  As I was going up a small hill , our middle child said, "Mom, I'm carsick".  I pulled over quickly to tend to him and as I did, a very fast moving car was speeding over the hill in my lane.  Had our son not said what he did, when he did, it would have been a head on accident.  We heaved a sigh over what almost happened and then I turned to our son.  He said he wasn't carsick anymore.  And he wasn't.

 

We continued on our trip which included a very long walk in a wooded area.  We did find the tree and took pictures.  Then we returned home by nightfall with no further problems.

 

Now, I ask you, "was this a miracle?  Were guardian angels watching over our family?  Or what else might have caused such a near miss?"  Once upon a time.......

 

In the news today we read about a dog who was found left in a car at the airport parking lot for three weeks.  Can you believe that?  The owner said it was an accident.  The dog actually survived but no one can figure how as he had no food or water and the temperatures were around zero.  He lost half of his weight.  The police gave the owner a huge fine and they took the dog away from him.  Someone will nurse him back to health and find him a new home.  It really hurts to think anyone could be this cruel to an animal.  How could any owner not know his dog was in the car?  All the dogs I ever saw made their presence known at all times.

It was at Tullys early this morning.  I had to drive DH to his 6:30 men's Bible Class because he wanted to carry his laptop computer along with his books so he didn't want to walk.  We have to get there at 6 am and he meets a lady friend there named Trish.  We sat with her and as other regulars came in they would greet one another by name and have short discussions about things of common interest.  After Jim went around the corner to his class, I read our paper and watched some of the people gather in comfy seats around the fire and chat.  It is a regular community of interesting people with interesting lives and backgrounds.  They are of different ages, young and some gray haired elderly folks.  I thought about how nice it was that they had all those friends there.  Friends are what makes our world so much more interesting and adds a richness of comraderie.  I have often seen men sitting alone reading a Bible.  And there are young men working at computers.  Jim's friend Trish goes to a health club for morning workout and then comes to Tullys where she drinks her coffee and reads a newspaper.  It is a little city within a city.  I found this quite interesting,