Faith Building Experience

The other night, while traveling on the freeway, Jeff and I had what I like to call a faith building experience. We ran into a bad snow storm with 2 inches of snow on the roads, blizzard like conditions, although we could still see, and snow coming down like crazy in HUGE flakes. I was busy reading while Jeff was driving and I hadn't looked up in at least 15 minutes. Jeff, being the smart man that he is, never mentioned the snow storm we were driving through, and I didn't even notice when he slowed down to 40 mph. When I did finally look up I almost freaked out, but my first thought, which I verbalized, was "we need to say a prayer". I immediately said a prayer for our safety and protection, for Jeff as the driver, and for peace and calm for me as the worried passenger (I tend to freak out and get extremely worried when driving in bad weather).

Not 30 seconds later my prayer was put to the test. The back end of the car started fishtailing and Jeff knew we were sliding/hydroplaning. Jeff shouts "oh shoot!" as he loses control and we take off spinning. The next 10 seconds all seemed to happen in slow motion and we both had multiple scenarios going through our heads. Jeff's parking lot doughnut skills kicked into action as he immediately turned the wheel into the spin and lightly tapped the break as he's thinking: 1. we're going to hit a reflector post and go into the median, but 2 we're not going fast enough to cross all the way over to the other side of the freeway, 3 we won't roll either because we're not going fast enough. He also saw a car on the other side slowing down, so he knew we would have help. Then as we reached 180 degrees in the spin he was looking at the traffic headed straight towards us and thought: ok, they won't hit us they are too far away.

I on the other hand, went rigid as we started spinning and watched as we inched closer and closer to the reflector post. We were headed towards it such that it would hit just behind my door on the passenger door. At this point I closed my eyes and braced myself for the impact with these thoughts going through my head: Oh my gosh, we're going to crash, we're going to hit that pole, we're going to roll, and end up in the median. Good thing we have insurance, good thing we're wearing seat belts, good thing I work for a rental car company (I'm sad to admit that this last thought really did go through my head. Does that say I work too much or what? But when I've lived and breathed Enterprise everyday for almost 4 years, what do you expect?).

10 seconds later our car has done a full 360 plus some as we've continued about 40 yards down the freeway, but then miraculously it comes to a stop, not because of a pole, or because we're in the median, we just stop in the middle of the road. No crash, no dent, no rolling, no damage, no injuries. I open my eyes and shout: "We're ok, we're ok, it's ok. We're ok!" We could not believe it! What happened to the post inches from our car? The ditch we were supposed to be in?
My prayer was answered! We were safe and protected, the car was not damaged, Jeff drove us through it amazingly, and I was calm! I normally would have been crying and completely freaking out, but I wasn't! I was shaking a little and in shock to be honest.

We relaxed for a moment and then got moving again, slower this time. After all that Jeff starts laughing! He said, "Well it's over now, we can laugh about it!" This was like the ultimate doughnut experience to him, but for me, I wasn't quite ready to laugh about it.

We honestly know that we were ok and nothing bad happened because of our prayer. Our Heavenly Father was listening and he did protect us. We are so grateful for his love and protection that night. Like the title says, definitley a faith building experience!

Click HERE to view a slight dramatization of what happened.