Definitely Protected

Anticipation was building as we were leaving for Texas for Christmas. We had been looking forward to going and had everything ready to go. The suitcases were all packed and loaded up in the van and all the gifts for the kids were packed and ready to be opened on Christmas morning. Marc came home from work and went to bed shortly after he came home so he could get some sleep as he was the first one driving and we were going to leave around midnight on Christmas Eve. It was a 16 hour drive down to my brother's house - no big deal, we've done that trip before. As always, we prayed before we left that God would keep us safe. Little did we know that that little prayer would pay off.

We decided to follow the GPS instead of taking the last route that we took this past summer. We never follow the GPS without anything else, but forgot to print off the directions before we left. The GPS took us through St. Louis (which was beautiful, by the way - the arch was AMAZING!). But just south of St. Louis, it started to snow and it was snowing hard! The roads got slick fast and we went from driving 70 mph to 35 mph. We did that for a few hours and then pulled off to get some gas and breakfast. Marc talked to some people at a gas station and we decided to take an alternate route that would put us south faster and get us out of the snow quicker. And it did just that. We were finally going faster, the snow was gone and it was raining out. We could deal with the rain. Then Marc asked me if we wanted to stop at the McDonald's, get the kids some lunch and then go from there. I decided we should wait just a little longer and we headed on. Little did we know that that was the road we were supposed to turn on. We kept going (in the wrong direction) and 5 minutes after I made the decision to not stop, we were hit by an oncoming car.

I had just closed my eyes and heard, "Oh no!". I opened them just in time to see a small silver car plow into the driver's side of the van. All of the kids screamed at the impact and then there was dead silence. She hit us hard enough that it sent us off the road. We went through a small woods (amazingly we didn't hit any trees) and came to a complete stop about 6 feet shy of plowing through someone's mobile home (wouldn't that have been a Merry Christmas for them). We did a kid check and found that everyone was o.k. I looked at Marc and he had a small bump over his eye (from his head hitting the air bag). The ambulance was called, the cops were called and there were people who saw the accident that stopped and helped. We pulled the kids out and had them checked out by the EMT's. The girl that hit us was o.k., too. The people who saw the accident, put our children in their warm vehicle (it was freezing out that day) and fed them snacks and entertained them for 2 HOURS!!! I couldn't believe that they did that! That was so nice of them. We called the insurance company and then the rental car company. Enterprise wouldn't bring a vehicle to us and we didn't know what to do. Then one of the EMT's said that he just happened to drive his wife's Cadillac Escalade to work that morning. We know that it wasn't a just happening for him - it was God playing a hand in this whole thing. One of the bosses drove us 1 1/2 hours down to the rental place - we waited 30 minutes for our rental and then had to drive 1 1/2 back north to get everything out of our van and into the rental van. So, our accident was at 10:30 am - and we didn't get back on the road to head to TX until 7:00 pm. We were off the road for 8 1/2 hours and still had 8 hours to go. It was a long day. What was supposed to be a 16 hour drive, turned into a 26 hour drive. We were wiped out but just so thankful that God kept us safe. The accident could have been so much worse. The car that hit us ran right into Marc and Eva. We could have been spending Christmas in a hospital, but we didn't. We were in TX on Christmas day!

God definitely protected us! We are so thankful our family is alright. Except for some minor bumps and bruises and no van, there would have been no sign that we were in an accident. He is so amazing! And we are so thankful that He kept us safe that day!

(The mobile home that we almost drove through - we don't know how we stopped in time)

(You can see the woods in the background that we went through. It's amazing that we didn't hit any trees or the wood piles!)