Hebrews 9:27 says, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die…”
On October 3, 2004, Michelle (my 19-year-old daughter) and I were en route to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, with my good friend, Alice. We were caravanning down Interstate 75 with our pastor, who’s home with the Lord now, and his fun-loving wife, Sondra Craft. We were following the pastor’s car, and Sonnie was driving. Michelle unbuckled her seat belt and lay down on the backseat to take a nap.
Alice always kept good following distance, but some things are just hard to avoid. This stretch of Interstate was three lanes wide and we were both in the center lane. About halfway through Kentucky, without warning, Sonnie dodged into the left lane. We immediately realized why. Some guy had lost a full-sized box spring on the Interstate (of all places). And it was in the center lane directly in front of us.
With no time to check for an open lane, Alice followed Sonnie to the left, hoping that lane was empty. It wasn’t. Although we didn’t sideswipe the car beside us, with a split second to react to avoid crashing into the box spring, Alice jerked the steering wheel to the right. We flattened the corner of it when we careened past, sliding toward the guardrail. In an effort to redirect the car back onto the pavement and regain control, Alice made a hard left. That threw us into a spin on a busy freeway. My thoughts turned to Michelle, unrestrained in the backseat. Aware that the car spun out of control, Michelle tried to sit up but centrifugal force plastered her to the backseat.
It was a miracle that cars and semis avoided plowing into us, because we slid all over the road, spinning in circles. Facing oncoming traffic, we narrowly missed a head-on collision, but now we glided straight toward the guard rail. At the last second, the car spun around again and came to rest on the shoulder of the road, inches from the guardrail, facing the right direction. Miraculously, the car escaped without a scratch, and no one was injured.
Pastor Craft watched the incident from the car’s mirror. He said that a number of semis had driven passed us as we spun out of control.
Too rattled to drive again, Alice climbed in with Sonnie, and Pastor Craft got behind the wheel of her car. Then we continued on our journey. We were meeting Larry and Phyllis at their huge vacation home for a weekend of fun and fellowship. They were also driving down from Cincinnati.
We were still an hour north of Gatlinburg when Sonnie pulled off the freeway for gasoline. As she coasted to the end of the off-ramp, her brakes went out completely. With no brakes, she maneuvered into a service station, and we followed her in. We all thought, “Oh wonderful. There is no way that all five of us could pile into Alice’s car, luggage and all, and make it down to Gatlinburg.” On a lark, Sonnie called Larry to see where they were. Incredibly, he and Phyllis were in Tennessee just coming up to our exit. I mean, they weren’t but a few minutes north of us.
The seven of us waited an hour for a tow truck. Then we loaded the preacher and Sonnie’s luggage into Alice’s car and they jumped in with Larry and Phyllis. Later that weekend, Larry and the preacher returned to pick up his car. We had no more incidents that weekend.
Any one of us, or all five of us, could have been killed that fateful day, but it wasn’t our appointed time. When Michelle and I got home, we were telling my husband about our freeway mishap, and Michelle said to her dad. “Where was God when we were almost killed!”
Floyd said, “Oh, honey, God was there. Didn’t you see Him?”
“No.”
“He was busy directing traffic.”
Hebrews 9:27 says, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die…”