Stacy's August 8th blog http://cowtownstacy.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-that-our-tire.html about their tire coming off and rolling down the highway made me realize that I may have never written down some of our experiences…the times we felt the HAND OF GOD.
Stacy’s story brings back a memory from LONG ago. January 1976. We had sold our house in Colorado in order to go to Bible College in Florida. We had just purchased an older used car and had gotten new tires put on it. We were probably 400 miles from home, pulling a U-Haul trailer, in the middle of absolutely nowhere (New Mexico or western Texas). It was a dark moonless night and I was driving. Merle was asleep in the back seat. There was a set of headlights coming toward me. Then another vehicle pulled out into my lane, as if to pass the other car. But, it didn't get back in its lane...it just kept coming and coming. I realized if I didn't stop we were going to collide head on. I slammed on the brakes throwing Merle to the floor. Then the lights vanished….COMPLETELY! I kept saying..."Where did that car go? There was a car headed straight for me! I KNOW there was!" Merle said, "Pull over and I will drive a while." I was FINE, I hadn't even been sleepy, and now I was DEFINITELY alert, but shaken. Then, as I drove along very slowly looking for a spot to pull over, we heard the clunk, clunk, clunk of the lug nuts inside the hub cap. 2 lug nuts of the 5 were completely sheared off and a third nearly was. Evidently they hadn't tightened the lug nuts on one wheel when they put the new tires on. Merle tightened down the lug nuts that remained and we drove on. Do I believe God caused me to see a vehicle that wasn't there? YES,I DO! If I had driven much farther, I probably wouldn't be here to write this. Pulling a trailer, with an unfamiliar car, in the dark on an unfamiliar road, with only moderate driving skills....If HE knows how many hairs are on my head, and HE knows when a sparrow falls, I believe HE protected us in a miraculous way.
On down the road a bit farther, we began talking about driving through Lubbock. It would be fun to see the town, since our good friends Mike and Vickie, who had lived across the street from us until recently, had moved back home to Lubbock Too bad that we would be passing through it in the middle of the night.. Then, before long, about 3 am, both of us grew weary and knew we needed to pull over and take a short nap. We slept in the car, and when we awoke, it was after 6:30 am. We hadn’t planned to sleep so long, but had no way of setting an alarm, and had slept nearly 4 hours. We came into Lubbock about 7 am that Sunday morning. We decided to call Mike and Vickie and see if they would like to join us for breakfast. They were excited to hear from us and gave us directions to their house, and told us to come on over and she would fix us breakfast. We had a great time catching up over a delicious meal, but knew that we were hours behind schedule and better get going. Merle was showing Mike how the U-Haul didn't have to be attached with a ball and hitch, we had one that just attached to the bumper itself. As they got to looking, they noticed that the ENTIRE bumper was being pulled off the car! We could have been down the road a bit and lost the trailer and bumper all at the same time. Who knows what damage could have been done, or who might have been injured because of it.
But, now what were we going to do? We were smack in the middle of the Bible Belt. In those days, basically NOTHING was open on Sunday mornings. But, we HAD to get it repaired before we could go any further. It wasn’t going to be a simple fix either. We knew it would have to be welded, and we couldn’t do anything to repair it ourselves. Then Vickie announced that her father owns a welding shop and he could weld it back on for us! She called him and he met us at the shop and did just that. Early on a Sunday morning in the Bible Belt. On top of that, he did it for FREE, wouldn't even take a dollar.
If we hadn't grown sleepy and slept precisely that amount of time, we wouldn't have made a connection with the Buxkempers, since they would have been at church later. And if it had been earlier, we wouldn't have even called them. If Merle hadn't been showing Mike how the trailer attached, we would never have known that the bumper was being pulled off. Vickie’s Dad just happened to own a welding shop…God's perfect timing. Reassuring us that yes, HE was indeed with us.
Well, maybe I need to back up just a little now. We had been living in a small town on the prairie, Ft. Morgan, CO. Definitely a cowtown. Lots of dairy and beef cattle in the area. Merle worked horrendous hours as an oil well logging engineer for Dresser Atlas. We were involved in a Bible Study for couples sponsored by the Christian Women's Club I attended. There were couples involved from all different churches and backgrounds. This was our first real experience of being in a study with people who didn't share the same views. It sent us searching the scriptures to see if what we believed was true. I became convinced that I really wanted to go to Bible College to learn more. I kept telling Merle that if we ever got transferred somewhere close enough to a Bible college that I wanted to go. I guess it gave him the bug to go too.
At some point his work hours were becoming unbearable (often 80 to 100 hours a week), with no relief in sight. We decided that he would quit his job and we would go to Bible College somewhere. We bought a book that listed different colleges: where they were, and what they offered. We spoke about our desires with our pastor, Frank Hogeland of Grace Bible Church. He suggested the school where his daughter was, Florida Bible College. It was between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami, in Hollywood, FL. We decided to enroll for the session beginning in Jan. It must have been about Thanksgiving when we made that decision. We were excited about it and told the couples at our Bible Study about our plans. One of the men, Tom, worked at the Savings and Loan, and told us there was NO WAY we could sell our house quickly enough to get to Florida for classes beginning in January. Even if we sold it TODAY, it would take four to six weeks to process the loan before we could close. We told them, that we believed God was leading us and that if HE wanted us there, then HE would make a way. We decided on a price and put an ad in the local newspaper. The next day, a lady called and came to see the house. The following day she brought her husband. They agreed to buy it. In TWO DAYS. We had signed the contract within a week. They were able to put enough money down to assume our loan and we closed two weeks later. Tom couldn’t believe it.
We packed up some of our stuff to store at my parents’ house, and then spent the holidays with our families. Two days before we left, we bought an older used car to take to Florida, knowing that the salt air would ruin our little Mercury Capri that we'd bought just two years earlier. So we bought Ruth--we named her that, saying that she would say "where ever you go, I will go, and your people shall be my people, and your God, my God." We bought new tires, rented a U-Haul and headed to Florida. We decided to take turns driving so that we could get there sooner. We would try to drive through the night....and that's when I saw the lights coming toward me...
So, you would think that we would be FULLY assured. that we were INDEED going where God wanted us to be. After three miracles of sorts….selling our house so quickly, the lights which vanished so that we would drive slowly enough to hear the sheared off lug nuts, and the newly welded bumper…Yes, surely we would know…yet just two days later, I found myself sprawled across a sheet-less bed, crying my eyes out and wailing that I wanted to go back home….
What happened?
We found the campus and pulled in with our U-Haul trailing along behind. The beach was directly behind the college buildings and there was a large sign saying not to go one direction, but we misunderstood which direction that was, and we ended up driving down the boardwalk. Since it was just after New Years, there were lots of people on the beach. They were all staring at us. We realized that we’d made a mistake and needed to get back to the main road, so we drove on, looking for the next opportunity to go out, surely there would be an exit down just a little further. We were a couple of blocks down the street when everyone on the beach started flailing their arms back and forth over their heads and yelling “GO BACK, THERE’S NO WAY OUT!” Ever tried to back a U-Haul 2 blocks?? NOT an easy task…and how embarrassing to have the whole beach watching and shaking their heads at our idiocy.
We planned our arrival to be a couple of days earlier than most of the student body would be returning, knowing that we’d need to get settled in. As a result, there weren’t many people around. I can’t even remember all the problems we encountered, but nothing much went right from the moment we arrived at our destination. I do remember that we couldn’t find anyone to help us figure out how to get our things all the way up to our 10th floor efficiency apartment. I do remember that I tried to be friendly with a girl on the elevator and she snubbed me royally, and wouldn’t say a word. (Later I learned that this girl was the most snobbish of anyone on campus. She wasn’t even a student, but was the young daughter of someone on staff.) I found the atmosphere wasn’t the welcoming one I had envisioned at all. Maybe I didn’t want to be here after all…
And thus began two of the happiest years of my life.
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