As I wrote about in my last post Another “Crank-Fest” Starts Up, my mood as of late had been pretty bad, but I was trying to get back on track so we could move forward in getting Jeffrey ready for possibly going to college.
Since we had no idea what the next year was going to hold, we decided that we were going to take Jeffrey and make the jaunt up to Seattle to spend Christmas with my side of the family and his cousins – plus visit with a few of our friends.
The Lord granted us traveling mercies on our drive up there, however after we arrived in our hotel things started falling apart…
We had booked an accessible room at a hotel that offered a full free breakfast. It had “used” to be a really nice hotel, but as we checked in we noticed that they had definitely let it get run down. Our room was totally beat-up. There was exposed wiring leading to sockets behind the couch, the bolt lock on the door was broken (they kept promising to fix it, but never did), and the wheelchair accessible shower was so sloped that whenever we took showers the water ran all over the floor – and I do mean all over the floor!
Switch to another room – are you kidding? They were booked to capacity!
Of course everything was made worse because Gary and I were at each other’s throats pretty much the whole time. What about? Everything! Jesus – the Reason for the Season – seemed to have completely vanished from our celebrations.
Nothing seemed to be going right. We were getting so sick of all the commercialization that we got to the point where we just wanted Christmas to be over.
Added to that, the stress of continuing to think about the whole college thing was putting me over the edge. And for Gary, his job was getting more difficult all the time.
Originally we had decided to drive home on Christmas Day, but since we had all been in such terrible moods, we decided to start our drive a day early, after we met with a couple friends for a late lunch. We figured at least we could make it half-way.
We ended up spending the night in Portland, and left to drive the rest of the way home the next day about 11:00 AM. That got us home early afternoon, which was nice as we could just chill a bit before bedtime.
Then the next morning I got up to read the local paper, and in it was an article about a man who was witnessed in Sandy (a little town we drove through on the way home the previous afternoon), who had been spotted carrying around a high-powered rifle. The police were so alarmed that they ended up closing down the main highway from Sandy to Mount Hood – which is exactly the way we had driven.
The time this all happened? Shortly after we had passed through Sandy the day before!
Gary and I were amazed, and started thinking about the Lord and His ways. Our original plan had been to start our drive Christmas morning, which would have brought us to Sandy mid-afternoon. Instead, because we had decided to leave Seattle a day early, we were brought safely home at a decent time of the day.
If we would have been stuck in the highway closure, we would have had to turn around and it would have added probably hours to our trip. That would have definitely put Gary and I even more over the edge.
Sorry, I don’t believe in coincidences. And I do believe that God always knows best. Although I don’t understand all the logistics, I do wholeheartedly believe that God used the events which happened during our trip to get us home safe and at a decent hour.
Oh, to just keep our eyes on Him!
The God Of All Comfort 