Prodigal: I am loving the company!
Me: Yes, nothing better than good food and good folk.
This is from the book Where Angels Walk by Joan Wester Anderson
Chad and Peggy Anderson were already bustling around on a cold predawn Saturday in their kitchen in Antioch, Illinois. Peggy, a nurse, was due to work the seven-am. to three p.m shift at McHenry Hospital. And as any working wife knows, getting up, dressed, and out takes plenty of time. As he usually did when Peggy worked a Saturday shift, Chad would be caring for the Anderson’s two sons as well as two preschool grandchildren currently living with them. Now, though, as he glanced outside, he frowned and said, “It’s snowing, Peg.”
“Not heavily.” Peggy peered out the kitchen window.
“No….but I think you ought to drive the Lincoln rather than your little Chevette. Just in case.”
“Well….” Peggy wasn’t especially nervous in snow, but the hospital was twenty miles away, and she had to cover a rather zigzag, mostly rural route. The big car would be safer, so she decided to take Chad’s advice.
The cold white blanket made everything look fresh and new, and although Peggy seemed the only traveler on the road, she was actually enjoying the ride- until she hit a curve on a bridge about eight miles form McHenry. The snow-covered pavement was slicker than she had assumed, and with the frozen marsh some thirty or forty feet below, Peggy attempted to slow down. Instead, the big car swerved and went into a 360-degree rotation. Peggy tensed immediately, trying frantically to remember what one was supposed to do to straighten a spinning car. But it was too late. She had lost control and the Lincoln was obviously going to plunge through the guardrail into the marsh below–there was nowhere else for it to go. Would she drown in a watery prison? Her little boys–what would become of them? “Oh, God,” she called as the Lincoln veered toward the posts, “help me!”
There was no other vehicles in view, and Peggy’s headlights were still the only illumination. But suddenly, in the dawn’s semidarkness, a warm glow lit the spinning car’s interior. At the same time, Peggy was filled with indescribably reassurance. The light warmed her, bathing her in contentment, and it was simply…..heavenly. She knew–without exactly knowing how she knew–that there was no reason to be afraid.
And yes, the car was still going–but somehow approaching the end of the bridge without crashing through the rail, now rolling down the side of the steep thirty-foot ditch to the marshland below, now, unbelievable, slowing in a small clearing. It came to a stop. The light immediately went out.
“I sat in the car in amazement, just praying and praising God for a few minutes,” Peggy recalls.
“Nothing like this ever happened to me before, and nothing quite as marvelous has happened since,” says Peggy.
Proverbs 14:30
A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
