Our trip was going well for the first seven hours. Unfortunately, we ran in to a snow storm in western Kansas late that day. This was not too bad of snow storm. I have driven in much worse, but it was blowing across the interstate, which made the road slick. Our car tires were having trouble gripping the road. At first I thought this was just the way it was going to be, just slow down and keep it on the road. But after awhile of watching traffic pass us by, I began to wonder why it was just our car having so much trouble, while others were able to continue on at higher speeds without trouble.
We exited to get some gas and my father-in-law told me that his car was not having near the problems as ours was and that he could see from behind that we were sliding all over the place. We attempted to continue, but things did not get better, in fact it got worse. We pulled off at a town called Burlington, right across the border in Colorado. We got a couple of hotel rooms and talked about the car issues. It was decided that the car did not have the right tires for snow. After discussing a few different options we decided that our car could not go any further into Colorado, especially into the mountains with those tires.
The final decision: I would drive the car back to Oklahoma with Kenny. Our youngest son Kenny, a few weeks before the ski trip was diagnosed with a tendon issue in his ankle. He was on crutches with an air cast on his foot.
So, Kenny wasn't going to get to ski anyway, and I do not ski either. So as far as skiing goes, we were the two of the six of us that were not going to being skiing, so we would take our car back home. We got up the next day. Monica and our oldest son, Karis moved their luggage into Monica's parents car, they went on to their destination in Colorado and Kenny and I drove back home. Our "Ski Trip" has now officially changed to Kenny and my "trip to nowhere" :)
We got on the road back to Oklahoma about 9am and got home around 5:30pm. We drove 16 hours in a 24 hour period of time. You would think that this was a total waste of time and gas money for a trip to nowhere? Not a chance.THIS is where the blessing begins!
I was able to spend 8 1/2 hours in the car together alone with Kenny. We talked the entire way home! I asked him, at one point, if he was tired that he could lay the seat back and sleep. He was not interested in that. He had his cell phone with him and with a 16 year old boy, it would have been very easy for him to spend time texting friends or playing games on his phone and not engage in conversation with me, but he didn't choose to do that either. We got to talk about all kinds of things from sports, to his girl friend, to hunting, to his ankle injury. We talked about character and Godliness and obedience versus consequences of disobedience, and his upcoming decisions for college and future career ideas he had. It was a huge blessing for me! I told Monica that Kenny may have felt like it was abuse or punishment to him, having to ride all that way and listen to me, but it was definitely not a one sided conversation. What could have been considered a waste of time and caused us to have a poor attitude, turned into a really enjoyable short trip that was a blessing from God.
Lesson Learned
We make choices everyday. I could have chosen to be upset about a wasted trip. I could have been quiet and turned up the car radio. Kenny could have chosen to put on his head phones and listen to music for 8 1/2 hours and not engage in conversation with his step-dad. Thankfully, we both chose to engage each other in the conversation. You could call this an 8 1/2 hour "Faith Walk". I believe we were both blessed by it.
Take the time to "see" how God is working through your circumstances and try to make the right choices that allow for His blessings along the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment