Ever since I was a little girl I have liked pushing the limits. I am a risk taker. I don’t think that this is so much due to my personality but it is rather due to my God. I have blind faith. God has proven to be so capable of protecting me that it is rare that I experience fear.
Sometimes little things do tend to worry me, though. Like my car. A few years back I was in Orlando, Florida and I let a friend of mine drive my car. He ran it into a parking blockade at a speed which was not conducive to parking. Ever since that incident I have been a tad bit worried about the front end of my car. It makes funny noises.
Recently the funny noises have been getting worse and I intended to take it in to get it looked at but I just didn’t have the time. I had to fly out to the Midwest for a family reunion and then I had to turn around and take my son back to college in Louisiana. No time for car repairs. I am sure I prayed about it but more than praying, I just worried.
As I was driving back from Louisiana I encountered quite a few traffic jams. On I 20 W, no less, which is a highway and should not be allowed to have traffic jams. I had suffered through a couple of jams and by that time my legs were demanding to walk about every hour. I am not a person who sits much and when I have to sit in the car for long periods of time my legs scream out in pain. The dark of night was closing in when I got an alert on my phone. There was a traffic jam ahead that was threatening to delay me for 85 minutes. That was 85 more minutes that my legs would be begging to get out and walk. It was an unacceptable option. I thought to myself, “Gosh, I wish there was a work around to this traffic jam.” Soon my GPS read my thoughts and gave me a work around.
It was near Myrtle Springs, Texas, where the traffic was literally stopped on the highway. I decided to take a chance and try the work around even though the sun had descended into the dead of night. I drove off of the highway and crossed it on the overpass going to a county road. The problem was that the county road was more potholes than road and soon I saw a car ahead with its hazard lights on. There was another car stopped beside it. Then I realized I was in about a foot of water and the road was flooded ahead of me. I had a decision to make. The thought that I should just turn around and go back to the highway crossed my mind and got pushed aside by the pain in my legs. In a split second I decided to gun my motor and speed ahead. I whipped around the stopped car and kept going.
In retrospect it was either a courageous or foolish move on my part. It was dark, I was in an area which I didn’t know and I had no idea how to tell the AAA folks where I was if I got waterlogged. But it was a successful move so I consider it more courageous than foolish. There are times when I do risky things but they are done because I know my God is powerful. It is interesting that after going through the flood waters I no longer heard the funny noises in the front end of my car. Sometimes you just have to take the risk and step out in blind faith.
