This story begins last Tuesday night about 8:45 p.m....or does it?
We had a memorial service at our church that night and we were on our way home. I had driven there after work so my husband and I were in two separate vehicles. I was driving the car with Jac and Ethan and Lindy was behind me in the van with Gavin. We live in the city limits but just enough in the country that you have to pass cornfields and a sod farm to get to our house. The main road leading to our house turns from four-lane to two-lane and as I turned my head forward after looking over my left shoulder to see if I could merge a deer ran right across my lane. I had to swerve right and left to miss him. As Lindy was right behind me he also had to swerve and brake to miss him. I continued driving home but Lindy slowed down to see what would happen as the deer continued across the median and into the lanes going the other direction. He saw brake lights and then hazard lights and realized that someone going the other way had hit the deer. He turned around to go and see if he could help. It was merely a near miss on our part...or was it?
When he got there he realized that the guy inside the car was OK but his airbag had deployed and his car was totaled. The deer was alive but suffering greatly with numerous compound fractures. (This is according to Lindy's assessment and, frankly, I'm impressed that he can recognize a compound fracture). As he was talking to the other driver and asking if he was OK, the guy said, "You know, I was listening to music and the song that was playing as I hit the deer was, 'It Is Well With My Soul.'" Lindy said to him, "It is well with your soul, isn't it?" The guy agreed and told Lindy that he's a worship pastor at a local church. Lindy then told him that he was a senior pastor at a local church. That must have been a coincidence...or was it?
As the other driver was starting to call the police they were discussing how the deer was in agony. Lindy asked him if he thought he should go ahead and shoot him. The guy said, "If you have a gun go ahead." Lindy had his .40 with him so he took it out and shot the deer twice to put him out of his misery. While the shots were being fired the guy was on the phone with the police. When he got off the phone and Lindy prepared to head home he asked the guy if he would please not mention his name to the police if they asked why they could hear a firearm being discharged in the city limits. :) That's Lindy...always thinking.
When he and Gavin got home the first words out of Gavin's mouth were, "The deer went to deer heaven." That's all it took for me to know Lindy was going to have an amazing story to tell. So he relayed the story and told me he had already called one of his friends to tell him. He proceeded to call two more friends and his Dad to recount the story. To hear Lindy tell the story--and I heard it three times--it goes like this:
"You know, I'm going to be 41 years old next week and in all of my 41 years I've never shot a deer...until tonight. I shot it with my .40...and I did it while wearing a suit and tie."
Now in order for you to realize the full impact of the story you have to imagine his intonation and his pauses for effect. My true love is a one-of-a-kind guy, always impressing me yet never surprising me because I'm accustomed to his many talents and jack-of-all-trades ways. That's the totality of the story...or is it?
Actually this story began Sunday morning, two days before this incident. I was playing the keyboard at church, as usual, and we had prayer time in the middle of the service. The altar area was full of people and one of the ladies came up on the platform to pray for me. That rarely happens--the part about someone praying for me on the platform. She prayed for me and then told me that she felt strongly that there was going to be some sort of danger coming my way that week and she felt that it might have something to do with me traveling in my car. Now, you may not give any credence to God impressing upon someone to pray so specifically, but I totally believe it and was glad she had been obedient. I honestly didn't think much about it, and didn't even tell Lindy, until Wednesday morning. I was reading my "little book" that I read from every morning. There's nothing magical about it but it's full of Scriptures and statements that I speak out each morning. (There's a long story about the book itself, but this post is long enough already). I happened to be reading the following passage,
"No evil will befall me, neither shall any plague come near my dwelling. For You have given Your angels charge over me. They keep me in all my ways. In my pathway is life, healing, and health."
As I read that I immediately remembered what Sue had prayed over me Sunday morning and connected it to what happened the night before. There had also been a bad accident on the highway Tuesday morning which I avoided, but it took place where I should have been traveling that morning at that time. Surely it was a coincidence that God protected me twice in one day...or was it?
You see, I believe God's Word is alive and we can stand on His promises. I also believe that He uses ordinary people to intercede on our behalf and He sends His angels to protect us. Does that mean that we will never have anything bad happen to us or that calamity will never come our way? No, it doesn't. We live in a fallen world, but we still put our trust in God and know that nothing happens to us that isn't first filtered through Him. He knows the beginning and the ending. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. So, the real story here wasn't about my husband and his super cool, never-ending adventure he calls his normal life; it's really about being obedient to God and His never-ending love and protection.
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