The Cattle Truck Miracle

My friend Author Sharon Connell (http://www.amazon.com/author/sharonkconnell) shared a travel miracle story.

 

Kathy, I have a travel story that involves my move from Des Plaines, IL to Pensacola, FL when I went to Bible school there.

My son and his wife traveled from Pensacola to Des Plaines to help me move. We loaded the cars with my daughter's bicycle mounted on top of Ron's vehicle (fortunately, he was an avid bicyclist at the time and had a rack). 

 

We took off in the wee hours of the morning, a fourteen to fifteen hour journey to Pensacola. I followed Ron's vehicle from the start. If I wanted to stop somewhere, I'd flash my lights and he'd pull off the road to see what I wanted. All went well as we traveled from Illinois, through Indiana, to Tennessee, until dusk. 

 

We'd been following a cattle trailer pulled by one of those heavy-duty pickup trucks for many miles. If I remember right, there were about six to eight head of cattle in the trailer. It was as if we were playing leapfrog. He'd pull around us, and a little while later, we'd pull around him. We stopped at the same place for lunch and dinner that the cattle hauling pickup did each time.

 

After our last stop, my vehicle started to act up. We were in the middle of the Smoky Mountains, up and down the rolling hills, when my engine began to lose power. I also lost the lights. Ron apparently was in a conversation with his wife and hadn't noticed our car falling behind, nor did he hear the weak horn when I blew it. I told my daughter, Heatherlyn, then ten years old, to start praying because we were never going to make it up the next hill.

 

I'd been watching the reflectors on my daughter's bike spin as Ron traveled ahead of us. Now the reflectors were barely seen as my headlights dimmed to almost nothing. There were no other cars around, and the truck with the cattle trailer had passed us and moved on a little while ago. I prayed that my son would notice we weren't behind him anymore, but I had no idea how he'd find us unless he got off the road, entered the other direction, and then retraced the journey. I also had no idea how long it would be, and it was getting dark.

 

As my car started up the last hill, I pulled off onto the shoulder, and the engine died. My daughter and I prayed and asked God for His help. I was at the point of tears, but didn't want to cry and scare Heatherlyn. When I lifted my head, I saw Ron's car, driving backward on the shoulder, coming over the rolling hilltop in front of us, bike pedal reflectors spinning like mad. Praise God!

 

After I told Ron what happened, he tried the starter on my car, and it started right up. Huh? Lights came on, and everything seemed normal. He got out of the car and said he had no idea what was wrong. I said, I didn't either. He suggested we get off the highway at the next exit so he could find some light and check the engine. We did that, but he still couldn't find anything wrong, and the car didn't slow down again or lose the lights.

 

We decided to proceed with our journey to Pensacola and trust God to get us there. Ron said he'd follow us for the rest of the journey, and we took off. 

 

About half an hour later, what little traffic had accumulated on the road since we reentered had stopped. When we neared, we saw the highway patrol blocking everything in both directions, and some of the officers trying to round up cows in the median strip. The truck and trailer we'd been playing leapfrog with earlier was also in the median strip, the trailer on its side. Apparently, the driver had swerved to miss something running across the road, and the trailer toppled over onto the median strip in the process. No one was hurt in the accident, and all the cows were uninjured. Another praise God.

 

Not only had God kept us from being involved, and possibly injured, in this accident by giving my car a hiccup, but He protected the driver and the animals. 

 

I'll never forget that night. I used this incident in one of the scenes in my very first published novel. Another blessing. And a miracle.