Please get us off the highway, Lord!
I could see on my phone that we were a little more than a mile south of the Glasgow exit, so we prayed that God would get us safely off the interstate and I proceeded to drive very slowly, emergency flashers on, toward the exit. We finally made it and pulled into an Exxon station. We thanked The Lord for His protection.
No one was on duty to help, but a man the station clerk had me call said he would send a tow truck driver to have a look, I told him I wasn’t going anywhere.
I began to try to remove the spare tire from its place beneath the back of the truck. It looked like it hadn’t been removed since just before Y2K, so it wasn’t easy. That’s when a young man named Dan walked over and offered to help. I guess it was becoming clear that this wasn’t my speciality, so, even though he was on his way to see that evening’s light show at Natural Bridge, he jumped in and in pretty short order the bum tire was off and the spare was on. Looking at the failed tire, I marveled that it had not blown when we were on the interstate. It was bulging in several places.
The tow truck operator showed up just as we were wrapping up. Looking at the old, worn spare and remaining tires, he advised taking it very slow and trying to make it to Staunton, about 50 miles away. Once there, he suggested getting a new set of tires from either WalMart or Merchant Tire, whichever was open.
Hannah and I thanked God for Dan and the advice and we prayed for God to get us safely to Staunton.
We headed north again, slowly and this time on Route 11, the main Shenandoah Valley thoroughfare. We drove over Natural Bridge, which is hidden from view by a short wooden fence along either side of the road. We passed Hull’s 1950s-style drive-in theatre, non-profit, community-owned, and packed that evening with cars and people on tailgates and blankets to see the movie.
We drove on slowly, watching the dusky valley landscape pass by. And praying.