Every day has the possibility of a miracle.

Saturday Chase will be the ring bearer in my cousin's wedding. This will be his first wedding experience and we are due to be 700 miles from our house by Friday at 6 for the rehearsal. We thought we'd be ahead of the game, take Thursday/Friday off, and begin our road trip late Wednesday so that we could drive most of the way while Chase slept. As usual we left later than we had planned and didn't make it out the door until about 9... not what we'd hoped for but at least we were on our way. As we were walking out the door there was a flash of lightening and Chase said, "Jesus just took my picture." Yes baby, and he will be watching over you now more than ever. We were pulling a U.Haul to take the generators from Ike back and stopped to get gas before getting out of town. Looking back we should have been suspicious when only two pumps were working, hind-sight is 20/20. Duchess and Mads were riding with us and we knew we'd have plenty of entertainment for the 11 hour ride. I think the kids finally fell asleep around midnight and we decided to keep driving until we were to the point we needed to pull over. I'll admit that while they've done great, silence was golden. I was looking around and remember seeing a church sign that read, "Trust in the Lord, He will see you through." If we'd only knew then what we know now we would have pulled over way sooner.

At around 2 in the morning, in the middle of nowhere, with no lights on the road, and two sleeping toddlers, the Tahoe started making some really weird sounds and jerking in a way that it definitely should not have been. Instantly we knew we had a huge problem, bad thing is that our problem was only going to get way worse. All too quickly the Tahoe lost power. Jeff would hit the gas and nothing but sputtering and pulling. There was nothing. All the lights were still working but we just couldn't get it to go. We all thought about the gas, the pumps, Ike. Ike has done damage to so many stations and produced lots of bad gas. Perhaps that's what we'd got. We finally made it to a station that was open and asked where the closest town was that had a hotel. 13 miles. 13 long miles. I never thought we'd make it, we could barely get the Tahoe to move, much less go that far. By this time Chase was awake and crying. I was so scared. Please God, just let us make to a safe spot where we could get a hotel and put the babies to bed. Please let it be OK.

We did make it to the next town. We were literally coasting, but we made it. We tried one hotel and it was booked, there are still so many evacuees around. We were so scared to stop for the fear the Tahoe would not make it, my heart was racing. Thank God it was late because there was no stopping for stop signs and lights at this point. We made it to a second hotel and found a small slice of heaven. The staff were so caring and offered us help in any way, it was clean, it was dry (oh, did I not mention it has been thundering, raining, and lightening the entire way), and it was awesome.

Here is where I will make a long story short, if it's not too late for that. Fortunately I have an uncle that works with GMC designing and building their engines. He also thought perhaps we had gotten bad gas and suggested adding supplement to it and then continuing to run the tank down by driving. Less than 10 miles later we were in the same situation as before and having to drive on the shoulder with no power. We found a dealership that ran diagnostics and found out we had two sensors that were showing a history (meaning they were having issues). We reported the news to my uncle who said continue to drive until 1) the engine started flashing or 2) we couldn't go anymore. Fortunately only one sensor was the problem, the second was just having issues because of the first. It didn't take long before we couldn't go any further. 20 minutes later we found ourselves completely broke down in the middle of a small town. This is where our miracle begins. and we learned that angels are everywhere.

***Check back soon for the rest of the story.***


***I am grateful for
1) we are safe
2) angels are never where you thought they'd be
3) the kindness of strangers
4) the Tahoe is running again
5) we *almost* to our destination... almost