Safe Travels

Recently I was told, "Don't pray for safe travels; pray for God's will to be done." I mean yeah, maybe it isn't God's will for us to be 'safe' as we travel, but it sure is nice, isn't it?

Well today, I got a taste of what it feels like to be right in the middle of God's ever-working plan.

A group of 4 friends and I went on our first 'grown-up' road trip this weekend to Carowinds in the Carolinas. We left at 5:30 a.m. on Friday and aimed to return Saturday afternoon. We had a great trip up there; we stopped for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, we got to the park only 30 minutes later than we'd planned to, Caleb only got us lost once, the lines in the park were pretty short because the weather wasn't so hot, so we were in good shape. We had a great time in the park. We rode EVERY roller coaster, and some of them we rode twice! We took pictures and played around and ate food and it was a great day.

Later we got to stay in a hotel suite all by ourselves (part of the 'grown-up' trip experience) and that was a blast! (Especially since we watched the 7th Harry Potter).

So everything's great, right?

Well...

Things were great as we stopped about 2 hours into our trip back to eat lunch at Subway/take a bathroom break at the gas station, and we were content, but tired and ready to be home. So we head back out onto I-77 and about 10 minutes in I feel Jasmine's car (which I'm driving at the time) start to shake and change gears all funny and the engine light starts blinking.

Fabulous.

So I put on the emergency blinkers and pull over. Caleb's ahead of us so he sees us stop so he stops too. Well, at first everyone just thought I was worrying too much, and I thought maybe I was too, but I just had to make sure because I'd rather have pulled over than have the car crap out in the middle of the interstate with cars flying past at 80 mph. Well we call a bunch of people, and turns out there's practically no oil in the car. Woo freaking hoo. We end up with just the one car left by ourselves because Caleb had to leave, and we were there for a good hour and a half easy. The parents were called (mine last because she didn't need to know anything until the problem had been resolved) and we had been ordered to get in our car with our seat belts on and the doors locked, just in case (cool mom, cool).

Finally, we were towed back home (about an hour away from where we currently were) and the 3 of us sat in the back of this guy's tow truck all the way back. Though, he did let us off at a rest stop to pee.

So all in all, we had a really fun experience on our first grown-up road trip! And I think we all made the official transition into the fact that we're almost college students. Weird.

Anyway, I'd like to take this opportunity to say that while our trip back may not have gone as planned, God clearly had a better idea for us than getting back home on time. After all, His plan is bigger than ours, so even if we don't understand why in the world we had to be stranded on a crazy interstate, it's comforting to know that God's bigger than all the things in the world that we understand. He's got a plan, and this was a part of it. His will was done, and I'm grateful that we were able to rely on Him to bless us and keep us.

Pray for God's will, not safe travels.

Jeremiah 29:11

Song of the day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WucHt6uno1o