A prayer in my heart

We had to drive 50 miles to get to the airport to fly out to California. We left at 4:30 in the morning, after digging our cars out of the driveway from the foot of snow. The freeway had been fairly well plowed, so for the first half of the drive, the road was clean and mostly dry. In the 36 hours before we left, we got a foot of snow. I had prayed the night before that they would be able to get the roads plowed, and the airport plowed, and that we would be able to get to the airport safely.

I hate travelling. It always stresses me out. I always worry about all the things that could possibly go wrong. I also hate inconveniencing people, so you can just imagine what traveling with a toddler does to me. And there we were, on the freeway driving along and I was praying the whole way that everything would be okay. I asked GeekBoy, "What's the difference between always having a prayer in your heart and just being a nag?" He answered with the parable of the unjust judge. We started talking about the difference in attitude and trust between the two behaviors when we hit ice. Luckily, my husband had seen it coming so we were fine, but the road conditions started getting worse, and then it started to snow, and get very windy.

Right as the snow started, a car pulled onto the freeway in front of us. The whole way through the snow and wind, the last 25 miles to the airport, that car stayed right in front of us. We had tail lights to guide us through, to alert us to bad patches of road, to allow us to see the changes in the terrain, and to blow the drifting snow off of the freeway in front of us. When that car left with just a few miles to the airport, another one pulled in front of us to take its place. The road was really bad. At one point my husband, who does not worry, leaned over and said, "Now would be the time to start nagging." But we were guided through that whole stretch of dangerous road.

And about five miles into those treacherous conditions, my prayers turned from a nagging, "please keep us safe, please keep us safe, please keep us safe" to a simple "I trust in your care, Father, for my family." And with that change, I felt a change in me. My tension melted away. That's the difference between a prayer in your heart and nagging. Heavenly Father doesn't want us to die in a car crash any more than I do, so me bugging him about it isn't going to change things. Me going to Him for comfort in a time of stress, and allowing myself to remember the constant care I have always received from Him, and putting myself back in that care is the essence of a prayer in my heart. We had done the things we knew to do to prepare us for the situation we were in. Now we could honestly trust in Heavenly Father to let us know if there was something else we needed to do to keep ourselves safe.

Now if I can just remember that the next time I have to drive through a snowstorm.