A crazy thing happened to me

After the triathlon I had to go back to my mom's house (I had stayed the night there since she lives a lot closer) to pick up my stuff. They've recently done a huge lanscaping project and it included buying a new grill; ours recently died, so I offered to take the old one off their hands. Since I was there and had our truck with me, my stepdad loaded it up so I could haul it home.

I left shortly thereafter, exhausted and in need of a shower (lake water + sweat = gross). They live just a few miles from the freeway and all seemed fine until I took the left turn onto the freeway onramp. You can see where this is going...

The weird thing is, right before I got to that spot I had this very strong feeling that something bad was going to happen. It made me think about my fear of dying and leaving my kids without a mother. I suddenly had this horrible flash in my head of what it would be like if I got in an accident on the way home and died. I hate thinking like that, and usually I try to push those thoughts out of my head. I'm sure it's a common fear in mothers. But I felt nervous about the drive home suddenly and I prayed about it. I asked God to please not take me today; to guide me home to my family and keep me safe. That I love and miss them to please let me get home safely.

And then the grill fell out of the back of my truck.

I was stopped at the stoplight, so it wasn't as if I'd taken the turn too fast. The light turned green, I went and as I finished the corner, the top-heavy grill toppled over the side of the truck and landed with a sickening crunch on the ground - in the middle of the road. Thankfully it didn't hit someone, just the road - upsidedown and most certainly destroyed.

I panicked. Well, panic is probably a bit too dramatic, but I was instantly mortified and completely unsure of what on earth to do. I couldn't pull over where I was and there were people behind me trying to get on the freeway. So I kept going and called my husband. He didn't know what to tell me, and ended up unintentionally making it worse by asking me over and over, "Why did you keep going?!" like I'd left the scene of an accident. Finally I told him I'd call him back, pulled over and called my parents. My mom answered and when I told her (sobbing, I have to admit) that the grill fell out of the truck I think she about dropped the phone. She told my stepdad, and after explaining exactly where it had happened, he said he'd meet me there.

I had to go to the next exit and turn around, which took some time. By the time I got back to the scene of the grill debacle, someone had moved it out of the road. My stepdad called me back and told me to meet him at the Lowes parking lot, which was just past the freeway onramp.

He apologized up and down for not tying the grill down better. He never in a million years thought it would tip over like that. I felt like a kid again, crying into the arms of my stepdad. I think I was just too damned tired to handle the situation like a mature adult. So I regressed into scared child running to her parents to save her.

The kicker of the whole thing though, is that when I got to Lowes (and dried my tears finally), my stepdad said, "Ok, let's go shopping." He bought me a new freaking grill. And he must have felt really, really bad because it's a nice one too! I told him over and over that he didn't have to do that, but he insisted. When I called my husband back and told him what I was bringing home he couldn't believe it. When our grill went kaput it felt like one more thing added to the list of expenses - we really didn't know how or when we'd be able to afford a new one. And now suddenly, there's one on our back patio.

Maybe this is the part where I read too much into the situation, but I can't get over the feeling that something bad was going to happen to me on that drive home, but knocking that grill out of the truck kept me from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who knows; maybe my feeling of dread was tied to a little premonition that the grill was going to do a header out the back. But maybe, just maybe, that was God's way of keeping me out of harms way. Obviously I'll never know, but I appreciate it just the same. I could have lived without the whole mess and I'm still nervous that someone wrote down my license plate or something and I'll get in trouble for driving away. But I did get a new grill out of the deal, so it couldn't have been *that* bad, right? LOL.

My stepdad sent me an email asking if I'd gotten the grill home ok. Then he said, "You came up to do a triathlon and went home with a new grill - all you had to do was swim 800 yards, bike 12 miles, run 3 miles and then ditch a grill out of the back of your truck on a freeway onramp. Not too bad for one day's work!"