All signs said go North...

...yet I insisted on going south. That is until I ended up upside down in a ditch.

So Br has been working in OK for a couple weeks now and E and I have been hanging out in DFW. Midway through last week after HOURS of cleaning and decluttering I finally got our house on the market. The second it was ready to been seen I wanted to get out of it so that E didn't undo my hard work. Late Wed afternoon E, Duchess (our dog) and I loaded up and decided to head down to Houston to stay with JoJo and visit friends for a couple weeks to pass some of the time between putting our house on the market and moving up to OK for real. Mostly I've just been trying to put off moving despite my boss's wise advice that E and I just needed to be with Br as soon as possible (that was sign number 1 that I should have gone north). I even paid the $39 the day before to get a new safety inspection so that I could keep my car in TX for another two weeks without getting a ticket. I'm pretty sure nobody in OK would have cared if I was driving around with an expired TX sticker.

The trip started as I pulled out of our neighborhood going South to try to get on the freeway. The major road that leads to the on ramp was backup up all the way to my street (I've never seen that road back up in the year we've lived there). Seeing the backup and deciding I didn't want to wait I turned around and exited my neighborhood to the north (sign number 2). Once I was finally on the freeway in the southbound direction traffic soon slowed until it was pretty much to a standstill. Of course the Northbound direction leading to OK was moving just fine (sign 3). What should have taken me about 15 minutes to get to the next interchange going towards Houston took over an hour but I kept going.

I kept going until I got to I-45 and then kept going down that a ways until a coyote ran out into the road. My natural impulse was to not hit it even though in my mind I thought, okay if you swerve don't over correct. I swerved and thought, okay try a little less this time, and then swerved like two or three more times until I thought, "Oh great now I'm going sideways and sort of spinning, and now going off the road, and now rolling." As I sat upside down I looked right at my dog now sitting in front of me on the shattered windshield wanting to get out of the car as much as I wanted to. I immediately asked E if he was okay since he wasn't crying and he said calmly "O hey". That's when I knew everything was "O hey". My only other panic was when the truckers who came to my rescue opened the door and Duchess went running straight for the highway. Luckily another trucker grabber her at the top of the hill right before she made it to the road.

E and I both got out of the car easily and aside from the tiniest little sliver of glass in my hand both of us were completely untouched. Poor Duchess who went from the back seat to the front has a cut on her paw that only bled for a minute. I know we were blessed. There were no other cars around me on the road when I started to swerve and spin. We stopped rolling only because we didn't have momentum because where we came to rest was flat not sloped. Just up the road a little the drop off was really steep so we were lucky our "ditch" was relatively flat in comparison. As I sat there looking at my upside down smashed car I realized it came to rest pointing North (the final sign).

I let the EMTs check us out even though we both felt fine and then we caught a ride with the tow truck to the Love's truck stop in Fairfield, TX. We were a sad sight sitting there outside the gas station up against the wall next to the pay phone. We must have looked a little odd considering I had my dog attached to a rope yet had real luggage and a laptop we watched a movie on while we waited. Kelly (the most amazing and selfless person in the world) came to our rescue in the middle of the night. (THANK YOU Amy for watching a few of her kids so she could come to our aid! and thanks for watching E the next day while Br and I tied up all the loose ends). I am eternally grateful. (As a quick side note, just to show you what a great person she is, as she was driving she thought, "how on earth am I supposed to find them at a truck stop I've never been to." Just then she looked up and saw a huge billboard that said "Love's truck stop Fairfield 28 miles". What she didn't realize was that that sign was directly below a sign that said something like "Nothing is too hard for God". Indeed, nothing is too hard for God. He'll protect a family trying to avoid hitting an animal and he'll be sure a sign appears for the person driving in the middle of the night coming to their rescue.

Br arrived in DFW a little before we got back home. I was so good to be with him. I realized I should have just been with him the whole time. At that point I decided it was better for us all to be together, no matter where it was.

The next day I decided that I should go get my baby checked out even though I knew she was "O hey" too. After a couple hours at the hospital and every test coming back normal Br and I got in the car and headed back to Fairfield to get everything out of my car before the insurance company hauled it away. We rolled back to town about 9 pm. Br then got to fix out fence that had blown down that day while I went and picked up E. When I got back to the house with E he refused to get out of the car so Br, Duchess and I got in and we all finally headed north--together.

In the end the morals are:
I know the Lord protected us.
I know that the best thing for our family is to be together as a family
and when a coyote runs into the road in front of you, just hit it!