I used to work as a 3-11 pm Supervisor at The St Josephs Nursing Home. The shift ended at 11 PM but I was never out on time. I needed to make sure that the night was running smoothly before I left and sometimes it was 1 AM before I left to go home. Any other time it would be about a half hour or so to get home in winter, if the roads weren't icy and or snowing hard.
This particular night it was really cold, 10 above zero and I had made it to Heuvelton, 5 miles from home when my car started acting like the entire electrical system was going out. The lights on the dash panel kept flashing on and off and and I thought for sure it was going to die right on the spot, but I gave it some gas and sped through the village praying that I would make it home. I crested the hill and coasted to my turn off on East road and the car decided to give up the ghost, just as I turned onto my road.
It was 1:30 in the morning on a weeknight, and there were no streetlamps on my road. It was pitch black , except for a tiny sliver of a moon and it was brutally cold. I knew that I could not walk the 4 miles home in my thin Nursing uniform, even though I had a coat. I would surely freeze to death and I was kicking myself for not putting a blanket in the trunk, as I had said I would.
Hindsight is always 20/20 and I thought this might be the last mistake I would make in this inhospitable climate. I was really wishing I had a cell phone like my friend Janice, but I didn't. It would not have done me any good to try to walk the mile back into the village because when the village closed up, it closed up. No 24 hour supermarkets, no Walmarts nor coffee shops.
The prayer had started the minute my light panel had begun flickering and it continued for the next 10 minutes. No one came by and why would they? It was 2 o'clock in the morning and people were snug in their warm beds.
I sat in my car for a bit, then decided that I may as well walk out to the main street and pray that someone would be driving by this early in the morning, but not expecting anything. I walked out and saw the house at the top of the hill but I hated to wake anyone up. I was kind of surprised that I wasn't colder than I was and was really starting to think I could walk home.
I walked back to my car and just as I did, I saw lights coming down my road. I was shocked and the truck stopped when they saw me. It was a lady and she was on her way to work that morning and she had a cell phone. I called my husband and he said he would be right there. She stayed there with me and wanted me to get inside so I could warm up, but I declined. Something else was warming me up on the inside and I was barely cold.
We did not know each other but she lived at the other end of our road and we had already introduced ourselves when she said, " I don't normally go into work until 4, but I was awake and could not sleep, so decided to go on in." I felt a flood of warmth on my body when she said that. I knew that it was no accident that she had come to help me. She wanted to wait with me but I told her that my husband was only 5 minutes down the road and she left me with a thermos of coffee and went on her way.
Before her lights were gone, I saw another car coming down the main street. This was crazy. Cars were not out at this time of night. This was an elderly man and woman and they were coming from the hospital. His wife had not felt well earlier and they had gone to the Dr and were on their way back home. They stopped and asked , "could we take you home?" and I replied, " no, my husbands coming and he will be here any minute." They seemed reluctant to leave me also but I said to his wife that she better go on home and get to bed where it is warm. They insisted on leaving me a blanket and they went on down the road.
I watched their lights as they drove and before their lights disappeared, I could hear my husbands Van coming.
He arrived and we had decided to push the car off the road so no one would hit it in the dark, just in case anyone came by and then something hit me to try the car again so I did and it started, just barely. The lights would not come on but it was running and my husband jumped in his van and turned it around to provide light for me to see the road. I followed closely behind him and kept saying in my mind, a few more feet, a few more feet. We passed the forest, the most beautiful part of the drive where the trees were laden with white snow, we turned the corners and the few houses and trailers came into view. Ours was the 9th house on the road but it was 4 miles in. With each 100 feet that we drove, I just knew my car was going to die but it didn't, not until I pulled into my driveway.
That was the longest half hour I had spent in some time and I had spent it in the elements and I was not overly cold.
No one can tell me that God did not send that lady to work early, or that elderly couple to give me a blanket or that my husband would hear the phone or that his hand was not in my making it home, without lights.
I had so much to be thankful for that night and many times since. It could have gone so differently and someone may have discovered me the next morning 5 or 6 hours later, frozen in my car, but not that night......
I love each of you very much and pray that when you need an Angel, one will appear... Love always, Kimmee
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