Left Behind or Do you know where your spouse is.

This is the story of how a cell phone saved us a lot of grief.

We were going to a wedding in Georgia for our niece Amy, and were taking 4 of our 6 children, the littlest being only two. It was to be an 18 hour drive so we calculated the arrival time and decided to leave at midnight to arrive in the afternoon instead of leaving early in the morning and arriving in the middle of the night. My husband Joe and I are able to drive long hours and we each have our special talents. He is a morning person and can drive best then, and I am able to drive through the night. On this occasion, he was still wide awake after packing for a couple of hours so he drove first and since I’m able to fall asleep fast I went immediately to the bed in the back of the conversion van and closed my eyes. The rest of the family was watching (listening ) to back to the future 1 and part of 2 when Joe pulled over to let me know he was done and could I wake up and start driving. I don’t know how long I’d been sleeping but I definitely needed a jump start to get behind the wheel. I asked him to get a diet coke to help me get more alert and he brought the 48oz special back, they all loaded into the van and we got back on the road. Joe was in the back on the bed with Mitchell who was 6 at the time 16 yr old Melodee was riding shot gun, and Mark who was 14 and the baby Mari were in the middle. Mari took the longest time to fall asleep, but eventually they all dropped off and I was able to drive in peace. I listened to the rest of the movie and then the diet coke caught up with me and I had to go use the little girls room, it was in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere but fortunately within minutes a sign came up for the next rest stop. My goal at that point was to take care of business as fast as possible and get back on the road without disturbing the peaceful environment. So, leaving the motor running and the movie on, I ran in ran out, took a quick look around to make sure everyone was still sleeping, confident that no one had moved I went down the on ramp and took off. I “listened” to the rest of that movie and put in back to the future 3 and was still wired as the sun came up. Looking around, in the van, everyone was still sleeping peacefully and I was so proud that I had done the all night thing and we would be in Nashville early, we were making very good time. Melodee was still crashed, Mari and Mark were still out in the middle, Mitchell was asleep in the back on the bed, and ….wait a minute, why would Joe let him take the whole back seat, he was little, Joe must be crunched up behind the middle seat where I couldn’t see him, and he was going to get a stiff neck, or maybe he was on the floor, no he was too tall to sleep on the floor he must be leaning on the window just out of my view. I was getting increasingly ticked that he would sleep funny and be crabby all day because he was still tired. After all, I had done the hard thing at least he could sleep comfortably, it was about that time that a tiny troublesome thought entered my brain, “what if he wasn’t back there at all!!???” Then the sickening realization hit me, and it dropped like a thud to my stomach. I wanted to believe that everything was fine and Joe was in the back, but as I cranked around to see if there was any sign of Joe behind the seat, I thought, ”Oh no….! OH NO!!! OH MY GOODNESS NO!!!! MELODEE WAKE UP AND TELL ME YOUR DAD IS IN THE BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Mel and all the kids slowly came alive to their mother screaming, IS YOUR DAD BACK THERE? TELL ME IF YOUR DAD IS BACK THERE!

No… No they all agreed sleepily, they didn’t see him. OH MY GOSH, I MUST HAVE LEFT YOUR DAD AT THE REST STOP, AHHHH……WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? As if it was a sign, there was another rest stop coming up so I pulled over and ran in, looking like a crazed maniac I’m sure. Out of breath I found the custodian ( All those rest stops in the south have people working there) and asked the question. I left my husband at a rest stop and I don’t know what to do, do you have numbers for all the other rest stops on this Hiway ? I didn’t think it was that funny but they were laughing quite a while. When they finally stopped for breath, and stopped making stupid comments, like did you have a fight, and that’s one way to do it, they said they couldnt call the other rest stops. (I thought that was a good idea) and that I should probably call the state police. GOOD IDEA! Wait, what state were we in? Maaam yawl er in Kintuucky. OK, what state I leave him in? That would have been Indiana, how long ago was it? I had no idea. It was dark out and now it wasn’t. Turns out it was about 6 am at that moment. On my way to the van to call state police on the cell phone, the thought occurred to me, OH yeah I have a cell phone, maybe he tried to call. When I turned the cell phone back on which he had turned off while he was driving, (Mental note , make sure to bring that up if blame starts to be thrown around) there were 15 voice mails un-listened to from the last two weeks. After impatiently deleting them one by one I got down to the last 4. Hi this is Joe; this is like something out of a bad sitcom. You left me at the rest stop. I guess the phone is still off. Its 4 am I’ll try you back in a bit. I tried to return the call but it just rang. Shoot, well maybe he gave me his location on the next message and I can go back and find him. I listened to the last three each being a little more pathetic than the one before it and still had no clue how to get to him. Hi this is Joe, I’m still here, it’s now 4:45 not sure what to do, you still have the phone off. Well I guess I will call again. On the last message I returned the call again and he happened to be standing there ready to call me again. He had decided that by 6 or so he was just going to start hitchhiking because we would be too far ahead. When he picked the phone I was so thankful, and I said I am so sorry I left you, I can’t believe I did that, are you OK? And his comment is nomination for sainthhood. He said, that’s OK honey you didn’t know I wasn’t in the van. Granted he had been standing in a rest stop for four hours and probably was too exhausted to be angry. We discussed what the best solution was to the situation and again he was sacrificial in his response, why don’t I just hitchhike down to you, it will take less time than if you had to back track to get me. I said all right and found out my exact location, and we agreed I’d just wait. The kids ran around and we watched another movie while we waited. I don’t know why I remember this but I think it was the wedding singer, maybe I was trying to get ideas to make things better when he got there. Well he finally pulled up in a van, we were both relieved to finally be back together and able to resume our journey. It has only been 4 hours but at times like that the reunions are as good as years apart. After thank yous and hugs all around we hit the road again. Later, when we were able to talk about the ordeal, he told me what he had gone through while I was cruising through Indiana and Kentucky. When he first came out from the rest room and there were no cars in the parking lot of the rest stop ( It was the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere) he looked around chuckling a little, thinking that maybe this was a weird kind of joke, but after a few minutes in the dark silence, he decided no it was not a joke, he walked down the on ramp a bit to see if maybe I had realized he wasn’t in the car and was backing up, but no there were no tail lights coming. He also tried hitch hiking with a trucker, but after 3 or 4 went by without stopping one kind trucker did stop and let him know that most companies had a policy not to pick up hikers, so he went back in to talk to his new friend the custodian and the guy gave him the same advice as they gave me, must be a common line, call the state police. So Joe did, and they tried but they never did catch up with a woman driving a 94 conversion van. Later I thought that would have been pretty funny if they had, “maam may I see your license and do you know where your husband is”? Or even the trucker, with Joe waving at me from the other vehicle and the kids asking why daddy was over there. Well anyway, after I finally reached him and we decided on the best plan. He hung up and was talking to the attendant, they had become good friends by then, and a guy in the rest stop overheard them and told Joe that he was going that way, Joe could ride with him, but could Joe drive, he was a bit tired. So again with the sainthood, Joe said sure, even though he’d been standing there for 4 hours and had very little sleep before that. The man wasn’t going as far as the rest stop where I was at, so Joe had to wake the guy up, get out and put out his thumb again. A lady and her husband who were on their way to a Christian conference in Georgia pulled over and picked him up and so Joe had some good conversation for the rest of the trip and made it to us in good shape.

There is no moral of the story. But we are thankful for God’s protection, the way He works all things together for His purposes for those who love Him, and cell phones. What did we ever do without them?