Blessings in disguise: a Christmas related svithe

Imagine how you'd feel when you discover your house filling up with black smoke at 11:30 pm on Christmas Eve Eve (that's right, two days before Christmas), not knowing the origin of the smoke. Panic might ensue with thoughts of a ruined Christmas, losing your home, and/or of your small children being endangered. You'd call 9-1-1 and stand by helplessly while you wait for professionals to do their thing, hoping your nightmares might not be realized.

Imagine your relief once you found out it was, in fact, just a minor wiring melt down in your dishwasher and not a full blown, all-consuming fire. Relief would wash over you, leaving you with a grateful heart that you avoided a near disaster.

This actually happened to the Bishop in my parent's ward. After relating this he said added a few more lines that that made me stop and think. He said, "Had we immediately known our dishwasher was the culprit, we may have been annoyed and frustrated at our unfortunate loss two days before Christmas. But because we thought we were going to lose so much more, we were very grateful it was just that. We could deal with a broken dishwasher."

It was a good look at perspective and how we perceive the situations and problems that arise in life. We choose how we respond and what we make of life.

Having said that, I'd like to relate another story that my family's already heard.

After 56 total travel hours (one way), we FINALLY arrived home.

Our trip should have been a relatively easy drive with only 4 roads spanning AZ, NM, and TX. It's normally about 14 hours one way-long, but do-able.

A little after 4 hours into our drive home, the snow began to get heavier and road conditions worsened. Just outside of Albuquerque we saw a suburban flipped over (not the actual flip, but it was soon enough thereafter to see them crawling out the back), and two multiple-car wrecks on our way into town. We were going to just forge ahead, at least until Amarillo, until we saw a sign saying I-40 was closed from ABQ to the Texas border.

We found a motel, ate a delicious dinner at Applebee's (I highly recommend their Cajun Lime Tilapia on the Weight Watchers portion of the menu) and hung out until the roads opened again. It snowed all night and ended up being the most snowfall ever recorded there in one day (see above). Needless to say, the roads didn't open right up. They actually didn't open them until 5 pm Saturday (24 hours after we arrived in ABQ). I was surprised they opened it so late because I figured ice would be beginning to form, but we really wanted to get at least a couple more hours of travel out of the way.

We crawled along at 10-30 miles an hour for 2 hours. 56 miles out of ABQ we came to a dead stop. Wrecks somewhere ahead of us. That was at 7 pm Saturday. We didn't move from that spot until 1:15 am Sunday. We were VERY VERY glad my mom suggested we bring a big blanket with us just in case something like this were to happen. We both huddled under the blanket and tried to sleep. The car was so cold that our breath began to crystallize and freeze on the inside of our windows (see right). It was cold.

A little before 1:15 am we saw cop car lights flashing and heard them yell "WAKE UP! Get a move on! Someone wake up that trucker in front!" Sweet heaven and earth we were on the move! We quickly tried to scrape the inside of our windshield so we could see, and we set off again. Around 2 am we neared a semi in front of us with its hazards on. Traffic was once again at a dead stop. Later we learned that there were 17 wrecks in the second round alone. Nothing like taking 18 hours to travel 60 miles.

We weren't allowed to move again until Sunday morning at 11. There was a rough patch of snow for another 5-10 miles, but we had pretty smooth sailing after that. We'd hoped to get here Friday night, but we didn't get here until Sunday night at 10:20!

Even though it was really cold in our car that night, we weren't able to brush our teeth, we spent a total of 29 consecutive hours in our car, we ate beef jerky and Pringles for 2 meals, and we had to pee out in the cold snow while we were stranded, I'm glad we got through in that first batch on Saturday night. I'm pretty sure they didn't open that road until Monday to travelers not already stranded on I-40. Who wants to drive 10 hours on New Year day?