The Vacation from Sheol

Have you ever had one? You know, the Murphy ’s Law kind? We should’ve turned back after nine hours of driving and when we discovered we had left the key to the mountain cabin at home. We had to break a window to get in and the cabin wasn’t even ours.
Our first big outing: horseback riding. In the mountains, riding a horse is quite different than riding in the flat lands of Florida. The four of us had a guide so we thought “what could happen?”, right? Kristen, my fifteen year old daughter (at the time) was riding peacefully along when her horse stepped in a yellow jackets nest, reared back, and dumped her. As the horses legs were coming back down, they were aimed at Kristen’s stomach and I held my breath. In the nick of time, she rolled over, just missing a very heavy horse. It seemed to happen in slow motion and we were all VERY grateful it ended well.
My husband, Bill, was helping a friend do some repairs one day, so the girls and I went tubing down the river, a first for them both. Soon I realized that my tube was floating far ahead of theirs. Not to worry, they both were fine swimmers. What I didn’t foresee was nine year old Brittany’s tube getting caught on the only boulder in the river with a snake sunning on it. Realizing I couldn’t turn back and get to her, I answered her screams with “God has not given you a spirit of fear!” Gee, thanks mom. Her tube broke loose as the snake swam away. When our trek ended, the locals told us the snake we described was harmless and Brittany probably scared him more than he did her.
The day before we were to leave for home, Bill and I decided to pick wild blackberries alongside the road. The girls were glued to the tube watching “Ann of Green Gables” (they had had enough of living in the wild) so Bill and I went alone. We climbed over a barbed wire fence to pick the berries, all the while attracting bees to my bright red shirt. When we came back over the fence, somehow I got caught on it. Yes, caught on an electric fence. Yes, one that happened to be turned on. Bill grabbed me and pulled me over the fence, getting a charge himself and scrapping my leg on the wire. What I thought to be a deep gash, turned out to be only a scratch. The berries were definitely NOT worth it!
Even with all these misadventures, no one was trampled, no bones broken, no snake bites or fatal electrocutions. In all these things we were MORE than conquerors and I’ll bet we kept our guardian angels busy. J Can you imagine what it would’ve been like without God’s protection!?