Signs, signs everywhere there's signs...

Today, DSs 3 & 4, our cousin, and I went to The National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. This place was AMAZING! It is more than three HUGE hangars of the history of aviation with a TON of planes to see. My aviator, DS 3, and his brother who is following in his brother's footsteps, was in heaven! I took over a hundred pictures that I'm sure we'll share in some form or another.

We left Dayton and headed south to Kentucky. I wanted to get to Lexington and stay for the night. Lexington, it turns out, didn't have many hotel rooms that would suit us...so we started looking for another option. I told DS 3 to start looking for a sign for the hotel chain we usually use. Almost immediately a sign appeared in a field saying there was one at a near-by exit. We joked that this must be our sign. It was a message that we didn't have to drive any further.

I went into the hotel prepared to "get my room". After all, I saw the sign, right? The hotel was completely sold out! As was every hotel at that exit! I have no idea what that many people were doing in that little tiny blue grass town, but we packed our tired bodies back in the car and continued on down the road.

It was pressing in on 10:30 and I asked DS 3 to call the hotel chain back to confirm the room that was the "next one south of where we were". With that call, there was a reservation and a promise that we would be at our destination within 25 miles. I figured that we would be in the room by 11:00.

My thoughts went something like this: "In by 11:00. Check email. Maybe check blogs. Get a good night's sleep and be ready to go in the morning for a leisurely drive to Atlanta to see Jane."

And mid-thought, two police officers with lights blazing appeared in my rear view mirror. I checked my speed. Why is it that we naturally do this even when we DO drive the speed limit?? Anyway, they whizzed past us followed by an ambulance. And almost simultaneously, the traffic on the Interstate came to a full and complete stop. People were eventually out of their cars...lights off...radios on....It didn't take us long to figure out that we were at the scene of a terrible accident.

We sat there until just after 11:00 when we finally were able to get around it. DS 3 and I discussed "our" sign a bit further. Now I am not one to say that "God had us stop so we wouldn't be in an accident"...because I can't let my mind do the opposite thing and think that God would keep me from an accident while letting someone else get into one...BUT I DO know that if it weren't for the signs and us stopping, it could have been us in that tangled mess.

And I couldn't help but draw up a parallel lesson to remember:

Sometimes the sign is clear, isn't it? You know exactly the "what" and "why" of it. It's easy to follow. And other times, the purpose of a "sign" may not become clear until later on and it may be much deeper than originally thought. In fact, it may be in our lives for a totally different reason than we could begin to imagine.

Isn't it amazing that you can EVEN learn while driving down the highway??

By the way, since the "sign" on the nighstand reads 12:27am as I type this...I'm thinking it's one of those crystal clear signals that I need to stop typing and get to bed!!!