Did You Bring God With You Today?
By Cori Morrow
The sound of The Greatest Showman soundtrack thumps through the speakers as we pull out of the driveway with our 30-year-old pop-up camper for another Morrow family adventure.
We’ve been traveling as a family for 10 years now, so it’s hard to imagine we would forget anything. We have our packing routine down to a well-oiled machine, and besides, I usually say, “If we did forget something, there’s always Walmart!”
However, can we really buy everything we need? Did God make it into our suitcases?
Then he said to Him, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here.” Exodus 33:15.
I know that I am very good about remembering to go to God when times are tough; it feels like second nature. Psalm 46:1 says, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” But remembering to take Him with me in the good times, and in the everyday activities isn’t always natural, and when I forget, He reminds me.
We typically put on 10,000 miles in a summer with our pop-up, and that comes with its own set of challenges. I’m a very linear thinker. I teach math, so spontaneity and I don’t connect very well. Have you ever noticed that whenever there is something you struggle with, God continues to put it in front of you to work on and gently reminds you: did you bring Me with you today?😊
As we left at 3:00 a.m. that morning, everything seemed right as we hooked up for the first time to the car. Since we had left so early, we had let our girls lay in the back so that they could sleep.
A few hours later, we had just switched drivers, and I was now driving. We had gotten the girls back into their seats, and as I was coming up to a bridge overpass, I saw the entire front end of the camper in the rearview mirror, but it was no longer attached to the car; the chains had snapped.
I screamed, “The camper is off!”
My husband, in disbelief, checked his side mirror. Anyone’s natural instinct would be to brake, but he yelled, “Don’t brake!”
The front of the camper would have hit us if I had pressed on the brakes. I swerved into the left lane, and I pulled off to the side of the road as we watched our camper speed past us in the right lane. Then, it jumped the curb and came to a screeching halt at the top of a huge hill.
I was obviously shaking at that point, and the girls were crying and were worried about what would happen to our camper. Remember earlier when I asked if God had made it in our suitcase? I will humbly say: He had not (or so I thought), but He had shown us that He was definitely a stowaway!
As I reflect back on this terrifying situation, I can now see that His hand was upon everything. First, God had intervened when he had me offer to take over the driving as I tend to drive slower than my husband because I’m not as comfortable in driving while pulling the camper, but I wanted to give him a break. God had His hand on the girls who were no longer sleeping; they were secure in their seats. He had protected us for many miles; we were five hours from our house–300 miles away from home; the fact that we had made it that far before this happened is definitely God orchestrated. Then, once we calmed down and were able to survey the damage, the only problem we could see was one bent leveling jack that had actually stopped the camper from plummeting down the hill which would have undoubtedly resulted in a complete camper loss.
Then, as if God had the number on speed dial, a tow truck pulled up before we even had an opportunity to think of who to call. The tow-truck driver got the camper hooked back up to our car. In order to keep going, we needed new chains. God showed loving -kindness through the tow-truck driver who followed us to a place that was just one mile down the road off of the very next exit! We figured out with the age of our camper, there is a perfect spot on it where it appeared to be on and to be locked, but it wasn’t all the way. We had had no issues the previous years as we had been towing with a different vehicle.
Now that we had gotten our new chains, we learned very quickly what quirks to watch for as we began to tow on this new hitch, and we were on our way again an hour and a half after watching our camper pass us by in the other lane and without having made one phone call!
We might not have thought we remembered to bring God with us that day, but He reminded us that He always remembers us, and He is always with us watching over us and protecting us even when we might think we forgot to pack Him. He is in the details of everything we do whether it’s dropping the kids off at school, driving to work, or enjoying some time together as a family on one of our many camping trips. Our Lord is worthy of praise: not only in the bad times, but in the good and mundane times as well. Proverbs 16:9 says, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
Many may wonder if we continue to travel with our pop-up camper after this ordeal, and the answer is absolutely! However, we have changed one big detail: God is always first on our packing list.
