a reality check

It seems the theme for my blog is about attitude adjustments right now - obviously it's always a struggle in my mind as a parent. If you read my last post, you might find it ironic - as I did as I walked away from typing it. The irony of feeling bad about a few broken/damaged things around my house - when here we were just fighting a flood - and thankfully can say we've come through unharmed. The credit for coming through unharmed goes to the hard work of the men of this town who worked day and night to sandbag dikes and get the Army Corps in here to help. The government agreed to (after many meetings with the city council here) get the dike raised - so hopefully we won't have such a fight next time that much water comes our way. It is a relief to see the water going down - and things are getting back to normal. No one lost their home or more importantly - their life.
Speaking of loosing your life, we made a foolish decision today. The road is closed between Neche and Pembina (where we go to church) and has been for weeks. This morning we took the long way around and like I said before, we were noticing how much the water has gone down. So - on the way home, we looked down the highway that was closed (before we took the turn-off to the detour), and thought it might be safe enough to take home - it looked like the water had really gone done. We approached a strip of water that was running across the road and started through it - as we got going through it, we began to realize that it a lot deeper than we thought - and a lot longer of a stretch. The water was probably as high as our running boards. We no longer could see the lines on the road, and the only edge you could see was the lower one where the water was rushing off. The swirling of the water was confusing to your eyes - and it felt like the vehicle wasn't going straight. Thankfully we had 4WD, and such a large vehicle (and Excursion) - I'm sure a smaller one would have been swept away. There are no shoulders to that hwy - and the ditches are deep enough to have covered our Excursion if we were swept off. We couldn't see the condition of the road under us - it could have easily been broken away in spots. Garret kept asking if he could take off his seatbelt - in case we went under, and we had to make it out a window. Every seatbelt in our vehicle is full - there are 8 of us - and 2 in car-seats - one only 3 months old. As I was praying, I was trying to come up with a plan for if/when we got swept away. I would roll down the window on the side towards the sky and start unbuckling kids - I was picturing my trying to keep 3 month old Zeke up out of water while I poked kids out the window. I was planning on calling with my cell phone at the same time. It's truly out in the boonies - there wouldn't be anyone coming down the road. I kept quietly praying for forgiveness for being so foolish - and looking at my baby thinking about how God intrusted us with these children, and here we are... The stretch of water finally came to a close and we all looked at each other with relief as we drove up onto dry ground - until we came upon the next stretch. Not good. We crept along at a steady pace and the wheels stayed secured on the pavement that we couldn't see - as we began praying again. We made it home, but the nerves have hardly recovered. I am just so thankful that God was merciful to us - it really could have been tragic - and if nothing else - embarressing - Stu is fire chief of Neche - whoops - not too great of an example there...
Thank You God - thank you.