"I want to go through Siloam Springs," my husband announced as we were about to come upon our exit for the highway that would take us to Tulsa. Tulsa. Our nemesis! Every time we were routed through there, we got lost, due to detours around road construction!
"Why do you want to go that way?" I protested, figuring it would take longer, and I was already worn out after two days on the road returning from our trip. He said he hadn't been to the small town in some sixty years, and he wanted to go there. I knew that's where his brother, a young, traveling evangelist, met the girl who would be his wife, and there were family ties there. But he also reminded me that his great-grandfather used to pastor a church nearby, and that his family had taken him there as a small child.
"There was a spring near there where my mother always insisted on stopping for some of the good water," he explained. Actually, I went there and saw the spring and church on a trip with Howard and his family when we were teenage sweethearts.
The route he had decided on would take us to Siloam Springs via Fayetteville. Suddenly I felt like I was back in Tennessee! The curvy, scenic, mountain roads soon gave way to breathtaking beauty! I hadn't seen heights like this since we crossed Sam's Gap and Fancy Gap, deep, blue, mist-shrouded chasms in North Carolina a few years ago! I ooh-ed and ah-ed in appreciation and wonder.
"Jeannean thought this was the prettiest place on earth," Howard said of his late sister-in-law, young then and a school teacher in the area. Well, it was very beautiful! But the hairpin curves were a little unnerving.
He didn't recognize a thing in Siloam Springs, the main thoroughfare of the sleepy little town having been transformed into a strip of restaurants, agencies, banks and other miscellaneous businesses. "What is that thing in the distance?" I asked. It looked like a monument of colossal proportions, but drawing nearer, we saw it was a casino, complete with a waterfall cascading down its rocky heights.
We were hesitant to follow the signs leading to Tulsa, so Howard stopped for directions, even though we had our GPS. We wanted to avoid the detours through the city at all costs. "He said this was the right way," my husband reported, getting back in the car. Sure enough, we navigated through the metropolis and soon found ourselves clear of the city and on the final leg of our journey home!
What if we hadn't taken the route Howard had spontaneously decided to take? We would not have been on a clear path through Tulsa! Thank you, Lord, for being with us on this 2,000 mile trip! We had been safe all the way! Not only that, but our mechanically-inclined grandson had taken it upon himself to work until midnight on the eve of our departure replacing our brakes! Something very necessary on the mountain roads! Every time we make it home safe and sound from a long, arduous trip, we consider it something of a miracle! And I believe it is!
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