A Time to Die

I am sorry that I missed last week.  I was out of town for the holiday. During this holiday adventure, this week’s blog post emerged. It was not by normal means but in an event that if you recognize the small and simple things that help us each day, it is in the realms of miracles. This is what happened…

After driving to the coast to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my husband’s family we headed back home late Saturday night. Our youngest son Kris had flown out of the Raleigh/Durham airport at 6:50 that night so we dropped him off around 5. We had decided to just head home and drive straight thorough and arrive home in the early morning hours on Sunday.  That way we would miss most of the holiday traffic.

I slept and Randy happily drove. He took a short cut through a mountain road and he was quite enjoying himself. I woke up when we reachedChattanoogaTennesseeabout 2 o’clock in the morning. We headed west on Interstate 24 towards our turnoff that would take us toHuntsvilleAlabama.  Several miles before our turnoff we started to hear a clicking in one of the tires. We wondered if the tire was damaged and thought it was better to pull off at the next exit to see. There are only a couple of exits on that stretch of the highway.  We pulled off at a Pilot gas station. As we pulled in an old run down car pulled in beside us. A scruffy looking man got out and asked if we needed help. We explained the situation and since the tire appeared completely normal we pulled forward and back to see if the noise returned. It didn’t. The man explained that he had just gotten out of prison for car theft and was out six days. Could we help him? We were in a lighted area with people about so we felt safe and Randy gave him some money for food. We headed off on our way. A few more miles down the road where our turn off was they had been completing road construction and we missed our turnoff since they moved it. There were not any signs up yet to tell us of the new exit.  We headed off quite unhappy that we had to find another exit to turn around to make our exit. The next exit was ten miles down the road. We took the exit and made our way back to our original exit to go home. As we turned off theSouth Pittsburgexit we were immediately met with flashing lights from patrol cars. It appeared an accident had just occurred and we turned around and headed up a road through a residential area. We were quite miffed at all the delays. As we passed the wreck site we could look down of the road as saw it had just occurred and closed both lanes. All we could see was a motorcycle lying on its side. We couldn’t see the other vehicles involved down the side of the mountain. We were tired as after the delays it was now late in the night or I should say early morning. As we finished our journey and arrived safely home we realized that if we had not had the sound in the tire, or the missed exit we would have been on that section of road at the time of the accident. We knew we had been watched over. Our time is not yet.

So this brings me to my topic. We do have individuals, usually family members that have passed on that watch over us. Circumstances will happen so we are not where there is danger if that is important for us at that time.

It was important to understand when Kory died that it was his time to go. In the book “Life Everlasting” by Duane S. Crowther: page 42 gives scriptural support to this.

“Although man dies not fully understand how the time of his death is fixed, yet it is clear that mortals have such a time set for them.”

Ecclesiastes 3:2, “a time to be born, and a time to die.”

Doctrine and Covenants 42: 48 “And again, it shall come to pass that he that hath faith in me to be healed, and is not appointed‍ unto death, shall be healed.

Brother Crowther further states:

“The righteous man, who gives due care to his physical being and fulfills his obligations to the Lord, may expect the privilege of remaining on earth to fulfill his life’s mission and course and living the full extent of his appointed years.”

I also know that we will be here on the earth until the appointed time of death arrives. So I do not worry about it. I guess I take reasonable caution, but even this past year when we had the killer tornado out brake in the area. I just say to myself, “if it is my time, it is my time. If not I don’t worry about it.” It gives me a lot of freedom from worry.

I know that Kory is watching over us, we saw evidence of this, this past weekend. We all have the privilege of having guarding angels. We are never left alone.