During our family’s hamster wheel of initial preparation to leave for Africa, one of my sons was diagnosed with ADHD. The Reader’s Digest version, as I looked to homeschooling him: Overwhelmed. 

Retrieving medicine from the pharmacy, my kids bounced like pogo sticks. “We’re moving to Uganda!” one of them brightly announced to the pharmacist. 

She probably thought something like, What a nice story. Isn’t that in South America? 

I offered a grin. “Actually, they’re telling the truth. We’re moving to Africa.” She looked at me, eyebrows lifted, then glanced at the kids racing around me. 

“Are y’all nuts?”

Good grief. I didn’t even have all my kids with me. 

Cut to weeks later, taking my mom out for falafel and jasmine rice. We headed to Barnes & Noble to spend a gift card, chatting and laughing. At a traffic light, my trusty minivan gathered strength for the uphill turn. 

I saw headlights in my peripheral vision. A Corolla barreled off the front of the van. We spun.

Mom and I sat there, stunned, assessing each other and ourselves—unhurt, save a ripening goose egg. Quizzed each other: I had the green, right? Looked into the car now adjacent to us, where driver and passenger were conscious, shaken.

Next morning on the phone, I attempted to explain to my grandmother how our van had shook and lurched when the tow truck separated the two vehicles. (The speed limit on the cross road is 45.) “I braked,” I told her, and then… 

What if I hadn’t braked? 

That smashed front end that groaned when it was separated would have been—my door.

I went over and kissed my daughter’s head. I felt expansively thankful to be making her oatmeal as she waited there (on the floor; we’d sold our table) in her pink flannel nightgown, wrapped up in her quilt. 

Leaving for Africa, I had increasingly felt like a spectator–in a good way. God’s plans seem to buzz and collide around me in gracious and powerful ways. I witnessed how I was (still am) part of His plans, and not the other way around. 

Also of note was my utter fear of losing our lives in Ugandan traffic at the time. God seemed to say, Safety comes not with where you’re at, nor with your circumstances—but who’s with you.

He didn’t mean my mom. 

Psychiatrist Curt Thompson says, “Courage is about me having somebody else within me that enables me to do hard things that I otherwise wouldn’t do on my own.” 

Like Psalm 91, I felt…covered. Not prevented from danger, but hovered over by the presence of God. Over all these things so far beyond capability, my family heard, I’ve got this one.

Be still.