People asked me if I was scared during my accident. Nope. Not a twinge of fright during the entire experience. Afterward, however, I was VERY scared of it ever, ever happening again, and became suddenly very open-minded about the possibility of a much closer job than Walmart.
The accident happened on Wednesday. All through Thursday, I stayed prayerful, asking God to direct if He maybe had a different career option, one involving less life-threatening commutes. I knew that God had directed my path to Walmart, but didn't know if I was still supposed to be there or not. I didn't ask for any specific sign, but left myself open to direction, and that if possible, I'd find out by the end of the up-coming weekend (I'm a very impatient person by nature and wanted to get my uncertainty over with).
I pictured some Westby business interest coming up to me on the street and saying I was just the employee they'd been looking for, and could I start for them as soon as possible. Instead, Friday morning I got a call from Laura's school. After the ensuing discussion, the school and I both agreed that Laura would be more successful at home for the rest of the school year.
Instant life-shift, because there was no way that I'd be able to keep my old Walmart job with both Laura and John at home. Or even Laura by herself, since whether she likes it or not, she's still young enough to need me around. I would be gone too much and too long.
And to think I thought it would take to the end of the weekend for God to make my path clear! Now that I had finding out my future trajectory crossed off my weekend to-do list, I could focus on more relaxing things like our trip to Glendive for church and the impromptu visit afterward to the Makoshika State Park.
I will borrow the already blogged account from my sister's blog,
http://goldcountrymeetsbigsky.blogspot.com, but add the pictures I took of our fun jaunt through snow covered hills in skirts. (And what they were doing in skirts, I'll never know.)
"Snow covers much of the ground, drifting fairly deep in some places. Not everyone was dressed for a hike, coming straight from church as we were. Technically speaking, all of us were unprepared, to some degree or other. Five out of seven of us had improper footgear, some VERY improper. Others of us had less than ideal clothing.
"I was in fairly good shape, in my Winter Church Chic look: skirt, Eskimo jacket, thick gloves, black long johns (since after all, I was dressing up more formally), and warm boots. It could have been worse. Tiggy wore pants...capri pants. If not for the thin boots she borrowed from me, she would have had trouble. Jack wore underarmor under his dress clothes, but his slip-on shoes weren't intended for snow hiking. Tina had dressed much like me, only with black stockings instead of black long johns."Worst of all was Cowboy Devon, wearing my unwittingly borrowed jacket (grrrr!), a western shirt, blue jeans, and yep, cowboy boots. He had already fallen on the ice twice, and apparently wanted to see how much more trouble he could get into. As usual. As usual, he was able to answer that question with flair.
"All the way along the trail, Jack stepped exactly in our friend's footsteps, so he didn't get much snow in his shoes, even in the deep places. There's bound to be a good lesson in there somewhere.
"Devon did not follow the path so clearly marked out for him. There's bound to be a good lesson there, too.
"He tried to follow the other kids up hills and down coulees, right until his boot got stuck in the snow. We had to take the long way around to the other side of the gully, while Devon warmed his now-bare feet on Tiggy's abdomen.
"Being the kind, warm, caring mother that I am, I carried him on my back most of the way back to the car.
"Even mother love balked at hauling him up the last steep hill, so he had to make a dash for it. 'Eeech, aaatch, ooootch, ouch,' trailed behind him all the way.
" 'I wish I hadn't brought these old bootcycles,' I said to myself. (If you haven't already heard the story, remind me to tell you about that tidbit of family history later.)"Despite a temperature of -3F, I was sweaty, um I mean rosy, when I got back to the vehicle. As thin as Devon is, he is also surprisingly solid. Add snow clothes - wet snow clothes - and you have a nifty workout.
"He didn't even have frostbite this time, thanks more to Tiggy than to him actually learning a lesson about dressing appropriately for cold weather."THE END
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