Angels Among Us

I think angels especially enjoy helping people in trouble—like me

In this inspiring little video I saw recently, a guy starts having car problems and pulls over at a gas station. He sees a woman crying by a gas pump and goes over to see if she needs help. She does. Her story unfolds and he offers to help. He fills the gas tank, gets her kids some food, gives her his gloves, prays with her, and comforts her at her moment of crisis. As they part ways the woman says, “So are you an angel or something?” He says, “At this time of the year, angels are really busy, so God sometimes uses regular people.”

My Own Little Crisis

The week before Christmas, I was driving four hours to another state to pick up my daughter from college. It was just me and my young son since my husband had to work. About halfway through the rural drive, a red warning light I’d never seen before appeared on the dash of our old minivan. Then the engine light came on. Then the heat quit working. Then the tire sensors started malfunctioning. My heart rate quickened as I imagined my son and I stranded in the middle of nowhere in a broken down, heatless car.

I didn’t dare stop the car as long as it was moving. My husband was in a meeting and unreachable at the moment, so I asked Google to tell me what the warning light meant. Siri offered possible diagnoses ranging from mild glitches to catastrophic engine failure and suggested that I pull over immediately. I didn’t. I told my son in the back seat what was going on and started talking through possible scenarios. He said, “Mom, don’t you think we should pray?”

Yes. Yes I do. And why didn’t I think of that?

So, he prayed. He prayed that the car would work and that we’d be able to get home safely that night.

I was thinking through how I could frame things for him without crushing his faith when the car DIDN’T work correctly and we were stranded in Idaho that night with a whole host of complications to solve. How would we get all my daughter’s belongings out of her apartment on time and transferred back home which was 300 miles away? Would we have to tow the car? How much would it cost to fix the car? If I got it to a garage, would they try to rip me off? Would I have to cataclysmically buy a new car? How would my husband get home from work that night since we were his ride home? Where would we sleep that night?

After the prayer I told my son I felt like we should keep driving until we got to our destination. He agreed. I eventually reached my husband, and he agreed with that plan after some Googling of his own.

Calling on Angels

I went through the very short list of people I knew in Idaho who may be able to suggest the name of a trustworthy garage in our destination city. I decided to call my friend Heidi who had family there. (I later found out she was in the middle of one of the most hectic days of her life but she helped me anyway). She consulted her brothers and one of them responded in a surprising way. He said, “I have a travelling mechanic coming to look at a car at my house in an hour. Just have your friend drive to my house. I’ll ask the mechanic if he can look at her car too.”

What?? Really? Really.

I drove on. A terrible electrical burning smell filled the car. “Here we go,” I said out loud, sure that the car was about to implode. But I kept driving and the smell dissipated. “The smell’s gone,” I said. My son responded, “I prayed in my head that the car would keep working.” (Insert happy tears emoji here).

We pushed on for another hour, toward the address of my friend’s brother. We rolled into his driveway somewhat sheepishly, and a lanky young mechanic named McKay ambled over and said, “Are you Chad’s sister’s friend Kim?” Yes I am. Are you the miraculous answer to my son’s prayer, waiting right here at the exact place at the exact moment I need you?

I’d never heard of a traveling mechanic, and who could have guessed that one would be waiting for me in a faraway city as if on cue? He pulled out his diagnostic tools and within minutes discovered the likely source of the problem. “I can’t find any evidence of coolant in the system at all.” Um, yeah, that could be a problem. He called his buddy Gabe at an auto parts store a mile away and said he was sending a lady in a minivan his way and would he please find me the right coolant and put it in for me.

What?? Really? Really.

I asked McKay what I owed him for his trouble. He said, “I was already here, and it was easy to fix. Don’t worry about it.” I joyfully gave him $20 bucks for his trouble. He was grateful and said he’d give it to his wife, who would be happy about it. I was happy; she was happy; he was happy. We were all happy.

We arrived at my daughter’s apartment exactly on time, full to the brim on coolant as if there had been no glitch in the plans whatsoever. We packed her up and were on the road in a perfectly functioning car. We rolled on in thankful bliss. I couldn’t believe it! We got my daughter to an appointment that evening on time, swung by my husband’s work to pick him up, and slept snug in our beds at home that night. It was a 10-hour ordeal that ended much better than I knew it could have.

Are We All Angels?

I heard a quote once that I’ve remembered: “God does notice us, and He watches over us. But it is usually through another person that God meets our needs” (Spencer W. Kimball, quoted here.)

None of my worst-case scenarios came to pass that fateful, blessed day a couple of weeks ago. Because of the orchestration of God and a few heavenly angels he sent to answer my son’s prayer (Heidi, her brother, and a traveling mechanic) we were spared a whole host of complications, problems, and expensive setbacks.

The man in the story I started this post with—who stopped because of his own car complications—found that when he returned to his car after helping the woman, it started up perfectly. He knew immediately why his car trouble had brought him to that exact place at that exact moment. He reflected, “It was so incredible to be part of someone else’s miracle.”

What if the man had been too wrapped up in his own irritation to notice the woman weeping?

If we keep our eyes open, perhaps even our setbacks will reveal themselves as miracles. Perhaps we can be the angels in other people’s stories.

With love,

Kimberly

P.S. Remember to check your coolant once in a while :)