Where Angels Walk

Where Angels Walk

Connie Kennedy of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, has the best job in the entire world. Just as I do. We're grandmothers! But there is an enormous amount of responsibility that accompanies this position, and one day Connie's angels were really put to the test.

"I had recently purchased a new car," says Connie, "and I wasn't aware of all its safety features. Along with the car, we had also purchased a top-of-the-line car seat for our eighteen-month-old granddaughter Jennifer."  Eventually Connie felt more confident, and she decided to do some errands on a day when she was caring for Jennifer by herself.

"I was on a highway and Jennifer was in her new car seat, which I thought was correctly strapped down, in the back seat," Connie recalls. The locks on the back doors were also child-proof. But Connie hadn't realized that she had to enable the locks first. Now the car was on a long expanse of highway where some construction was going on. Connie was leading about fifteen cars along a one lane stretch when, all of a sudden the back door next to Jennifer flew open!, Shocked, Connie realized that the toddler had managed to undo the car seat and open the lock. Her car seat, barely strapped to the seat was wobbling around and any minute she could somersault right out of the seat and onto the pavement.

Jennifer hadn't slid anywhere, however. Instead she was waving out the back window. "Hi hi!"  Â she kept calling while wearing a huge smile. "Her face was lit up like a spotlight," Connie says. "I couldn't see anything out there in the fields for her to be waving at,and although I was in a panic to stop, with the construction trucks all over, there was no place to pull off."

Forcing herself to be calm, Connie talked to Jennifer. "Hold onto your seat, honey," she murmured. "Grandma will stop in just a minute." But Jennifer was absorbed in whatever was outside her window. She kept laughing, smiling and even pointing. Finally after about five hundred yards, Connie was able to pull off on a side curb, get out, hug Jennifer, re-lock everything and shakily make her way back onto the highway.

Jennifer was completely calm during the whole incident, smiling and extending her little hands to something Connie couldn't see. "But I know what was happening," Connie says. "Jennifer should have plummeted out of the car seat and onto the road, maybe even been run over by the long stream of cars behind us. But something held her inside until I could get us to safety.
"Thank God for guardian angels. I know they were with us that day."
…..(c) 2011 Joan Wester Anderson (joan@joanwanderson.com) by “Christian Voices” (christianvoices@att.net)