NOTE: At the end of day of the Realm Makers Conference, I wrote a journal entry. I didn’t want to post them right away, because I was exhausted and knew they would need some editing. Therefore I will be posting an entry here each day for the next six days. All-in-all they’re fairly short, so they shouldn’t take up too much of your time.

Sixteen hours and 1,000 miles of Interstate and state highways. Some parts of the drive were in the middle of nowhere, and others were smack in the middle of big cities.

For this girl who lives in a smaller town and drives less than 100 miles a week, and most of it through residential streets, daunting doesn’t begin to describe it. This being my fourth time taking this particular drive to the 11th annual Realm Makers writers conference in St Louis, Missouri doesn’t make any difference.

Largely because I can’t predict what the traffic or weather will be like. All I can do is pray God stays with me and keeps me and my son safe.

All-in-all, it was uneventful. Just a long day. Tom, my son, and I left at 3:15am, but discovered fifteen minutes into the trip we had forgotten our food. We figured we were still close enough to home to go back and retrieve it. Since I wanted to leave by 3:30 anyway, we only lost fifteen minutes, getting back on the road at 3:45.

I made the mistake of making decaf coffee to start, and I was fighting to stay alert until our first stop for gas. After the first few sips of caffeinated coffee, though, I didn’t have to fight any mental fatigue anymore. The weather started out cool at 55 degrees (F), and didn’t warm up past 70 until we got into Iowa. By the time we entered Missouri, though, the temperatures had jumped to 90. We also saw mostly cloudy skies with peeks of blue.

Three particular happenstances proved just how engaged God was in our trip. Two of them happened within five minutes of each other. I forget which city for sure; they all started blending in after the 10th hour of driving. The first was a driver got distracted and swerved into my lane so fast I didn’t have time to react. Luckily he corrected quickly enough and missed my front bumper by no more than a foot or two.

The second was when we were traveling next to a semi to my left. Neither one of us noticed that his lane was about to end, and we were headed for a collision. My only option was to immediately swerve into the lane to my right. So immediately I didn’t have to time to look to make sure I wasn’t about to smash into another car.

The lane was open, so both the semi and I shifted lanes at the same time as if we had planned it all along.

In fact, in all but two instances of those 1,000 miles, every time I needed to change lanes, that lane was open. Granted I’m in the habit of always looking in my mirrors to see where other cars are whether I’m changing lanes or not, but the lanes being open over 95% of the time when I needed to change is more than a coincidence.

My favorite part of the day (in retrospect) was the storm we ran into 20 miles from St. Louis. Sure I was white-knuckled, because of lower visibility on an unfamiliar highway—and no idea if hail was in the forecast—but the lightning show was fantastic. I wished I had a dash cam, so I could show the rest of you the many spider-web-like lightning that streaked across the sky.

Oh, and no hail.

A friend and fellow writer had sent me a text this morning, but I didn’t get a chance to read it until we arrived at the hotel. It said, “I’m praying for traveling blessings and mercies for you and Tom today. May the angels of the Lord keep you safe from all critters, both animal and human, and take you safely to your destination. May he keep you alert at all times while you are driving. May the Lord also prosper your time there.”

I can confidently and joyfully proclaim God did just that.