I am grateful for divine protection

Today I am very grateful for the safety of my family. In particular, I am grateful for an answer to prayers that has saved the life of one of my sons.

I often hear families pray for blessings of protection and my family does the same. The Doctrine and Covenants teaches us that the priesthood authority has the keys to the administering of angels and in my personal prayers I have often prayed for the protection and safety of each person in my family. Something very scary happened on Sunday after church and luckily, or with divine providence, Wes was miraculously saved from being hit by a car.

We've had lots of trouble with keeping track of Wes after Sunday meetings. We spend more time tracking that boy down in the church building! He's like a little leprechaun. You can stare at him for ten minutes without blinking and the second you take your eyes off him, bam!, he's gone. This Sunday we tried something different. It was a nice day and people were hanging out on the sidewalk. Nobody wanted to get in their car and drive home so we decided to stick around. There was a group of kids on the lawn away from parents and they were at least 15 feet from the road. The kids were old enough to know to stay away from the road.

Enter Mr. Wes.

He wanted to go over with those kids and I watched to see what he would do. He plopped right down beside the other children and had a great time (and sat in place) for quite a while. Some kids came and went. I looked over at him often to make sure he was ok.

Here's the scary part. Avert your eyes now if you have a queasy stomach.

The last time I looked over at the group of kids, I saw Wes standing up a few steps away from them. He was staring at the road, probably 20 feet away from it. I honestly thought to myself, "Is this what it's like to be a parent and see their kid for the last time?" There were no cars around. The road by our church doesn't have much traffic on it or I would have been by his side the whole time. Well, he suddenly bolted straight for the road. And two cars appeared out of thin air, heading on a collision course with disaster.

I ran toward him, but there was no way I was going to get there first. The cars were going fast. They didn't show any signs of slowing down. The first car had no reason to slow down because he wasn't going to hit Wes. The second car was so close to the car in front of it that it probably couldn't see Wes. Whatever the case, they sped on their way and Wes ran right into the road, just feet away from being hit. He was laughing hard because he loves to run. I got to him right after he got into the road, sat down and turned to face me. I had already looked to make sure no more cars were coming. Then I reached down to hold his hand, which he took, and then he followed me off the road and I took him to the car.

I was pretty calm at the time. Since then, I've replayed it in my head lots of times and have gotten pretty scared. I think Skyler might have gotten the worst of it. He was there with the other kids and watched Wes running toward the road. He started screaming for me, paralyzed where he stood. And he was on the verge of tears after the fact.

Crazy times. And I know that my Heavenly Father has given us a miracle. For days I thought, "Our life could be very different right now. We could either be at the cemetery or in the hospital with a critically injured boy. Big sigh!

We have been giving our thanks in prayer to our Father in Heaven for his safety and that he is still with us.

We sure do love that silly boy. We love having him in our family. He brightens up our day with his smiles, his laughter and his testimony. I know that the Lord put him in our family and now I know he has been preserved to stay with us. I hope it's for a good, long time.