This Time... We WERE There

Okay, if you've heard/read the news today then you know all about the second attack in Jerusalem by a man in a front loader. As you can guess by the title of this post, we were there!

Today we applied Psalms 71:1-2 to our family... "In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion. Deliver me in thy righteousness, and cause me to escape: incline thine ear unto me, and save me." Here's our story...

My son had a check-up this afternoon at the doctor. When that was finished we headed back to our home. We came to the end of a street where we wanted to make a right turn, but there was a front loader in front of us, so we had to wait behind him. He stayed at the corner of that street for quite some time, and at first we thought that he was having trouble finding an opening in the traffic to get onto the road. We were tired of waiting, so when we saw an opening, we went around the front loader to pull onto the adjacent street. As we paused before our turn I looked at the driver to see if he would be annoyed that we were passing him. He looked at me, but he didn't seem to be bothered by us; he just looked like he was waiting. I did notice that the scoop of his vehicle was flat on the ground, and I thought that was odd if he was going to be driving. We pulled onto the road and got into the right hand lane of traffic and waited at the red light. There were about 3-4 cars behind us at the light also. While we were waiting, all of a sudden, we heard what sounded to be cars crashing behind us; at first we assumed that a wreck had occurred. When we turned to look, we noticed that it was this front loader that we had just passed, ramming into cars and hitting them with his scoop. My husband (applying Ps.71:1) was rattled, I'm sure, but he was not confused. Since we were in the right hand lane, near the next intersection, we backed up (hitting the car behind us) and drove up onto the curb, down the sidewalk, and took a right onto the next road. Just as we turned the corner we heard a barrage of gunfire. We sped away fast. We pulled over at a nearby hotel so my husband could make a call, reporting the incident, but then we heard gunfire again, so we took off from there. That's one time I don't think my husband minded breaking the "don't talk on your cell while you're driving" rule. We went back to my husband's office, where it's nice and safe, and waited until the evening before venturing out on the roads again. We took the same way home and they were still clearing the road of crushed vehicles.

I would love to say that I was calm and collected, but at the moment I was just in shock. I was praying, loudly, for God to protect us and help those people left behind. I have NO DOUBT that the LORD is the only reason we made it out of there with only a few scratches on our rear bumper. We keep thinking... what if we had honked at that guy when we were waiting behind him? Would that have made him mad and put his front loader into reverse? I looked that man in the eye... moments before he died... what were his thoughts of our family? Why did he decide to wait until we passed by?

I'm still in disbelief that this has happened to us. It all seems very surreal. My daughter is a little shook up, understandably. When we got to safety, she wrote a letter to God expressing her feelings and thanking him. I've told her to keep that letter for the future. My son doesn't seem very bothered by it. He keeps saying, "I'm glad we weren't smushed." And, "I'm glad God kept us safe." Most of all we are just VERY thankful to our loving God for keeping our family safe and causing us to escape (Ps. 71:2).