A Sense of Déjà Vu

One day my son Bert and I drove home after shopping and visiting with my mother. Restless, Bert started playing with the knobs and dials on the dashboard.

A sudden blast of hot air hit us. “Turn that off, please!” I insisted.

He did so. Then he started jiggling the radio knobs.

First, the music was so low it was barely audible.

Then he turned it so loud that I cried, “That hurts my ears!” I did not want a headache. We entered an area where radio reception was very poor.

Loud static filled the air. I turned off the radio.

After about two quiet minutes, Bert started fiddling with the handles that opened the passenger car window and door. I pulled Bert back toward me.

“Stay right here!” I insisted. “If the door flies open and you fall out, you could get badly hurt or killed!” Unfortunately, a four-year-old has a really short attention span! The next time I looked, Bert was clinging to the door handle, and it suddenly flew open! I do not know how I managed to slow down enough to pull into a country store parking lot with Bert hanging tightly to the door handle. I grabbed his crisscross overall straps and pulled him back into the car. We sat silently, resting, as I struggled to regain my composure.

I had strange feelings of déjà vu as if this had happened to us before. But it had not. Then I recalled hearing a hair-raising story years before.

Langdon Hudson, a biology professor, had told a similar story at a program at our church. The same thing happened with him and his small son, Larry—even pulling Larry to safety by his overall straps! I made Bert ride in the back of our two-door Ford Custom after that. (Back in the late sixties, new cars had seat belts for adults but none for children. Child seats finally became available after our little Ann was born in 1971.) In both cases, perhaps guardian angels held the boys’ hands fast to the door handles. There may have been extra angels who saw to it that the roads were traffic-free during those moments.

However they did it, we were deeply grateful! What a mighty God we serve!

Bonnie Moyers