I was five years old, carefree and innocent. I lived in Kansas at the time. My father was the pastor of a small church and life was good. I could not have predicted the unusual event that was about to occur in my calm little world. One day my mother was way upstairs in the third floor room of our house taking a shower.
I was playing with my two older sisters, Mindy and Marissa, and my younger brother Matthew on the main floor of our house when suddenly the doorbell rang. My oldest sister, Mindy, who was eight years old at the time, went to open the door, trailed by Marissa, Matthew and me. We all peered eagerly out, as little kids often do, curious to see who it was. It was a man delivering a package. “Hello,” he said. “Please sign for this package.” As Mindy signed her name the man said in an enthusiastic voice, “Hey, how would you guys like to go for a ride in my van with me?”
I did not want to be impolite, but I didn’t think it sounded like much fun to go for a ride in a stuffy old van. My little brother must have thought differently because he immediately yelled out, “Yes!”
Ever the conscientious little girl, I said, “I have to ask my mom first,” and turned around to run upstairs to ask my mother for permission.
My sisters gave out an immediate emphatic, “NO!”
My mother, blissfully unaware of the events unfolding downstairs, was startled by my bounding into the room and asking, “Hey this guy wants to know if we can ride in his van with him.”
“What?” my mother yelled. She threw on her towel and ran downstairs, but the man had already left. Apparently as soon as I had turned around to go upstairs and ask my mom for permission to ride with him in his van, the delivery man had fled swiftly to his vehicle and pealed out of our driveway.
My mother was extremely thankful that nothing bad had happened to us. She gave my father a full rundown of what happened that afternoon when he came home from work. My dad tried to get in touch with the company that the man worked for to tell them what happened, but the company was not able to help him.
That event was quite an eye opener in my life. I like to tell the story nowadays of the time that I “almost” got kidnapped. I laugh and joke about how ridiculously unaware I was at that time, but the more I have thought about that occurrence, the more I have realized how deeply grateful I should be to God. After all, my siblings and I were an easy target for the deliveryman. Four kids, all alone, or so it appeared, would be extremely easy to just run off with. I do not know if it was my telling the man that I needed to ask my mom for permission that made him realize we were not as completely easy targets as we appeared or not. At any rate, God was certainly watching over my siblings and me. I was completely unaware of the danger that could have readily befallen me, and yet even then God protected me when I did not even know I needed the protection. It reminds me of the often-quoted Bible verse, Psalms 91:11, which says, “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”
My run-in with danger has served as a constant reminder to me of God’s ever loving care. It is only by God’s grace that I am still here today. Who knows if the man would have actually kidnapped me or not? All I know is that I could have easily been taken, but I wasn’t. Although God does not always seem to save everybody from danger when they need him, we can always trust in his ultimate loving care.
The next time that you feel alone and afraid remember Psalms 91:11 and four little kids whom God watched over when they did not know they needed it. God will always take care of you!
McKenzie Cosaert Wallace writes from the Pacific Northwest.
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