143.6 miles

Man, the rains were treacherous in the past week. This past Tuesday, Jo, Mya, and I headed to PAMF to make sure Joanne's left-side pain was a normal part of pregnancy. Through God's gracious intervention, everything was normal. We even saw a heartbeat on the ultrasound. On the way home, we took 880 and bypassed a little traffic by using the carpool lane. Everything was fine through Union City and Hayward - I was keeping my distance from the Civic in front of me, and the Landcruiser behind me was far as well. It was raining enough to warrant the use of the windshield wipers, but the pavement was really wet. There were some puddles here and there. I rode the carpool lane all the way to the end near the border of San Lorenzo and Hayward. Once we hit SLo, the cars in front of me suddenly stopped. The Mercedes in front of the Civic narrowly missed rear-ending the car in front of it. The Civic broke in enough time, and so did I, with room to spare. But I slammed on those brakes, man! The Landcruiser in front of me had to swerve to the shoulder and literally ended up side-by-side to me. I thought the dude was leaving a ton of space behind me, but I guess he/she wasn't paying attention.

I thank God for keeping us safe that day, and when I finally got off the freeway and stopped at a stoplight, I took a deep breath. I also made the sign of the cross six times and kissed my medallion of Jesus in our truck. I've been doing this regularly before I start driving anyways, to ask the archangels to keep the six of us safe - Me, Jo, Mya, Jo's lil' bundle, Gilbey, and Belle. This day, they were truly looking out for us. For some reason, I glanced down at the trip odometer and saw that it read 143.6 miles. 143 has always been pager code for "I love you" (look at the number of letters in each word). And the number 6, I've interpreted to be the six of us. God works in mysterious ways.