A choir director I know used to take his choir on a fall “advance” (instead of a “retreat”) to make progress on the fall’s music. Usually we think of a retreat as a time to get away or “save yourself,” as in a military retreat. I think all these nuanced ideas work well together: we seek to leave our normal routine, sometimes as a “life-saving” necessity to make progress in areas of our life where we feel stuck. For most of us, these are planned events. I want to tell you the story of a forced retreat.
Years ago, my husband and I headed east on I-70 on October 30th. It was snowing in the Denver metro area and since this was before Internet, we assumed we would drive out of it as we got closer to Kansas. Instead, we drove into it. We had several opportunities to pull off the highway but that false hope that “if we just kept pushing through it HAD to get better” kept us moving forward.
Visibility was about 50 feet due to blizzard winds. Suddenly, in front of us was a car sideways across both lanes. The last thing I remember was a dark-haired woman in the passenger seat looking at us, her mouth open in a scream. John swerved and hit the end of their car; we shot off into the median as they went off the other side of the highway. John could hardly stand up in the wind as he searched for the other car. It had vanished.
We sat in the cold and dark, petting the cat that was traveling with us. Finally, a snow plow driver stopped and insisted he take us off the road. (We had refused to go with an earlier one.) Reluctantly, we left the cat with a big sweater and went to “town,” which consisted of a restaurant and motel, both completely full. A sister and brother offered to share their room with us and we moved in with complete strangers, worried about the people we had hit and the cat sitting in the truck that was stuck in the median.
That was a God-ordained night. The brother was having serious faith and life issues and the sister had been praying for someone to connect with him. As we spent a long time talking, a corner may have been turned in the brother’s life.
The next day, the sun was out, a tow truck took John back out, pulled the bent fender off the tire, and towed us out. John drove back into town with a grateful kitty. On making further inquiries, the car we hit was never found; in fact, there was no evidence that a car had ever been there.
I am convinced we hit an angel and were stopped not only for that brother and sister but to save our lives. Not too much further down the highway, 50 cars had spent the night in the storm on the highway and some people died.
While not your typical retreat, our lives were saved as we were taken out of our agenda (unwillingly but lovingly), and much was advanced in four lives. I can still picture that angel and it has served as a warning many times when a still, small voice was telling me to stop and I was insisting on my agenda. Also, I now know that in certain circumstances, if I won’t stop, God will engineer it so that I have to.
We advance by retreating at times.
Join the Conversation
Have you had God “force” you into a retreat you weren’t expecting? What were the results?
How does Valerie’s story of a life-saving, unexpected “advance” speak to you?
 Valerie Hess is an author, instructor in the Spring Arbor University’s Master of Arts in Spiritual Formation and Leadership (MSFL) program, retreat speaker, musician, mother and pastor’s wife. She does a weekly blog for the MSFL program and has written numerous articles, mostly on the themes of spiritual formation through the spiritual disciplines and church music. She has written two books: Habits of a Child’s Heart: Raising Your Kids with the Spiritual Disciplines (co-authored with Dr. Marti Watson Garlett) and Spiritual Disciplines Devotional: A Year of Readings. Her husband is an Associate Pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Boulder, CO. She has two daughters and two son-in-laws.
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