Last week’s Mysterious Ways newsletter shared the story of Judy Gray from Hope Valley, Rhode Island, who followed a strange feeling to pull off the highway and visit a fireworks and novelty store. She didn’t buy fireworks—but she did find help she didn’t even know she needed. Judy’s story inspired another Guideposts reader, Becky Scheidt from Monroe, Ohio, to tell us about the similar inexplicable urge she felt one day out on the road…
“About 15 years ago, my husband, our two boys and I were heading home from a weeklong vacation to Cocoa Beach and Disney World. It was a long drive from Florida back to where we live in Ohio. On I-75, heading north, we saw signs advertising fruit stands at nearly every exit.
I wanted to get oranges to take home, so I told my husband to stop at the next exit to get some. But we had a lot of driving ahead of us, so he wanted to continue on the road for a while. No matter, there were plenty of fruit stands for miles.
Suddenly, though, I was overcome by an odd feeling of panic. ‘No, we must stop at this exit!’ I said.
My husband sighed. ‘OK, OK. We’ll stop here.’
It was a typical roadside fruit stand, with all the citrus and even pecans from Georgia. Nothing unique about it. Other than a tall, older, white-haired gentleman and his wife, we were the only customers.
My husband and I were looking around when we noticed the older gentleman acting strange. His wife walked over to him. ‘He’s choking!’ she yelled.
The three men running the stand looked stunned. ‘Call an ambulance!’ I yelled.
‘We don’t have a phone,’ one of the fruit sellers said.
My husband ran over to the gentleman, got behind him and started the Heimlich maneuver. It took him several tries, but finally, a cluster of pecans dislodged from the man’s airway. The man breathed deeply. ‘He’s going to be OK,’ my husband assured the worried but thankful wife.
The three men running the stand did not know the Heimlich. My husband, a volunteer firefighter, is required to know it. What if we hadn’t taken that exit? I say to this day that God led us to that fruit stand.”
Becky and Judy both followed a feeling they couldn’t explain and ended up in places they needed to be—for entirely different reasons. It seems to me that there are just too many of these stories to call them “lucky coincidences.”
Have these stories reminded you of one of your own? Send it to us at mw@guideposts.org or post it in the comments below.
