Midnight ushered in a new day as we packed up our little home once again.

The power was out. The wind was picking up. Another storm was moving in, and after the reset Tennessee had given us, it was time to keep moving.

We didn't know exactly where.

We just knew south.

Somewhere near the Alabama-Mississippi border seemed far enough outside the storm's path, so we pointed the Tahoe in that direction and started driving.

The farther south we traveled, however, the more obvious another problem became.

It was HOT.

Our 2004 Tahoe didn't have air conditioning, which meant four people cruising through the South in summertime with the windows down and plenty of Chris Stapleton coming through the speakers.

Don't judge us.

We hadn't yet learned how much attention we should pay to what we continually allowed into our ears. That's another story for another day.

For now, we had a campground to find.

It was July 1st, which meant the Fourth of July holiday was quickly approaching. I knew waiting too long could leave us without a decent campsite, so while Nick drove, I searched.

Eventually, one name caught my attention.

Pickensville, Alabama.

Something about the name drew me in. It felt like one of those little confirmations I'd been learning to notice.

So I picked it.

Or at least, I thought I did.

As we drew closer, heat advisories began appearing and the temperature continued climbing.

Then it hit 104 degrees.

Nick finally leaned over and said in the most southern redneck impression he could, "Honey, I'm going to need you to find me a Wahl-mart." 

Fair enough.

About forty-five minutes from our campground, we found one and purchased a portable air conditioner to make our little home survivable.

Then we arrived.

And somehow, we landed a beautiful riverfront site in the Pickensville Campground—the kind our neighbors told us people reserved practically the moment reservations opened.

Yet there we were.

The facilities were clean, my body continued healing, and setup had finally become almost routine. Our neighbors were grandparents camping with their granddaughter, giving our kids an instant playmate and Nick and me some rare time together.

We explored.

We relaxed.

We enjoyed one another.

Apparently Alabama thought things were getting a little too peaceful.

That first evening, Nick and the kids were outside shooting bottle rockets while I finished cleaning up inside the camper.

They'd launched probably thirty of them without a problem.

Then Alayna lit one.

I was properly welcomed to Alabama by that bottle rocket as it did a 180 straight at me, striking the left side of my face as I stepped out of the camper.

Of course it did.

Thankfully, I was okay.

And after that rather explosive welcome, our time in Pickensville was actually wonderful.

When July 3rd arrived, we packed everything up and prepared to continue toward another unknown destination.

We didn't get very far.

We rolled up the slight hill toward the stop sign outside the campground when suddenly—

Flat tire.

Nick pulled over to investigate.

Within minutes, a vehicle stopped and someone offered to help.

Nick politely declined.

Then another vehicle stopped.

Again, Nick thanked them and waved them on.

Where we came from, having multiple strangers stop within minutes simply to ask whether we needed help wasn't normal to us. We'd also brought assumptions from past experiences about who was safe and who wasn't—assumptions I didn't fully recognize as prejudices at the time.

Both of the first people who stopped were Black.

And if I'm being truthful, that affected how quickly we were willing to trust their offers.

Then a third vehicle stopped.

This time, Nick looked at what was happening around us differently.

Three people had stopped within only a few minutes.

Maybe this wasn't coincidence.

Maybe we needed to stop insisting we could handle everything ourselves.

Inside that third vehicle were Miss Pancho and her nephew, Booker.

This time, we said yes.

And thank God we did.

As Nick investigated the tire, he quickly discovered we didn't even have the right tire iron to remove the lug nuts.

Booker did.

In fact, he had an extra one that fit exactly what we needed. He gave it to us and refused to let us pay him for it.  Nick gave him no choice by forcing a $20 bill in his hand.  

Then another vehicle stopped.  A volunteer firefighter who apparently drove around with something I never would've thought we'd need:

A bucket full of bolts.

Because by now we'd discovered the flat tire wasn't simply a flat tire.

When Nick inspected the brake caliper, one of its bolts was just...

Gone.

Not snapped off. Not visibly broken. There wasn't an obvious piece left behind showing us what had happened.

As Nick remembers it, it looked almost as though the bolt had never been there.

Somehow, the missing bolt had allowed the caliper to move out of position and damage the tire.

And now, standing beside us was a man with an entire bucket of bolts.

He reached in looking for something that might work.

The first suitable bolt he pulled out fit.

Of course it did.

One problem down.

One tire to go.

Except it was around 11:30 a.m. on July 3rd, and the nearest tire shop was in Aliceville, ten miles away and they closed at noon.

While we were trying to figure out what to do, another man pulled up. He recognized Miss Pancho and Booker, heard what was happening, and offered Nick a ride to Aliceville.

By the time Nick arrived at the tire shop, they were preparing to close for the holiday and told him they wouldn't be able to help.

But before sending him away, one of the employees noticed the owner of Tubbs Used Auto Towing & Repair outside mowing nearby.

“Maybe he can help.”

So the kind stranger who had already driven Nick to Aliceville took him over to Tubbs.

The shop was closed that day. Tubbs just happened to be there mowing.  Apparently, he'd intended to mow the previous day but hadn't.

So on July 3rd, in oppressive Alabama heat, on the exact day a family from Michigan was stranded down the road...

there he was.

Nick explained what had happened. The flat hadn't only destroyed the tire—the rim had been shredded too.

Tubbs found an OEM rim with a spare tire already mounted on it that would fit our Tahoe and handed it to Nick so he could go back and get our vehicle.

Nick tried to pay him.  Tubbs just smiled.

“Naw, I'll see ya in a minute.”

This man didn't know Nick. Yet he handed him exactly what he needed and trusted that he'd come back.

At the very same time we were learning to accept help from strangers, complete strangers were extending their trust to us.

The kind man who had given Nick the ride then drove him back to us with the temporary wheel. Once Nick installed it, he moved the Tahoe and camper across the road to an abandoned gas station, where we unhitched.

Then Nick and Alayna headed back to Tubbs while Liam and I stayed with the camper.

No vehicle.

No air conditioning.

And almost no cell reception.

There would be no checking in with Nick or knowing exactly when they'd return. The camper was unbearably hot inside, so Liam and I waited outside in an unfamiliar rural area.

Before leaving, Nick had given me our loaded gun because he wanted me to be able to protect us if necessary.

I understood why.

But standing there with responsibility for a weapon didn't exactly make me feel relaxed.

I felt stranded.

And then Miss Pancho came back.

She had already stopped once.

She and Booker had already helped us.

They had somewhere else to be that day. They owed us absolutely nothing.

But Miss Pancho knew Liam and I were sitting there in that Alabama heat while Nick tried to get our vehicle repaired.

So she returned.

With cold drinks.

Ice cream.

Popsicles.

For us.

I had been left holding a gun because we thought I might need protection from strangers.

Instead, one of those strangers came back carrying popsicles.

Sometimes God has a way of confronting our assumptions without saying a word.

The people I might once have been quickest to fear were becoming the very people showing my family extraordinary kindness.

Meanwhile, Nick and Alayna were experiencing another part of the story.

At Tubbs Used Auto, the Tahoe went up on the lift so they could install a properly rated tire and make sure everything else was safe.

That's when the owner noticed our hitch.

The hitch we'd been using to pull our camper from Michigan.

Through Kentucky.

Through Tennessee.

And now into Alabama.

According to what he told Nick, it was in such poor condition that we shouldn't have made it fifty miles from our driveway pulling a camper that heavy.

We had traveled hundreds.

I think about that now and shudder.

We'd driven interstate speeds. Up hills. Around curves. Through mountains.

Four people inside a Tahoe with a roughly 5,000-pound camper behind us.

Had that hitch failed at the wrong moment—especially on one of those mountain roads—the consequences could have been catastrophic.

Yet it hadn't.

It held through every mile until a seemingly unrelated flat tire stopped us beside a road in Alabama and eventually put our Tahoe on a lift where someone finally saw what we couldn't.

The flat tire was the problem we could see.

The hitch was the danger we couldn't.

Suddenly, being stranded didn't feel quite so unfortunate.

Remember how we started this trip asking God to give us peace when we were headed in the right direction and a stomach ache when we weren't?

Apparently, the Tahoe needed its own discernment system.

It chose a flat tire.

Just sayin'.

And apparently, that got our attention.

Wouldn't you know it?

The property at Tubbs Used Auto was practically a graveyard of Tahoes and Suburbans.  Somewhere among them was a hitch that fit ours.

So while the owner removed our failing hitch and replaced it with one from another vehicle, his mother did what apparently any reasonable person does while helping complete strangers stranded in 104-degree Alabama heat.

She made fresh-squeezed lemonade.

I mean, seriously.

By the time everything was finished, Nick had a properly rated tire and rim, a spare tire with its own rim, and a replacement hitch we hadn't even known we desperately needed.

The caliper bolt had already been replaced beside the road.

The bill at Tubbs was more of a suggestion with a question, $100?  Nick knew the kindness we'd received was worth far more than that.

We had $140 in cash.

He gave him all of it.

When Nick and Alayna finally returned to that abandoned gas station, the four of us were reunited.

The Tahoe was repaired.

The camper was reattached to a hitch we now knew could safely carry it.

And we were finally ready to leave Alabama.

Looking back, I don't think Hand-Picked describes the campground anymore.

It describes the people.

No single person arrived carrying everything we needed.

One had a tire iron.

One had a bolt.

One offered a ride.

One pointed us to another place.

And at that place was a man who just happened to be mowing on a day the shop was closed.

He had the mechanical knowledge to notice what we couldn't see—and a yard containing the replacement part we didn't even know we needed.

One woman came back with popsicles.

Another made lemonade.

Different people.

Different pieces.

Exactly when we needed them.

We thought we'd picked Pickensville because the name caught my attention on a map.

Maybe Pickensville had been hand-picked for us.

Or maybe God had simply known long before our tire went flat exactly who would be traveling that road, who would still be at the shop, and who would have what we needed when we finally became willing to receive it.

Sometimes provision doesn't look like God dropping an answer into our hands.

Sometimes it looks like Him placing people along the road and teaching us to stop waving them by.

That evening, I didn't look for another campground.

I found a hotel.

Air conditioning.

Real showers.

And, naturally, a pool for the kids.

We drove about two hours toward Georgia and called it a night.

Tomorrow we'd figure out where we were going next.

For one evening, it was enough to know that we were safe, together...

and still hitched.

North Carolina had been quietly sitting in the back of my mind for years.

Surely that would finally be the place where everything made sense.

Right?

Companion Thought:

Sometimes provision doesn't look like God dropping an answer into our hands.  Sometimes it 

looks like Him placing people along the road and teaching us to stop waving them by.