FaithStoriesOnline.com

Stories of Faith for Inspiration and Proof that God can be Trusted Completely

Sitting there at her sewing machine, my wife gave me her attention as I came into the room saying, “Well, I’ve got our trip mapped out; it should only take three months, and around 15,000 miles.” She stopped sewing, looked at me with her loving, caring eyes, and said, “Are you crazy! You can’t be serious, we have three little children!” But I WAS serious.

In 1987 my wife had quit her teaching job at a business university to stay home with our young children; I had quit my job as an environmental scientist with a state agency to strike out on my own as an environmental consultant, so for the time being, we were both jobless. Now, with time on my hands, I wanted to come up to speed on some of the current environmental issues, so my plan was to fly to an environmental conference in Tennessee and then fly to Washington, D.C. to discuss some energy ideas with a friend who had helped design the COMSAT satellite system, and then fly home.

Another travel plan developed, however, when my wife said, “I’m not working, and you’re not working, so why don’t we drive the trip and turn it into a family vacation.”  So, sitting down with a map, I looked at driving from Columbus, Ohio, to Tennessee, and then realized we weren’t far from Macon, Georgia, where I had some relatives, and that wasn’t far from Sarasota, Florida, where some of our good friends lived, and that wasn’t far from West Palm Beach on the other side of Florida where my wife had some relatives, and traveling up the East Coast, we had more friends and relatives right up to Boston.

And since I was on a roll at that point, the plan just kept on rolling along right into Boston and then to Chicago, to Little Rock, Arkansas, to the bottom of Texas, down to Mexico City and into Guatemala City, up the West coast of Mexico, into Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, and then up into British Columbia and across Canada, back into the States through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and…………back to Columbus, Ohio!  That’s why. . . when I presented my travel plans to my wife and at this point she clearly saw that she got a whole lot more than what she had originally bargained for, she reacted with, “Are you crazy?” One good friend with great concern said, “Nick, I think you’ve gone off the deep end this time.” My reaction was to go buy a twenty-year-old VW camper van!!

In the following weeks, we packed up the van with supplies for us and the kids and lots of spare parts and plenty of oil for the van. My son wasn’t potty trained yet, so we had white disposable diapers stuck everywhere! Before leaving, a friend of ours gave us a little 3×3-inch plaque with a Scripture verse on it that read, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)  We set the little plaque in a prominent place on our dashboard as it seemed the perfect motto for our trip.

The next day my wife, our five-year-old twin daughters, and two-year-old son climbed in the old van as I pulled the sliding side door shut.  It was like boarding Noah’s Ark only without the critters and the rain.  Pulling left out of our middle-class suburban driveway, we worked our way to the interstate, and we were off!

I was enjoying the drive south out of flat Columbus, Ohio, the kids were playing in the back of the roomy camper van, my wife was sitting in the passenger seat reading her Bible and watching the rolling hills grow larger and greener with trees as we drove further south.  The sky was a beautiful blue with wispy clouds, and all was serene as the van purred along.

After passing through Kentucky into Tennessee, I noticed a lack of power as the van attempted to climb the hills. I chalked it up, however, to the van only being a four cylinder that was loaded with family and supplies. But as we drove along, and as the hills got steeper, I became concerned about the steady decline in my engine power; then about half way up a very long high hill, it happened.

I felt the van jerk, and looking out the rearview mirror, I saw a huge cloud of gray smoke coming out of the back of the van where the engine was located. I had flashbacks of a burning van I was in earlier in my life that caused me to have visions of flames and a possible explosion. I yelled to my wife to get in the back of the van with the kids and instructed her that when I slowed down, I wanted her and the kids to jump out the sliding side door. My intent was to get the van away from them in case it burst into flames or exploded.

In preparation for the exit, my wife pulled open the side door; then slowing way down, I yelled back to them, “JUMP!” Instantly, they all bailed out holding hands, tumbling into the grass while I kept going till they were a safe distance away; then, I pulled the van to the side of the road, turned off the engine, yanked on the emergency brake, jumped out and ran back through the cloud of smoke to my family. We stood there and watched, but surprisingly, the big gray cloud drifted away, and nothing more seemed to be happening. Still, we waited.

After a good while, I walked back to the van, put my hand against the engine lid to see if something might still be smoldering on the inside, but the lid felt reasonably cool. Lifting the lid with great caution so I could inspect the engine, I feared that I might see all the wiring and parts burnt to a crisp like in my previous van, but to my complete surprise, they all looked fine, only covered with a layer of oil!

Checking the oil in the engine, there was not a drop on my dipstick, but since I had purchased plenty of oil before leaving Ohio, I was in good shape.  After refilling the engine with oil, I cautiously tried to start the motor. To my surprise, it started!  However, it was running really rough, like it was only running on three cylinders instead of four, and the smoke started blowing out of the exhaust pipe. Putting my hand into the exhaust cloud, I felt it was oily smoke and not a fire-based smoke. Obviously, something had happened to one or more of the pistons, and oil was being blown out of the engine.

The van seemed drivable, so we all got back in, and slowly, very slowly, we continued climbing the long, high hill. Soon, we came to a filling station; we needed gas, and I needed to check the oil. While my wife and kids made a potty run, I started filling the tank with gas and noticed a small puddle of oil forming under the van and realized the engine problem was even more serious than I had originally thought.  Praying, I said, “Lord, what do we do now? Is this the end of the trip? We really need your help! Thank you…..in the name of Jesus.” As soon as I finished praying, my eyes were drawn to a white audio cassette lying in the dirt in a nearby parking spot.

Letting go of the gas pump handle, I walked over and picked up the cassette. The side I picked up was blank, but when I turned it over, I saw that it was a music cassette by a Christian band I recognized. It was Petra’s album, Not of This World, and again my eyes were drawn to the middle song called—“Not by Sight.”  I thought about the plaque from our friend that was sitting on our dashboard and was reminded that indeed we are to walk not by sight, but by faith!  Right then and there, I decided that no matter how bad our situation “looked,” we would go on in faith trusting the Lord.

Filling the van up with oil and with a full tank of gas, we headed back out to the road and continued coasting down hills, and at a snail’s pace, climbing them, all the time fogging the folks behind us with oil smoke.  After about ten miles and a couple of stops to dump more oil in the van, the engine seemed to be getting more critical.  It was starting to get dark as evening closed in, and I began to wonder what to do. In another mile or so, we saw a truck weigh station, and I decided to pull in. There were only a couple of guys working in the isolated station with no trucks that needed weighing.

After going into the little building to inquire about a nearby auto repair shop, one of the guys said he had a friend that worked on VWs but more as a hobby rather than as a business, but he thought he might be able to help. He assured me that there were no auto repair shops nearby, and his friend was my best bet for getting the engine repaired. He called his mechanic friend, who suggested that we stay the night at a nearby state park, and then drive, if I could, to his place in the morning. He said he lived back in the woods, and we would never find his place in the dark. He gave us directions to the park and his place and planned on seeing me the next day at 9 a.m.

We limped our way to the park, paid for a camping site, parked the van and got ready for bed, but before drifting off to sleep, we prayed and thanked the Lord for a safe place to stay and for a plan to get the van fixed. Waking early the next morning and figuring this was probably going to take more than one day to fix, I got out the only “tent” we had which was a screen house, set it up, and moved the family, sleeping bags, food, water, and cooking stuff into the screen house. My family looked like they were in a cage for all to see as folks walking by on the nearby trail looked rather strangely at them.  In my wife’s own words, she recounts, “I remember feeling very silly; everybody knows you use a tent with sides to go camping, not a see-through screen house! What kind of novice campers were we?? Obviously, we hadn’t taken Camping 101 or if we took it, we must have royally failed it!!!  The passers-by had no idea we had a camper van that was in the shop being repaired.”

This was back before the days of affordable cell phones, so as I drove off, there was no way for me to stay in contact with my wife or to let the mechanic know I was on my way.  Leaving early to make sure I had plenty of time to get to the mechanic’s house, I followed his map through the narrow, secluded wooded park roads.  It seemed like I was about half way there when the van died—it just quit.  It was 8 a.m.; I got out my tools and tried working on the engine, cleaning oil off the connections and such to try to get it started again.  By 9 a.m. I was hot and thirsty and realized I had left all the water with my family, and there was no other water in sight.

Hunting around in the van, I found a quart of apple sauce; figuring that it had liquid in it, I drank the whole jar, which did little to quench my thirst. Back out on the engine, I needed to get it started to get to the mechanic. About twenty minutes later, I stood up from the engine and felt something funny happening inside of me! All of a sudden, I felt as if I had just drunk a very large glass of cool water!! I thought, “Wow!” It took about twenty minutes for my body to break down the fiber in the apple sauce into liquid, and I felt completely refreshed and no longer thirsty! Loudly I said, “Thank you, Jesus!!”

A few minutes after that, I saw a large tractor coming toward me—it was the mechanic! He said he figured I may have broken down on the way, so he came looking for me. He hooked up my van, towed it to his house, and drug it up a very steep hill to his large garage.  Even in perfect running order, my van never would have made it up his hill. In short order, he found the problem—a hole had been blown through a piston head! That explained the loss of power and the large dark oil cloud that traveled with us.

Our answer-to-prayer-mechanic said it would take him a few days to get parts and rebuild the engine, so we’d need to stay at the park till he was finished. He drove me back to the park where we lived in our screen house for all to see for three days. I got pretty good at changing my clothes in a sleeping bag though my wife and family chose to take the long walk to the shower house.  We literally came to understand what it meant to “live in a glass house.” More than a cliché, it became our awkward reality.

After the van was fixed, our friendly and extremely helpful Tennessee mechanic picked me up and took me back to his place, and I drove our new happy, healthy, purring-like-a-kitten van back to my family. It was the start of a new day and the beginning of our three-month, three-country, three-kid, 15,100-mile trip.  We loaded up the van, piled in, pulled the ark door shut, and we were off . . . with a new engine and a renewed faith.

“For we walk by faith, not by sight.”   — 2 Corinthians 5:7  (KJV)

Copyright © 2013 by William D. (Nick) Nichols

Post Script:  Our trip covered all the places mentioned except we never made it to Guatemala because we were robbed on a subway train underneath Mexico City and banditos got my passport–but that’s another story for another time.

[This story is dedicated to Karen and Denise DeMars who met up with us in Boston during our long road trip.  Karen also took the photo of our family aboard the USS Constitution at the top of the story.  Thank you Karen and DD, you guys are awesome!   --Nick]

Friends and family called him Phil; business associates called him Bill. He was a brilliant older gentleman, highly esteemed in the world of metallurgy. He had helped NASA with a rocket welding problem and made the final welds at top of the famous Saint Louis Gateway Arch. I had the honor of being both his friend and business associate…so I called him Phil-Bill.

On long business trips together he shared stories with me about his life. He was a survivor of multiple car crashes and other tragedies. In every instance, he would always point out how God had protected him because in the natural realm, he really should have been killed.  One of his stories has stayed with me over the years—perhaps because it illustrates the simplicity of his faith.

As a young salesman getting established, Phil-Bill traveled a lot. Occasionally, he barely had enough money to get from one place to the next, hoping for a sale. Such was the case one lonely afternoon. He had only enough to pay for his stay at the hotel but not enough to buy food. He sat there on his bed, lonely, hungry and a bit despairing.

These were times long ago, and the hotel room had a rickety old bed, noisy springs, hardwood flooring, and a vent above the door frame that slanted into the room. Turning to the Lord, Phil-Bill got on his knees beside the bed.

“Dear Father, in the name of Jesus, I thank you that I’m yours, but Father, I am out of money and I’m really hungry.  And …”

His prayer broke off at a loud THUMP right beside his head!  He opened his eyes, and just a few inches away lay a brown paper bag.

Phil-Bill, leaning forward, opened the bag to find a sandwich with an apple. Dumbstruck, he stared at the food. Closing his eyes, and with a smile, he said, “Thank you, Father!”

I remember him telling me it was an excellent sandwich! Later, he found out what happened.  Three gentlemen were standing near his door discussing their lunch plans.  One had a bag lunch; the other two didn’t.  After deciding to go to a restaurant, the man with the lunch just tossed it up through the open vent above Phil-Bill’s door.

Once again, God had taken care of him. He was always telling me that God was faithful, that He was reliable, and could be trusted completely. Phil-Bill lived that simple faith in his life, which was so clearly illustrated by his simple hungry prayer that was answered with a THUMP by his head.

“…for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!”     –Matthew 6:8 (NLT)

Copyright © 2012 by William D. (Nick) Nichols

Laying her 98-year-old mother on the bed, she felt her go limp.  No pulse.  My most-favorite-mother-in-law had passed from my sister-in-law’s arms into the arms of Jesus.  No drama–she passed peacefully into His presence—at home in the cozy apartment her son-in-law had built especially for her.

The first time I met my wife’s very conservative parents, whose father was a pastor, was a bit of a jolt, not for me, but for them!  I looked like, and actually was, a bit of a “hippie,” with my long hair, torn jeans, flannel shirt, hiking boots, and a large bushy red beard.  They must have thought their conservative daughter had gone off her rocker!

After we were married, and over the years, I fell deeply in love with my wife’s parents and wonderful family.  When guys at the lab would talk about how meddling and annoying their mother-in-laws were, I’d brag about how great my mother-in-law was!  My wife’s parents were special.

Dad told me one time about when he and mother were doing missionary work back the 1940s in the wild backwoods of Kentucky.  It was a tough time for them because the main product in them hills was “Moonshine,” bootleg whisky.  The whisky boys were giving Dad a hard time because they were worried that if folks started giving their lives to Jesus, business would go down.

One day Dad drove up the dry old rocky river bed, which was the only road back then, to visit a family.  After the visitation, a group of rough mountain men came out of the woods and surrounded dad and his car.  Dad said he prayed for safety, didn’t say a word to the men, got in his car, drove through the men back down the river bed.  Later he was told by one of the men that they were so angry and on edge, that if Dad would have said anything to them, they would have stoned him to death.

Mother often told me about those days when in the backwoods how whenever they ran out of food, or milk and diapers for the babies, that the Lord would bring those things to their doorstep.  They didn’t have much money, but she said the Lord always took care of them.

One evening while sitting in the kitchen, long after I’d married into the family, Mother told me about losing her sixteen-year-old son.  He was an athlete who played football in high school.  He had a paper route, and was well-loved by the community.  One day he came home from school complaining about getting a stiff neck during typing class.  A few days later he was gone.

Mother told me his death nearly tore her heart out.  She grieved his loss; she grieved profoundly and for a long time.  Holding her hand to her forehead, she tightly closed her eyes and said to me, “It got so bad, that I was having trouble doing my duties at the church, and I really thought I was starting to lose my mind!”  “Then one night during prayer when I felt I was at the end of myself with grief, Jesus seemed to come to me and touch my mind, and took my grief, and I knew everything would be ok.  The next day I was fine and could function normally–Jesus really had taken my burden.  I still missed my son, but everything was ok from then on.”

Much later when Dad was in the hospital, Jesus again came to Mother and gave her a verse that made her realize that the Lord was going to take Dad home.  The next day, he, too, passed into the arms of Jesus.  And just a few days ago, unknown to my wife, the day before her mother passed away, the Lord also gave her a special verse to bring comfort.  Sitting in a restaurant for breakfast on the other side of the world in South East Asia, my wife who decided to read Ephesians during breakfast, was struck with the verse, “The Lord Himself is our peace.”  Throughout the day, she wondered why the Lord had so impressed this verse on her heart.  Jesus had prepared her for her mother’s death just as Jesus had prepared her mother for her dad’s death.  Both experienced peace straight from the heart of God.

Thinking back over the years, I recalled mother being funny in her own way.  She generally didn’t get jokes, couldn’t hold a tune, and in their younger years when dad started teaching her how to drive, on her first lesson she backed straight up into a chicken coop, sending the chickens and feathers flying everywhere, and that was the end of her driving lessons!  But she was awesome in a thousand other ways—in ways that count!

One time sitting at the large old farm table for dinner with my family and my in-laws that lived on a farm nearby I decided to tell a joke that was, well, a bit on the edge.  I figured mother wouldn’t get it, so I told the joke and watched everyone having a good laugh and my brother-in-law was laughing so hard I’d never seen him turn that red!  I was sitting there kind of proud of myself for launching a really funny joke past mother, when I hear her from the head of the table calling my name.  Mother said, “Can you explain that joke to me please?”  Then it was my turn to turn red!!

Another time we were visiting Mother and had brought along our dog Sassy, a miniature Doberman.  My family and I were sitting with Mother at the table for lunch during one of our many Christmas vacation visits.  Before eating, Mother would often remove her retainer from her mouth and put it in a napkin while she ate.  This time after doing that, she unknowingly knocked it to the floor.  One of my kids noticed and called my attention to it—just as we heard Sassy making some strange noises under the table.

When I looked under the table, I saw that Sassy had her paws tightly wrapped around the retainer licking off the yummy remains.  Sassy looked up at me, and I recognized her look and realized Sassy was getting ready to turn Mother’s retainer into a doggy chew!  I dove under the table and retrieved the retainer—gave it back to mother, who promptly popped it back into her mouth!

Mother was also a bit of word maven, and even in her nineties could, according to a tall and very smart friend of ours, “clean his clock,” in the word game Boggle.  That game along with Skip-bo kept her mind agile.  But more important than the games in keeping her mind agile were all the missionaries and pastors she prayed for every day!  She had a prayer manual that listed thousands of retired and current missionaries and pastors from around the world.  It became so worn and full of notes, you could hardly read it!   In 2006 we bought her a new one.

Now, 2012, as I thumb through that “new” one, it is also worn and tattered; I am simply amazed at the number of people she had prayed for including added notes of additional family members or special needs.  Mother was in the full sense of the phrase, a “Prayer Warrior.”  And oh how she prayed for all of her children and grandchildren, and great grandchildren–we will all miss her prayers profoundly!!  And she knew her Bible well—during evening devotions on our visits she would often finish quoting by memory what we had started reading from the Bible.

By now, you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with a wart and a casket.  Well, mother had expressed her wishes that she wanted an open-casket funeral.  A couple years back she had developed a rather unbecoming wart on her nose.   Now, near her death, it had become a very ugly wart.  Not that mother cared much . . .  at 98 she was past being concerned about being fashionable.

On the day of her passing, in the morning during breakfast my sister-in-law was looking at her wart thinking how bad it looked.  At lunchtime, she noticed the wart was gone!  And three hours later, so was mother!  It was as if Jesus came down and performed His own special surgery to prepare her for her open-casket funeral. What a cool final gesture of love from our Lord Jesus to Mother.

Mother will be greatly missed; she will be a tough act to follow, and we will all greatly miss her prayers.  But words cannot express the gratitude we have for the rich spiritual heritage she and Dad have left us.  Mother is now happy in heaven to be with her Jesus who she has been looking forward to seeing since she was a young girl.  And like my other brother-in-law said, “She will be rejoicing in heaven, but she will be walking–No driving, as Dad will see to that!”

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”  –Psalm 116:15

Copyright © 2012 by William D. (Nick) Nichols

Written in memory of my Most-Favorite-Mother-in-Law who went to be with Jesus on January 9, 2012.

[FaithStoriesOnline.com is now read in over forty countries.]