Our Near Death Experience.

Well we weren’t exactly “near death” but we got ourselves into a pretty scary situation.

Last Friday night when we were in the mountains, we decided to hit up the local pizza joint. It was getting dark and the clouds had started to roll in a bit but nothing too serious. We had a nice dinner of greasy pizza then got back in the car to head to the cabin. Brett was driving, I was in the passenger seat, and Ethan was behind me. It was much colder outside and it was more “foggy” but still not too bad. As we made our way back up to the highway the visibility was getting worse and worse and by the time we got to the main road we could hardly see anything at all. To get back to the cabin we needed to turn left, crossing traffic to get to our side of the road. The only problem was that we couldn’t really see if there was any traffic coming. So as quickly and carefully as possible Brett made the turn onto our lane on the highway.

This is where I start to get nervous.

Brett is driving on the curvy highway, moving extremely slow since we can maybe see a foot in front of us. Every once in a while we see lights and right there in front of us is an oncoming car. A few times Brett has to open his door just so he can see the lines in the road to make sure we are on our side. He drives off into the shoulder a few times. He can’t find our little road that leads to the cabin, which is on the opposite side of the highway, meaning we have to cross traffic again.

This is where I start to panic.

Brett again drives onto the shoulder and he tells me he thinks he has gone too far and he’s not too sure where we are on the road. I literally start to melt down. I start to panic. I start crying and saying we’re never going to find our little road and we’ll never make it back. All kinds of crazy things start running through my mind, someone’s going to hit us from behind, we’re going to be in a head on collision, we’re going to drive off the side of the mountain, we’ll have to pull over and stay in the car and we’ll freeze to death. It sounds silly now, but at the moment I was scared. And Ethan could tell. He started whining and sounding scared himself. Brett on the other hand was more than calm. He patiently said to me, “just relax, we’ll find it, and you’re making Ethan nervous. Everything will be alright. I know I can find it.”

He quickly made a u-turn (yes, this made me squeal a little), since he had a feeling that he had gone too far. We continued on very slowly and within two minutes he found the little road. Once we were on the road leading to the cabin the visibility was much better and my insides stopped shaking so badly. You see, something could have gone terribly, horribly wrong, and I was scared for our little family. Luckily we were safe and soon warm and cozy in the cabin.

What really got me though was something Brett said to me. As we made our way back to the cabin Brett said, “You really had to trust me. I think this is the first time in our entire relationship that you had to put all of your trust in me.”

And he was right. I’m usually the one in control. I make the plan and execute them. I’m bossy and I tell him what to do (not that he always listens). I know where we’re going, how we need to get there, and when it all needs to happen.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always trusted that he will treat me with respect, love me, be a great husband, a wonderful father. But when it comes to giving your fears to someone else and trusting they will take those fears and make you feel safe is really hard to do.

So when Brett said to me, “relax…I know I can find it,” I realized I could not do anything. I had no control at all and I had to trust him. And I did.

For as much as I hated this experience, it was a good thing for us to go through. In some weird kind of way it made me trust Brett more than ever before, which ultimately makes us stronger at the end of the day. But that doesn’t mean I’ll be driving on any cloud filled mountain roads anytime soon.