On being rescued.

When labour with Peter was not progressing well, and I admitted defeat and asked for the epidural, the midwife warned me that it was a busy night and it would be a couple of hours’ wait before the anaesthetist would come. When he did show up, I really was delighted to see him.

“It must be nice to have a job where people are so pleased when you arrive,” I told him.

His name was Peter, which was not the reason our oldest is called Peter, but it did feel like confirmation and help with the positive associations of the name. (“It’s a solid name,” he told us, “I’ve always been happy with it.”) I taught a student who was one of four girls, and they were all named after the midwives who delivered them, which I thought was a sweet story.

I imagine people who work in emergency services get the same reception - people are so pleased to see you when you show up. “Thank goodness - the fire brigade are here to rescue us!” etc. It’s not quite the same in teaching, for some reason.

Considering all the miles of car journeys we do, I think it's a real mercy that we haven't had more tricky situations in which we could have required assistance. I’ve been rescued twice, and we still think and talk about those occasions, and how they show us God's goodness. 

One time I was driving back from a nature reserve with the three boys, who were still little, and there was some debris on the road I couldn’t avoid in time, and one of my tyres got shredded. I was on the A14, no hard shoulder, and it was instantly clear I had to stop the car (it made a terrible noise and started shuddering up and down). Highly fortunately, there was a lay-by just ahead, so I managed to pull into that, and got the three boys up some steps to the top of the bank. It was a baking hot day (a bit like today’s heatwave) and so I gave them umbrellas from the back of the car for shade and told them to sit to wait whilst I sorted out what was going to happen.

When things go wrong with cars, I feel like such a GIRL, and my first instinct was to phone Mike (who was away in another part of the country on his own rescue mission of sorts) to talk me through phoning the RAC for help. A minute later, a police car pulled into the lay-by behind me and wonderfully took over. The policewoman spoke to the RAC on my behalf, emphasising it was a woman with small children and arguing that the A14 should be counted as a motorway with no hard shoulder, so that I should be the top of the priority list for rescue. She answered all the hard questions for me (“Yes, we’ve got the locking wheel nut.” etc), and also somehow simultaneously gave me her phone and told me to phone a friend to collect the boys ASAP as the priority was to get them off the verge. 

The police officers then zoomed off and arrived back in five minutes with drinks and snacks for the boys, and insisted on waiting with us until the boys were safely collected and off the roadside. My very wonderful friend Jo did drive all the way to rescue them, took them to her house, fed them dinner, then returned them to my house later that evening. Meanwhile, I told the police they could go, waited for a very affable RAC man who was impressed by how thoroughly destroyed my tyre was, put a temporary one on, and escorted me all the way home.

I was so very impressed by this whole experience. What should have been a very stressful and miserable situation (me + boys + heatwave + long wait for rescue) ended up being a very positive experience. I’m so grateful to the police officers for stepping in, and I hope that my boys now know that the police are kind and helpful people who we should always be pleased to see. I was so thankful to Jo for taking my boys (who had a very jolly time at her house playing with her children and having a barbecue) and pleased to see the RAC man who was also very jovial and affirming. The boys were generally less impressed and surprised about the whole thing. Of course the police would magically arrive with Fruit shoots and take care of us. Of course Jo would drop everything and immediately drive 40 minutes in the heat to fetch them and look after them. What a wonderful world they live in. But the whole thing felt like God’s very good provision to us. 

The second memorable occasion of being rescued has left much more of an impression on them, maybe because they were a bit older. In fact, in recent family Bible times, Mike asked the boys things like how they would say they have seen the evidence of God’s work in their lives, and they always talk about the angel-man with the saw. 

I am used to driving on flat Cambridge roads. I am not a fan of twisty Cornish ones. On one occasion, I was driving the boys on some fairly terrifying (to me) roads (20 degree slope, narrow, tree-lined, twisting) and we came across a big branch in the road. I hopped out to move the branch and found I couldn’t, as it was attached to a fallen down tree. I genuinely wasn’t sure what to do. I can’t move a tree. I really really didn’t fancy trying to reverse miles uphill on Cornish roads to find a place to turn around. But then a van appeared, coming towards us, (“Uh-oh, Mum, now he’s stuck too!”) and a man got out, and also looked at the branch on the road. 

“No chance of moving that,” he said. “I’ve got my saw in the van.”

So he grabbed a saw, sawed through the branch, dragged the branch off the road, and then said to me, “Do you want me to reverse back to a passing place so you can get past me?” Which he did.

So I was pretty much rejoicing in the car, and the boys were saying things like, “Wow, Mum, do you actually love that man?” and I said, “He felt like an angel from heaven!” Mike was slightly more prosaic and said that perhaps the man was a tradesman so he’d carry tools in his van, or perhaps Cornish locals just know to drive with saws after storms in case of fallen trees. But nevertheless, we went from completely stuck, to safely and happily on our way in a matter of minutes, and again it felt like amazing provision. 

Being rescued is a wonderful feeling: anxiety to relief, stress to gratitude. And for me, it gives me a little reminder of a good God who can graciously turn our situations around, and is very much in the business of rescuing.