Our Sunday Blessings

We get into our car to drive to church 4 minutes later than we usually like to leave. If everything goes well, we hit the lights right, we'll make it in our seats just as the prelude music has ceased. We sail through our first light feeling good about the time, when ahead we see flashing lights and a huge car lineup. (As a side note: for those of you familiar to Virginia, if there's ever an accident, it seems as though they never attempt to move the cars to the side of the road. The cops come, they clean it up, make sure everyone's ok, and fill out the paper work-- all in the middle of the road while cars lineup for miles behind them.) We look at the blocked road, look at each other, and realize we need a quick escape route. About 50 yards before we hit the lineup, Rudy pulls into the turn lane and turns a 'not-quite' U turn-- an about-face to find an alternate route. Not before we could plan our new route we see flashing lights barreling toward us. We're racking our brains trying to figure out what we did illegally as we pull off into a parking lot. We figure we had pulled an illegal U-turn...but why would he care about that while they're trying to clean up an accident? The officer leans in. "Sir? Why were you evading a check point??" AHH! We look like incompitent bad guys! To make matters worse, Rudy, while transferring to his church pants, forgot to include his licence. The officer chuckles to himself then says, "Do you not have it because it's suspended??" As Rudy frantically tries to plead his case, he offers to have the officer follow us home so he can show him his license. When that doesn't work, Rudy offers up his phone as another form of I.D. ! After what seems like ages (and I'm sure a good internal laugh from the officer from Rudy's direness to assure him he was innocent), he comes back to the car with a ticket. He tells us that Rudy just needs to appear in court with his license on this certain date and it will be taken off. Well, that court date is the first day of fall clinic and Rudy's day was booked. He proceeds to plead with the officer if there was any way we could go back and get it now and hunt him down at the check point to show it to him. The officer laughs; then with a great kindness he says, "I can see you're on your way to church. Your address is where I patrol later today anyway. How about you call me when you get home and I'll come by your house and take a look at that license."
We made it in time for the Sacrament, and even had a uniformed visitor to our house later that day! What a blessing in disguise! Although we had quite the adrenaline trip, I'm sure if we had gone through the checkpoint, they would not have had such mercy on a man in slacks without his license.