In 1944, I was in my early teens and spending the summer with my sister, Sissy, and her husband, Ted. Sissy, her four children and I were about to leave for a trip in her old station wagon, when Ted surprised her with a brand-new car he’d just bought for her.
This was in the days before seat belts, so I had the privilege of holding the new baby, Linda, on the road. It was Saturday, and there were lots of construction signs but no workers. For miles, the signs warned us of the deep ditch next to the shoulder of the extremely narrow road.
My sister was fumbling with the radio and ran off the highway. She pulled hard on the steering wheel but there was no controlling it. She screamed, “Hold on!”
At that moment, an urgent voice I had never heard before spoke to me, saying, “Take off your glasses, lock your door [and] put your hand on the baby’s head.” Immediately, I followed the directions.
The new car flipped violently and came to a sudden stop just short of a telephone pole. My side of the car sank into the mud, and the other side was elevated above me.
Slowly, I relaxed my hand, which was still gripping the top of Linda’s little head. I was afraid she was dead, but the motionless child in my arms had slept through it all!
The windshield had shattered, and glass lay all over us. My sister was slumped over the wheel, unconscious. The three horrified children in the backseat were crying, but they said they were OK.
Still holding the baby, I tried unsuccessfully to open the door; it wouldn’t budge. We were pinned in the car. Finally, a highway patrolman arrived and pried open the car door with a crowbar after digging away the mud from the outside.
He said: “It is a miracle when this car flipped that everyone in it was not thrown out and under it and crushed. The door was barely hanging by the lock. Young lady, if you had not locked your door, you probably would all have been killed.”
When we were taken to the hospital and examined, the doctor found nothing wrong with any of us. He asked, “Where was the baby when this accident happened?”
Sissy told him that I was holding her. Then he said to me, “You must have covered the baby’s soft spot.”
I told him, “I put my hand on top of her head before we turned over because a voice told me to.” He said, “I believe this baby girl is alive because you obeyed that voice.”
I have never heard God’s voice in that same way again. But I know one thing for sure, I heard it that day, and I’m very thankful I did.
The Western Journal 
Troy Anderson 
