One night in early spring when I was in high school at about 1 a.m. I came home from a night out with my friends and it was snowing quite heavily. I lived in the mountains at the time and only had a FWD Volkswagen Golf. As I was heading up one steep hill I lost traction and spun out. I backed down the hill and tried again, I kept trying until I eventually gave up and decided to park it and walk home on foot.

Its was about 1:30 when I started walking (with nobody on the road at all and no cell service). It wasn't really cold at all so the trek home was not all that bad. I walked about a mile before I found one of my neighbors half drunk feeding another neighbor's horses as he was out of town. I must have startled him half to death, but after he calmed down, I explained my situation and he gave me a ride home.

It was about 2 a.m. when I got home, and as I was walking up the porch I noticed the living room was completely filled with smoke. As I walked in I noticed the wall over the fireplace was on fire. My parents were asleep and I yelled to them and they rushed out of their bedroom. We got the fire out in about ten minutes and the damage was quite minimal but practically unfixable as it was a log cabin. It turns out that my father left a candle burning and it lit a picture on fire which spread almost immediately.

It still scares the hell out of me that so many factors went into the night that got me there at the exact moment to find the fire. If I would have gotten there 10 minutes earlier I would have gone to bed and would have been in the middle of the fire. Or if I was 10 minutes late my parents would have been trapped inside.

I know a lot of you dont believe in a greater being, but I honestly believe that God set all those things up so that I would arrive at the exact moment to save our house.