God has a plan for you!

I have been feeling like God is prompting me to share this story with friends and family. I think is is especially for the descendants of my parents, Lloyd and Sarah Litwiller, but everyone can be encourage by this story. I may not have all the details correct and if my mom, brothers or sister remember it differently, please let me know.

We lived in an old house on a farm a couple miles west of Delavan, Illinois. I think it was the summer of 1963 we started tearing the old house down, and building a new house. We lived in part of the old house until the new basement was done and moved into the basement where we lived until the summer of 1965.

During supper one evening as will often happen with seven kids, something was spilled and one of my brothers got the mop and cleaned it up. The brooms and mops were stored against the wall behind the furnace. The furnace flue came out the back and went up and out. There was an opening in the bottom of the elbow. When he put the mop away, my brother tried to stand it up against the wall and it kept falling over so he just shoved the head of the mop in the hole in the bottom of the flue pipe so it wouldn't fall over. He was less than 5 years old at the time and of course couldn't know about the danger of carbon monoxide. I have no way of knowing, but it was probably early enough in the fall that the furnace didn't run until during the night.

We all went to bed with no thought of what was about to happen. Dad woke up during the night with a terrible headache, and realized that he smelled fumes from the furnace. I remember Dad coming into our room, waking us up and telling us to get out of the house, and having a bad headache for a couple of days. He told us later that our sister had stopped breathing and he worked with her and got her started breathing again.

Many times I have wondered how much longer it would have taken for the whole family to have been killed by the carbon monoxide gas. I believe the God woke Dad up and made him realize what was going on so our lives would be spared. I can't answer the question of why sometimes tragedies happen and sometimes they don't, but I can testify to the fact that God saved our family for a special purpose. Dad is no longer here on this earth with us, but Mom is and the 7 siblings, their spouses, 24 grandchildren, 5 spouses of grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren and one on the way.

The point of my sharing this is to remind all of us that God has a purpose for your life. Know that He loves you and cares about every detail of your life.