My husband squinted to see the road and the rain just wouldn’t quit. Suddenly I screamed…

The rain had been coming down since dawn, when my husband Ewart and I drove 26 miles to the church where he preached. It hadn't let up by the time we were ready to head back home that night.

As we arranged our wet umbrellas in the car and buckled up I heard myself humming an old spiritual, "Angels watching over me . . ." My husband squinted to see the road as the headlamps became coated with muck. But we were used to flooding in our area.

The swishing windshield wipers and purring motor lulled me to sleep. "Stop!" I screamed, waking suddenly. Ewart's foot immediately hit the brakes. Then he looked at me, astonished. "Why?" he asked. I was as bewildered as he.

"I just know we had to stop," I said. We were about halfway home, somewhere near the bridge into Hickory Flat. Taking the flashlight from the glove compartment, my husband sloshed out into the two inches of water covering the road.

He moved to the front of the car to see if things looked okay and shrugged his shoulders at me. With one hand on the hood, he stepped back with his right foot to wipe off the muddy headlamps.

Suddenly he lost his balance and lunged forward, grabbing for the hood with both hands. He held on, looking down over his shoulder. Less than six inches separated us from a 20-foot-deep channel of raging water. The bridge had washed away.