Get me to the church on time!

On Saturday we had an invitation to the wedding of our friend, Nick, who after a long, long search had finally found a wife whilst at Bible School in Slovakia - Miska. The wedding took place at a church in Bratislava & was due to be at 14.00. We'd never been to Bratislava before, but calculated that it would take about 2-2 and a half hours to get there, so we left about 10.30-ish to allow ourselves plenty of time - maybe even to have a look around at the castle which was nearby. It was a beautiful day, though very warm. We cruised through Czech Republic along the bumpity-bump delights of the legendary D1 motorway. If you have a back problem, this stretch of concrete should iron out the niggle...and if you don't have a back problem, it might give you one! We were soon into Slovakia and heading towards Bratislava...and then we hit the traffic jam at around 12.20...Thus began an agonising crawl towards our destination! There was traffic coming both ways through the small town of Stupava. We barely managed to move out of 2nd gear, and most of the time we had the engine switched off as we came to regular standstills.
As time passed, we (especially me!) became more desperate. Nick had waited so long to meet a wife...and I had shared some of this waiting time with him...was I to be robbed of the honour of seeing this momentous occasion!?! At 13.45, still on the outskirts of Bratislava, I uttered a heartfelt & desperate, almost angry prayer - "Surely not today, God! Not today!" Suddenly, we had a policeman in front of us - he'd been directing the traffic through a major junction. He waved us on, and then stopped the traffic behind us...and then there was a clear dual carriageway ahead of us! After nearly an hour and a half of suffocating in this horrendous jam, we were moving like the wind. Petra navigated with our map (she is my personal GPS!), and we just kept going. Eventually, we stopped at some lights & were pondering which way to go next. I saw a sign for the castle so we turned up there...as we did so, Petra noticed this was indeed THE road that we wanted! Shortly, we saw the church on our right! I immediately turned into the next road, we parked the car, trotted down the hill, got to the church (where the bride & her father were waiting - apparently, she'd got there 20 minutes earlier!), and sat down in the pew - it was precisely 14.00!! Amazing! (We were later to find out that other people were late & indeed some didn't even make it due to the traffic jams...)
And it was a wedding well worth getting there for - a beautiful time, and we wish Nick & Miska God's blessing in their journey ahead together.
But I also learnt something that day...
As a Christian, it's easy to think that when we pray, we have to be very correct & proper...perhaps even polite when we speak to God. But sometimes, when you need help, you've got to SHOUT OUT for help! And indeed, God does hear the cry of desperate people. Our case wasn't so serious, but I know from my life that desperate situations do require desperate praying...