A Scare

Hilary called around 4 yesterday afternoon, panic in her voice, and asked if she could drop the kids off.   Blaine had called her and had been to Urgent Care and they were sending him to the Emergency Room. 

He felt like he had pneumonia because his chest hurt so bad and he was coughing, but he also had been working with chemicals at Tate and Lyle and had been exposed to some nasty stuff.  There was a possibility his lungs had some chemical burn damage.

When Hilary dropped off the kids, she was visibly shaken, the kids were nearly in tears, and the atmosphere was grim.

Landon started to cry after she left, let me hug him while he sobbed, and told me he had been praying that his daddy would be ok. He didn't want him to die.  A sweet sidebar on that was that I was holding Lynnlee too.  She was so still, not moving, not making a sound, then she reacher out her little arm and put it around Landon and patted his back with her little hand.  So sweet.

Tessa didn't help things any.  When she came over, she said "My daddy got hurt at work and he might die."  That set Landon off in tears again.

The evening was rough.  We tried to keep the kids occupied.  Of course we were worried too.  Megan left and then returned in abut 5 minutes. I don't know whether she decided it would be better to stay here with us instead of going back home to the flooded basement or whether she was concerned about Blaine too and just wanted to stay here where we would hear somethng, or whether she felt sorry for her dad and me with all of the kids, two of them crying and three of them not listening very well to what we wanted to do.

For a while Lynnlee and I were upstairs and she was exploring our bedroom.  Then Owen joined us and they played in the pack-n-play for about an hour. 

Landon was playing with the iPad.

Tessa and Cooper were everywhere, getting into things, pulling pillows off the couch, jumping around, pulling things out of the closet in the family room.  Cooper is fine alone and listens well, but adding Tessa into the mix changes everything.  She likes to do her own thing, and she doesn't listen well.

Dinner - Gary fixed mini-corndogs and hot dogs for the kids  We ordered delivery from The Dock in Delphi - catfish dinner for Gary, some kind of sub sandwich for Megan, and chicken fingers and fries for me.  I really wasn't hungry, just more nervous about Blaine, so I ate about half of it and saved the rest for lunch in Saturday.

Later Megan decided to take Lynnlee home, and eventually Hilary called me back.

All of the tests that were run on Blaine showed no damage and everything seemed to be fine.  The kids were overjoyed that their daddy was ok and would be coming home.  I was relieved as well, and thanked God for watching over all of us, especially Blaine.

I am reading Lysa Terkeurst's book It's Not Supposed To Be This Way right now as a Proverbs 31 OBS. In it she is talking about how we need to trust God when things just don't go our way or when life throws a monkey wrench into our plans.  I want to trust God so much, but I am afraid of huge monkey wrenches being thrown into our lives.  I am not sure I can handle those.  However, during the evening, as I was fervently praying, I was reminded that I just needed to trust God, and I prayed that His will be done and that I trusted Him.  I felt the worry evaporate---not entirely, but enough for me to be of more help to the kids and hide my fears about Blaine and the possible damage to his lungs.

Praise the Lord that the test results showed no damage now.  I am still praying that there will be no damage showing later.  And that Blaine continue to take the necessary precautions when he is working with dangerous chemicals.