Airplanes and Urgent Care

Texas is hard.  I don't know if it's the memories of the long hours and missing my family or the heartache we went through while living there. I don't know if it's the dirty Burger King or the muggy weather. Texas is just hard for me.  But there are people there that we love and so we went. We went to celebrate a graduation, a passing into adulthood and he looks like an adult and talks like an adult and the passing of time shakes me up a bit.

And it is not only hard, but good too. It's good to see the face of one of my dearest friends and talk and laugh with her again. It's always the same with us. The passing of time and the distance don't seem to change much of anything.

But it's hard like I said and I feel distant from God there.  The old questions of why attempting to sneak back up and become forefront in my mind again. The reminder of failures knocks and I fight not to let them in. And in the midst of this our gracious God sends something else. The baby gets sick.

Day One I am thinking just a fever, bummer, but no big deal. Just means some extra time laying low in the hotel room and fewer late nights and dinners out. Even sounds a little bit nice, being stuck in the hotel with two of my favorite people.

Day Two we find the blood in her diaper and I am definitely worried. We call the doctor and it is getting worse and worse. Me, I am getting worse and worse and just want to get her home. We drive to San Antonio and to urgent care and they seem less than competent to a mother with a screaming baby. And I fall apart. I wonder if God has ever wanted to fall apart. I mean, I know he can't because he's God. but does he ever want to?

I missed out on the opportunity to trust Him. To stand firm and what He is showing me is this:

Circumstances are not excuses for lack of faith, they are our opportunities for faith to be made real.  I mostly missed this one. I had moments. Moments where my thoughts were right and I was calling on Him. But mostly I fell apart. And grace is that He is teaching me even in my failure.

My husband, strong, steady. I get to see what he's made of in these moments.

We get home, Eliya steadily improving. The doctors office calls and says the lab results look bad and it might be something serious and they are calling a specialist. And yes I was afraid, but also I was aware. I was aware of my opportunity to walk by faith. It seemed like a second chance of sorts. By grace I was careful how I spoke and I was trusting and waiting without worrying.

The next day our own pediatrician called and said basically that it was a false alarm. That we would watch her closely, but she didn't see anything to worry about.

I am grateful for the story with a happy ending and a lesson learned. I pray that I will continue to walk more and more by faith and less and less by sight.

AS a side note Eliya did wonderfully on her first airplane trip. On the way there she slept. On the way home, late at night, she was awake and squirmy as ever, but happy and making the people around her happy. We were just grateful she wasn't screaming :)