Well, today was an interesting day. My daughter went home sick from school (something that's never happened before.) She stayed with a neighbor b/c I don't have sick leave built in. At the end of the day, I was waiting for my son to get home from a field trip so I could then pick Emily up and attend to her properly. I was on the phone organizing some stuff for my job at the school when I overheard the owner of the school saying Nathan's bus had been in a wreck. I hung up on the person I was talking to and promptly picked up Travis and drove to the accident scene. We arrived at the intersection to see around 7 squad cars/fire trucks/ ambulances. There were 2 totaled vehicles and the damaged bus. We weaved our way through the chaos until we found Nathan. He was relatively calm and unharmed, watching his friends being taken by stretchers to the ambulances. MY SON WAS OKAY! But others were not. There was nothing I could do for the children on stretchers, but I could do something for the ones crying hysterically as they watched as bystanders. I know b/c someone once helped my children as they watched horrors around them.
This scene today reminded me oh so much of when the logging truck hit us in AL. That day, once upon a time, Travis and I were trapped in our car and our kids were taken by ambulance to the hospital without us. It was our second day in AL, so we knew no one. A wonderful stranger, Lisa Jones, did something that changed my life. She saw that it would take a while for them to "jaws of life" me out of the car, so she followed the ambulance with my children, who were bawling and begging not to be separated from us (and it didn't help that they saw us hurt and bloody.) She then spent much of her day walking from the children's wing of the hospital to us, updating our family members on how the others were doing. ~At the expense of missing her sons' baseball games. It touched me so much that someone would care enough to stop and help, taking such preemptive measures against fear that threatened to consume us. I decided right then that if it was in my power to do so, I'd help other families when the situation arose.
Well, today was my day. Even though my son was okay and I had every reason to go and attend to my sick daughter, I could not leave the scene. I spent the next hour letting kids sit on my lap, holding various hands and talking non stop with the kids, explaining what was happening and doing everything in my power to ease their fears until their parents came. I'm not normally a patient person. It was the workings of the Spirit and I'm pretty sure it was the growth of the seeds that Lisa Jones planted in all our hearts April 11th, 2009. So this is not a pat on my back. An hour was the least I could do. This is a deep bow to Lisa Jones and people like her in my life. Their witness and character make me want to be a better woman. And this is a deeper still bow to God. Even though it was AWFUL to go through, I can see fruit sprouting from our wreck oh so long ago. This isn't the first time I've seen fruit from that tremendous pain and suffering. Strange how that works. I still wouldn't choose to do it again, but I can see loving hands working all things to the good.
Yes, God is good. Amen!
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