Terrifying

As I write this I am drying my tears.  I had the scariest thing happen this afternoon; but it took until tonight for the gravity of it to really hit me. 

Here it is.

This afternoon all three boys, miraculously, fell asleep at the same time. So I decided I would lay down as well.  The baby has been sick, and the most sleep I get at night is two or three hours in a row.  I fell asleep almost instantly and woke up about an hour and a half later to Jack at my bedside.  "Mommy, can I get up?"

"Sure, honey. You can go play downstairs."

I laid there for a while, kind of waking up slowly because it had been one of those naps where you sleep hard enough to dream.  With my eyes closed and the sun creating a cozy glow in the bedroom, I let my thoughts wander.

Then all of a sudden, the house seemed too quiet.

I flew out of bed and down the stairs.

"Jack? ...Jack? Jack!?!"

He wasn't anywhere.

I ran the last few steps down the stairs, and flung open the front door, (which is actually the door to our arctic entry) to find Jack standing there, two left boots on his feet, his hand on the outside doorknob, and his coat inside out on the floor.

As soon as he saw me he started crying and buried his head in my legs.

He probably started crying because I screamed,"What do you think you're doing?!?" at him.

I could not believe he had been trying to go outside by himself.

There are snow drifts everywhere, it was only 5 degrees outside and our housing is right on the edge of the tundra.  There's nothing past our front door except the airport, and that's two miles away.  

I sat him down and told him he is never EVER to go outside alone and he is never EVER to go into the arctic entry without permission.  I told him a stranger could have gotten him or he could get sick from being too cold.

I told him he can't go outside without his gear, and he said he looked for his hat & gloves, but he couldn't find them.  (They are up on a shelf too high for him to reach.)  He said he didn't go outside because he couldn't get the door to work.  And when I asked him what he was going to do out there, he said he was just going to the school to see Daddy.

His face made it apparent that he understood quite well the gravity of the situation. He knew that what he had done was wrong. And just in case he didn't, when Josh got home, he also talked to him.

Like I said, it wasn't until tonight that I really began to feel the feelings that I had kept at bay while I handled the situation.  The sheer terror at thought of losing Jack makes my heart pound.  I could feel, all afternoon, a sense of anxiety rising in my throat.  And finally tonight as I rocked the baby to sleep I started crying.  The weight of the responsibility really started to get to me.  

I watched one of my favorite episodes of Sex & The City recently & in it Miranda is trying to get away for the weekend with the girls, but Steve says he can't keep the baby because he's scared he'll kill him.  And she said, "I know you're scared you will kill him.  We're both scared we'll kill him.  But I try not to kill him Monday through Friday, and you try not to kill him Saturday and Sunday."  So Josh and I joked that I try not to kill the kids from 8 to 4 and he tries not to kill them the rest of the time.  This makes that joke a bit morbid. I mean, at five degrees, I don't know how long Jack would have lasted, or if he truly could have found his way to the school.  I just keep thinking "What if?"

And as a mom, that's a scary place to be.

What I do know, that's not a what if, is that I felt prompted by the holy spirit to check on Jack.  And that if I had ignored that prompting, bad things could have happened.

Each night, after the boys are asleep, I quietly creep into their room to say a prayer over them.  This is the prayer I say: "Lord Jesus, Thank you so much for Jack (or Logan). Please keep him safe & healthy through the night and wake me if he needs anything at all. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen."

It may not have been night time, I know that it was God who woke me. I know that it was God who made the door not open.  And I know it was God who kept Jack safe.

Talk about an Alaskan Adventure.   

This story is one for the family books, that's for sure.