A Wow moment, and other adventures

Well, life has been interesting, exciting, and exhausting lately!  Isabel stayed home from school with an earache yesterday.  We went to the Dr. and he found nothing in her ear.  He prescribed a stronger allergy medicine and we discussed her tooth, which the dentist had previously said would need a baby root canal.  He told me that if her pain got worse, I'd have to take her to the dentist because that could be the cause of her pain, although he saw nothing in her mouth to indicate irritation at that time.  At about 1:30 pm, Isabel started holding her ear and her jaw and SCREAMING in pain.  She was shivering and shaking and saying "I can't handle the pain!"  I called the dentist, got hold of Fabian to come home and man the fort because it would be time to pick up Naomi and  be home for Andreas after school before long, and we ran out the door.  The dentist examined her thoroughly and found nothing wrong.  Isabel and I were both scared at this point because neither the pediatrician nor the dentist knew what was wrong.  I told her that God knew what was wrong and He would make it clear, and that he would show us just what to do. We drove back to the Dr. and he rechecked her ear...in 4 hours a raging infection had manifested.  Phew, even though she was still in pain I was glad to know what was wrong!  He wrote more prescriptions, and I dropped them off as well as picking up the allergy stuff already prescribed.  When I went back to get the antibiotic, the pharmacist noticed that it was for a penicillin derivative, which she's allergic to.  I had missed it in all the hub bub, and so did the Dr.  Argh!  I gave up and went home.  I was really hoping she'd be well enough to go on the Kindergarten field trip to the zoo today, but was resigned that she probably wouldn't be able to without the antibiotic.  Fabian said I should call the Dr. since it was their mistake, so I called the after hours nurse who contacted the on call Dr.  She called me back to let me know that a prescrip. had been called in.  I waited  1 1/2 hrs. to go get it, and the pharmacist told me it had never been called in!  So, I went  back and called the nurse and we started all over again. (It had been called it the first time, who know what happened to it!)  Finally late in the evening we woke Isabel up to give her the right antibiotic.  She slept well the rest of the night and woke up ready for her field trip today which brings me to the next part of the story...

STORMS!!!  We knew a squall line was expected in the wee hours of the morning but the TV news casters were not forecasting tornadoes. We've had some scarey storms this spring, but everything has been OK.  The night before last we had a very noisy hail storm -- it sounded like the windows would implode but we sustained no damage.  The kids were woken up by the hail storm but we ALL slept through last nights storms which were apparently VERY strong and history making!  Much worse actually than the night before.  We never heard the sirens and it seems that just about everyone else in North Texas was hiding in a closet -- except for us!  We were so exhausted by the events of yesterday that we barely noticed the storm!  I was aware that power went out, but it was back on by this morning and I never gave it another thought.  The kids weren't crying so I just kept on sleeping!  We got up and I took the kids to school because I was  going on Isa's field trip and I was just so happy that she was feeling better and we had made it.  On the way to school I noticed lots of trees and limbs and fences down and near the school  and police were blocking a road.  I let the kids out at the back door of the school and drove to the parking lot, clueless!  Another mom told me power was out in the school, and at her house, and they had heard the sirens in the middle of the night.  HUH?  We went into the school and it was dark, teachers carrying around flashlights and using cell phones to light the way.  The kids were all in the cafeteria, then Kindergarten was separated out while we all waited to go on the field trip.   A friend who teaches at another school called, her older son's middle school had just closed and she was at work and concerned about her son who is in Andreas' grade.  Pretty soon the principal of our school started turning students away because the situation was getting difficult, they couldn't tell who was or was not in the school and became concerned about security.  Finally they cancelled the field trip and closed the school, I rounded up my kids and my friend's son and home we went.  In the meantime Fabian took Naomi to Mothers Day Out, only to find that everything was closed over there too.  I had wanted to take the kids to the movies or something to occupy them, but couldn't with Naomi in tow (she's not ready for that yet!)  At about 10:30 we decided to go to Chuck E Cheeses and headed west because we were hearing how bad the damage was to the East.  Fabian had a hard time getting to the office and the electricity was out at work, and the company's network (his dept.) company wide was threatened by this.  They were having generator issues, but everything turned out OK.  In driving to and from Chuck E Cheeses, I saw lots of damaged roofs, brick walls knocked down, small trees snapped in half, limbs down (one had crushed a car in a driveway in our neighborhood).  I saw a huge electricity tower bent in half, and heard there were more bent a little further away.  A friend who lives in a very exclusive gated community just called and said they were still without power and going to spend the night in a hotel.  She said their yard was littered with roof tiles and trees were down all over her neighborhood, some had crashed through walls and into homes.  From their vantage point on a hill and through a wall of shuddering windows, they saw transformers blow up on the horizon last night.   She lived through the Northridge quake in CA and said this left her with the same kind of feeling.  My friend also told me she heard the winds were up to 90 miles and hour.  I heard on the news tonight that the situation is being evaluated and it will likely be confirmed that there were in fact tornados across the area.

Well, the our whole family slept through it!  I spent the first part of the day feeling  foolish and careless for not waking up and tending to the safety of my kids!  But then toward the later part of the afternoon, I realized something.  Jesus was able to sleep soundly on a boat being tossed by a storm at sea while everyone else around him wrung their hands in fear.  Perhaps Jesus is changing me inside more than I ever thought possible!  You see, I have been very afraid of tornados ever since I moved to Texas.  I would be the first one to clear out a closet and have a plan for what to do in an emergency.  However, this spring it has been different -- I just haven't been as phased by the weather men and their scarey warnings.  We were safe last night -- there wasn't damage anywhere near our home.  If we needed to get to safety, God would have woken us up.  But He didn't, he knew we all needed to sleep peacefully.  And He protected us completely!  This was a real "WOW" moment for me.