"my grace is sufficient for you. my power is made perfect in weakness"
2 Corinthians 12:9
another crazy story.
{I wont be offended if you don't read all these details. It's a long story and I just want to record it all so I don't ever forget. but please at least read the part where it says MIRACLE #3. I just want to shout from the rooftops what God did through a stranger and I want to encourage you to do the same!!}
Last Thursday (Oct. 11th), Reese and I were leaving Bible study and went by the grocery store on our way home. My parents were coming for the weekend and I needed to get a few things and was going to make a cake. Our grocery store, Hyvee, gives out a free piece of cheese and a free cookie to kids (awesome!) and at this particular one {which is on the other side of town from our house btw} they have the cookies in little boxes inside the pastry shelves where you can help yourself. Usually R just gets the cheese but she was being particularly sweet so I decided to reward her with a cookie. I just grabbed one from one of the cartons that I thought had m&ms on top (her favorite). I should have realized that the orange and yellow and brown 'm&ms' were actually reese's pieces but I guess I just thought they were colored for Fall? So she started licking the reeses pieces and trying to just eat that part off the top. I broke it into smaller pieces for her (still not realizing) and then I think she took a little bite. but I still don't think she really ate much of it... so in the amount of time it took to walk from the donut counter to the baking isle my little reesie started acting weird. She was pulling on her lip and said 'mommy my lip hurts' I looked at it and it was already SUPER swollen. Immediately I took a bite of her cookie and realized what had just happened. my heart sank. but no panic yet. i prayed "Lord be with reesers little body" and ran back to the cookie box to see if it really was a peanut butter cookie. sure enough. what was i thinking? I'm still very mad at myself for not looking at the label before handing it to her... but it's no good to beat myself up for that now. you better believe I'll be more careful now though!!! There was a bakery lady restocking the donuts i think and i asked her (panic setting in) if they were peanut butter and she said with very worried eyes ' oh no ma'am we never put pb cookies out for kids' I pulled the box out and shoved them at her and said 'they are actually pb. don't put those out again.' {thinking back on that I should probably go appologize to her for being rude. obviously it's not their fault!! i was just sort of freaking out at that moment.}
by then (like 2 minutes later) Reese was really whining and saying her back hurt? - she has this spot on her back that shes had since she was born that is some sort of clump of cells that flares up when she gets sick or allergic to something so i guess thats what she was talking about?- and she just kept saying 'i need dd (her blanket) and 'hold you mommy!!!' sweet thing. I was really trying to remain calm and keep her calm but gah lee it was hard.
We then rushed straight to the pharmacy, I pulled a box of Benadryl off the shelf and gave her some (thats what they did last time at the dr when she was 14 months old and she had her first reaction). We then went out to the car to get DD because that's all she was asking for. She was starting to get really really sweaty and a little lethargic, which was seriously freaking me out. We ran back in and I asked the pharmacist what I should do. She pointed to a door right behind me and said they had a Physicians Assistant on staff and she would be so helpful. I popped my head in her office and immediately knew God was taking care of us. miracle #1= What grocery store has a PA clinic inside?? incredible.
At this point, Reese was trying to slide out of my arms and just kept asking to lay down. Somehow, I think while I was talking to the pharmacist for 2 seconds she got down and laid on the floor of the grocery store. :( that was when it really clicked that this was getting serious. I picked her up and she was sort of limp and was having a hard time keeping her eyes open. Her face and lips were getting so pale and my heart has never been beating so fast. Now, even reliving this while I'm typing right now I can't hold back the tears. It was so so so scary but I was trying to be brave because I HAD to be. I called Mark. of course he didn't answer. I texted him '911. call me NOW!' and thankfully he called right then. {miracle #2 = that I got to talk to mark. that day truly happened to be one of mark's busiest days of his entire year! He had several big cases that day and was the only resident on their service and lots of other things were going on but... at that moment when I texted him he was scarfing down something for lunch during his only 10 minute break of the day and was literally running to his next case. If this would have happened even 10 minutes earlier or later, I would have missed him. and my Jesus knows I never would have made it without at least hearing his calming voice telling me it would be ok and that we were doing the right thing. so thank you Jesus for your timing}
While Mark was on the phone with me the PA called 911. Mark said to give her an epipen jr and just as I was asking the PA if they had one she turned around with it in her hand ready to give it to Reeser who was practically passed out and so so sweaty in my arms. Maybe the worst thing ever to see her reaction as that huge needle went into her thigh but I was a little relieved that she was screaming so loud and that her face was getting blood back to it. The paramedics came in at that point (they're fast!!) and Mark gave me instructions on what to do/where to go. And in just a few minutes - or maybe even one- Reese seemed to be coming back quickly. I knew she was going to be ok when instead of wiping her face she grabbed her dd and starting wiping my nose because she saw I was crying. what a sweetheart. She was talking a little. Holding me and dd and then starting laughing at this picture of giraffes on the wall saying "look at those silly giraffes mommy! they're so silly." :) gosh, i love her. Mark heard her talking and said he was so so sorry but he absolutely had to go because he had to scrub in on this important case... blah blah. residency is dumb. but i sure am proud of him. I'm not sure why God had Mark so unavailable to me that day but He sure did teach me a lot through it. Mark said sometimes the nurses will read them text messages if they ask them to during surgery so he said to text him if anything else happens and obviously he will scrub out. and then I boo hooed and said bye. and then my dear girl wiped my nose and eyes with her dd. what a doll.
I contemplated for a second if we even needed to really go on the ambulance ride and er visit, etc. since R seemed to be doing better and honestly dollar signs were racing through my head... but I quickly decided God would provide financially as he always does and we better be safe than sorry - especially since it had really only been about 4 minutes since she was practically passed out and white so... they brought in the stretcher.
I have never been in an ambulance before and I don't actually know if I've ever been to the ER in an actual emergency (besides when I fell off the monkey bars in kindergarten and the nurse acidentally poured alcohol on my head instead of hydrogen peroxide.) So, this was all so new to me and I was probably as freaked out about it as Reese was. They had to buckle her into the stretcher :( and put her on the ambulance. I ran to our car and grabbed a few things - magna doodle that just happened to be in our car and her car seat since we'd have to get back to our car somehow later - and I hopped in the ambulance with her. We talked about how we were going to the dr and they were going to give R a check up and make sure she was ok. She cried thinking she would get another shot and I assured her she wouldn't. They gave her two little stuffed animal bears that she was very scared of and wouldn't touch (until we got home and now she plays with them and always pretends like they are sick. I heard her say the other day 'you at a m&m and your back hurts? its ok. the dr will make you better.' sweet girl.) I guess from all that dr talk Reese decided she wanted to watch Doc McStuffins so I let her watch it on my phone while we drove. I later found out there was a hospital right by the grocery store that we could have gone to but I made them take us 20 minutes away to the hospital where Mark was just in case he might get out of surgery. and they have a children's hospital/er there so I thought it would be better.
We checked into the ER. about a billion nursers and drs came in and out getting us all situated. Reese was sooooooo brave letting them check her a million times. and then they said she looked ok but they wanted to monitor her for a few hours just to make sure there was no second reaction from the epipen or after it wore off. and then the dr (and resident) left and we didnt seem them again for about 3 hrs. and we were stuck with this old, weird, male nurse who sure didn't seem like he knew what he was doing but I guess he did. He did turn on PBS for Reesieboo and she watched Clifford for about 5 minutes. Then she played with her magnadoodle for a while and then she just got soooooo tired and couldn't even keep her eyes open.
They said it would be good for her to take a nap and she slept for about 2 hours while I just sat there. alone. in the dark. in the silence. crying. and praying. no one to call. i've truly never felt so alone. (please don't feel sorry for me... I'm just telling you these details so you can see how incredible it is what happened next.) I was praying and crying and asking Jesus to be my friend since I don't have many other ones here. I was praying for specific things that I wished I had here - a friend for me that lived close whose husband was in residency so we could relate! (i miss you kara!) I was praying for wherever we live in the future and that we would be closer to our families. I was praying that God would just really know these desires of my heart and meet my needs even the needs I didn't realize that I had. I was crying just asking God to send me a friend to go through life with and crying because I miss all my other friends sooo much and I just felt sooooo far away from everything familiar. (really, I feel like this every day but in this moment it was just so so so much more evident) and then, out of no where, a nurse walked in the room and said, 'ma'am, someone is here with your groceries.' God sent me a rainbow.
miracle #3= what in the world? I thought she must have been talking to someone else or gotten me confused or been playing a joke on me or something. I followed her out the lobby so confused and she opened the door and there stood this sweet looking girl about my age holding three bags of my groceries (one was even a cooler bag that she must have bought) she had two little boys, a baby and probably a three year old. and I just started bawling. She hugged me and said with a huge smile, "I saw the whole thing happening at the grocery store and I've had sick kids too and I just really wanted to do this for you. SO... here are your groceries." I was shocked and in awe. I just couldn't even believe it. I still can't believe it. Who would do that?? The nurse said she had driven to two hospitals looking for us. She paid for my groceries!! She parked and carried three bags and her two kids (one was a baby in a carseat) into the hospital looking for me... a stranger she had never met. What in the world?? She said she had even replaced all my milk and cheese and yogurt so they would be fresh. are you kidding me??? I think she said her name was Sara and I think she said she works at the hospital. I'm pretty convinced though that she was an angel. I mean, what a miracle. and not that the groceries were even that important... it was just the whole act of doing something so so so selfless for someone you don't even know. something sooo inconvenient for her. something not in their 'grocery budget' for that month. but it meant more to me than ANYTHING!! I pray the she has hundreds of jewels in her crown in heaven because of what she did. I pray that her boys will grow up and be as kind and generous to others as she was to me. I pray that I will be willing to do things like that for others. because honestly that was one of my first thoughts...
would I have done that if I was the one watching??
I would hope so but I'm sure I could think of a million excuses not to.. Reese is tired. We haven't eaten lunch. I don't know where to find them. I don't know their names. It's kind of a lot of groceries.... I mean are you kidding. I wish I could track her down somehow but then I also feel like maybe God just put her there - as an angel- in that moment and doesn't want me to track her down or feel like I owe her anything because I don't. It was her free gift to me. Just like Jesus is our free gift from God. There is nothing we do or can do to deserve what HE did for us. We just have to accept it. And accepting things freely is sort of hard. So, I challenge you (and I now have challenged myself) keep your eyes open to what God wants to use you to do in someone elses life. even if it seems inconvenient. think about what it can teach your heart, your kids hearts when they see you doing it and how much it could touch the other people.
I said thank you about a billion times through all my tears and she was gone. I walked alone again through the hallway back to my sleeping baby. crying and crying. tears because I was overwhelmed by the kindness. overwhelmed by what God does. overwhelmed by what I just watched reese go through. overwhelmed that my husband couldn't be there.... but this time as I walked alone, I realized I wasn't alone. Jesus was there. He is always there! I sat down, I felt Jesus by my side, closed my eyes and immediately saw a beautiful rainbow. and knew God had sent her (the woman with my groceries) as my rainbow. and His promise to me that he's taking care of us. He has friends for us here. Maybe we don't know them yet but I need to be patient and trust him and trust his timing. "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord" We know so clearly that Des Moines is where we were supposed to be for these next five years and Mark is so grateful and humbled to be a part of this awesome program... so we know that He had planned for us to be here and will provide for all of our needs while we're here.
{And actually its not like we don't have any friends! I have met several really sweet girls who have kids Reese's age and have been so fun to hang out with! It just takes a while to get to know people when you can only really hang out with them once a week at most and when most of the time is spent chasing around your kiddos it feels like every conversation is cut short. I will be excited to continue those friendships these next few months and hopefully connect more and more.I think we're still feeling a little unsettled too because we still haven't found a church where we feel like we totally connect. I think it will make a huge difference when we have a small group that we connect with too. all in HIS timing. we just have to wait and trust him to provide.}
ok back to the hospital. I finally stopped weeping and just kept thanking God over and over. Reese was still sleeping (it had been a few hours by then) and the dr came back in, gave me some info and we talked about peanut allergies and epi pens that I need to carry in my purse always and she said R was good to go. I then realized.... how are we going to get home??? Still haven't heard from Mark. It's nap time for my friends with kids and I would hate for them to have to wake up their littles. We could call a cab?? We could wait in the dr lounge until Mark is finished (except I had no idea how to find it bc this hospital is THE most confusing place). I started to feel alone again. I texted my one friend and sure enough her kids were sleeping. I called Mark's parents sweet friend but she was at work. I texted another dear sweet lady we met through a kanakuk connection (but have really only met twice) and she wrote back immediately and said she was on her way. What a dear soul she is. She reminds me of my mom soooo much. I KNOW God has placed her in my life to take care of me here. and Reese LOVES her, even though we've only met her a few times. So, praise the Lord, she came and picked us up. I lugged all of our stuff down the hallway- three bags of groceries, huge carseat, huge purse, r's backpack, manga doodle ha, and R's food that they had brought from the cafe - since we missed lunch- and a sweet little weak girl and don't forget I'm 26 weeks preggo. ha. what a sight. but we made it.
and little reesieboo sure seemed back to her normal self when we got home playing and talking a million miles an hour. My parents got here late that night and it was a fun weekend with them! So, now we just have to be the crazy parents who ask about everything Reeser eats and I'm doing my best to teach her from an early age that she cannot have peanut butter if anyone asks or tries to give her some. I'm not gonna lie I'm a little worried about halloween! yikes. and will for sure be monitoring that pumpkin bag full of candy. and maybe I was a little nervous at chick fil a today when she ate the chicken cooked in peanut oil (which was totally fine) and maybe it took me a whole week to go back to the grocery store... but I conquered my fears and we went back yesterday.
ok.... wow. this is so long. i'm sure NO one read all the way through this except maybe my mom and maybe mark and maybe me again in a few years.
thanks for praying for my reese as we learn how to deal with this unfortunate allergy and pray with me that she will be in the 20% of kids who outgrow it. I mean someone has to be in the 20% so please Lord let it be us.
ok bye.
