April

You know that old saying, "Life can change in the blink of an eye?" Yeah, that's turned out to be true. It's a little like balancing a tight rope for me because I've always been sort of carefree and laid back but with every year older that I'm getting comes another realization.

Be ye therefore careful.

And sometimes even in the midst of being as careful as can be, accidents are going to happen.

Thus was the case on Monday. What would have been known as an otherwise random normal evening grilling burgers turned into a nightmare right in front of my eyes.

Exactly what happened when and all of the details aren't anything I care to rehash at this point-I don't even think I could accurately recall myself. In short, April and I were just trying to light the grill and make some hamburgers and it blew up on her.

Sometimes a flurry of activity in an emergency situation is a bit like watching a lifetime flash right before your eyes.

Suddenly I was seven years old again, walking that sweet little thing into a Kindergarten classroom on her first day.

I still remember walking her off the bus and up the stairs into the school and the proud way I held her little hand in mine.

Two years her senior, it was my job to safely deliver my little sister to her classroom and to calm those big eyes full of uncertainty and fear. I'm sure I left her with comforting words but I do remember her Kindergarten classroom was at one end of the hall on the first floor of the building and my classroom was upstairs and all the way on the other end of the hall. It seemed forever away to me.

What was I going to do if she needed me? I wished that I could bring my class downstairs to be close to her.

All these years have passed and I don't know that I've ever thought much about that first day of school for her and the way I hated to leave her until now. Now we're in our thirties and just this week I stood and watched a helicopter take her away to the hospital and that was as much as I could do.

Helpless would be one way to describe how I felt.

Help-less but HOPE-FULL because time and again in my life as a mother, sister, friend I have went as far as I could for somebody and had to leave the rest up to the Lord. I'm human and humbled by the fact of just how little I can do and how incapable I am and how big and how capable He is.

What I have found is that it's times like these that we can experience the richness of our Lord so near. I believe that He's there all the time for us-He doesn't come and go. He's constant. It's just that we're more aware of Him when He is all we have.

I'm so grateful for God's healing power. April's airway could have easily been compromised. Holes were burned through her clothing but her body didn't get burned nearly like her neck, face and hands.

Just like years ago when I turned and went away into my own classroom, I am standing on the sidelines now watching her heal.

And I know that our God walks with her every step of the way.