Tuesday, April 12

One phone call from our knees

Your life can change in an instant.  Mine did.  About 11:20am last Sunday.  Here’s how that looked…

Rewinding all the way to Friday.  At some point during the day on Friday, I was talking to my mom and she mentioned that my older brother, Brian, had called her and said he wasn’t feeling well.  He was supposed to have his 4 year old daughter, Kayleigh, with him this weekend, but since he was not feeling well and did not want to expose her, he asked his ex-wife to take care of her.  We assumed he went to the Doctor or a walk-in clinic or something of the like.  Saturday, My mom called a few times, left a voicemail, emails, etc.  By Saturday night, the panic was setting in (at the time, I didn’t know how stressed she was about this).  So, Sunday morning, as Britt and I loaded up our 3 kids to get to the church by 7:30 since it was our long weekend to serve, I got a text from my mom saying she and Daddy still had not heard from Brian, so they were driving to Dallas.

I spent the next few hours texting her with “suggestions” – call the police, call his ex-wife, call ANYONE…  But they were determined to get there and see what was going on for themselves.  The last text I got from my parents was about 9:45 and they said they were crossing the Red River – which meant they were about an hour from his house.  About 11:15 (while I was super busy with my LifeChurch Host Team Leader duties), I glanced at my phone and saw a missed call and a voice mail from my mom.  My heart sunk, I RAN across the church lobby to my husband, basically THREW my phone at him and told him to call my mom back (I had listened to the 2 word voice mail that said “CALL ME” through a broken, teary voice, and I knew it was not good).

While dialing the phone, Britt lead me to the church office, quickly followed by our Volunteer Coordinator who I can only assume saw the events unfolding in the lobby.  She dutifully and lovingly held my hand (as I clung to her with my very life, pretty sure I screamed her name once, but I can’t be sure) while Britt spoke with  my mom on the phone – from about 30 feet away and with his back to me.  After a brief conversation and some head nodding, he turned around, and shook his head with tears in his eyes.  I screamed .  It was like a tragic scene from Law & Order or CSI.  I don’t remember all of the next 30 minutes of my life, but I was ushered into a side office, and I just remember people in an out of the room, a box of tissues being handed to me, lots of pats and shoulder rubs and a HUGE bear hug from my husband.

Some dear friends took the 3 Little Weavers from me for the afternoon, and Britt and I headed south.  Longest. Drive. EVER!  I felt like we would never get there.  Had to stop for gas pretty early on, then a  restroom break not too far from our destination.  I spent most of the ride on the phone with friends and family, sharing our tragic, horrible, awful, NIGHTMARE.  Only I didn’t realize this was only the first step.

1 comment:

Chuck said...

Sounds far too familiar!!!