Day 26 arrived with startling news. Apparently our town lost a horse to the EEE disease - Eastern Equine Encephalitis. This is a virus that is spread through the bite of an infected mosquito. My first question to the kids, who were practicing soccer last night until 7:30 was "do you have any bug bites?" Yes, my daughter answered. Crap! I learned that symptoms don't appear for three to ten days. And the virus is almost always fatal.
My first thought was prayer - obviously - and prayed that both kids would be protected from any infected mosquitos.
Our town has taken this threat very seriously and cancelled all practices on town fields after 6:00 p.m. Bonus - night off for Ryan. But now there are no after dinner walks or runs and no chit chats with neighbors until the sun goes down. It's inside by dusk, and covered in bug spray by day. Since the day was filled with work matters and practice was cancelled, I decided to do a workout video instead - my kenpo x. It is a fun and powerful workout and I was glad I did it.
On Saturday I was pleased to still find Deep Woods Off on the shelves of the local store. I bought two - since this will continue until the first hard freeze. As we prepared for soccer games, I checked the local weather and learned there was a tornado watch for our area. Are they kidding me? More prayer. Mark was out with friends at a sportsman club shooting God knows what. I had made arrangements for K to go home with a teammate since Ry had a game in another town. But, I wanted each child to have a parent with them, and was pleased that Mark cut his fabulous day short to meet our daughter on the field. Luckily for everyone, no rain, no tornado, and by the time the thunderstorm came through we were all safely inside our home.
All day long, however, I was dogged with nagging thoughts of "what if." I had to fight to reaffirm my faith that God was in charge of the mosquito bite on Kat's leg and the weather outside. I had to have faith that we were going to be okay. The words of Jesus came back to me ... "you of little faith." I'm remaining firm. When I was first saved, I began to pray for faith. I then encountered opportunities - difficult opportunities - where I could nothing but wait and have faith that God would take care of things. My faith has grown over the years. It is still uncomfortable waiting, but I'm learning and growing to rely on God. I am grateful that when I have to face such scary things as EEE and tornados, I have a personal knowledge of God and a friend in Jesus to say "I'm really scared, but I trust you, please protect my family." Then I have faith that He will.
Because I was behind in my reading, I failed to see that today's Psalm reading read "Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge." Psalm 16:1. It continues with "Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, becaues you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay." Psalm 16:9-10. Had I been up-to-date, I would like to think that I would have rested better.
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