BLESSED

Late Sunday night we had to take Bates to Children's hospital in Birmingham.  He was running a high fever and being that he is so little in age and weight, our doctor wanted us to take him there.  My intern graciously came over to stay at our house while the older two slept.  At least that is the way that it was supposed to happen.
Right after I called my intern, the oldest child woke up, I tried to get him to go back to sleep but he wouldn't.  When she arrived, he greeted her at the door and had a mild breakdown as we walked out the door.  She was able to get him to fall back asleep in OUR bed.
Problem solved?
We arrived at Children's at about 1am.  We were brought to that back fairly quickly and went through the process of being seen.  It seemed like a pretty quiet night at the hospital and so we were kind of frustrated that it was taking a while to be seen and evaluated.  The doctor (or resident doctor) came in a looked Bates over and thought he looked great, he just had a virus!  WE WERE READY TO LEAVE! this doctor told us that his boss would be in shortly to look Bates over quickly and then allow us to leave. There was an end in sight.
We then received a text that our middle child had woken up but had also thrown up in his bed.  What was supposed to be a pretty easy night for her ended up being a long night.  He was then upset that we weren't there and after watching some infomercials and then a movie, he slowly went back to sleep (kind of).
We then became even more frustrated that it was taking so long.  We now had a baby with a high fever, a child who had thrown up, and an hour drive back to Tuscaloosa.  We hadn't slept in almost 24 hours and we were getting agitated.
After a couple of trips into the hallway (which was still quiet) to ask where the doctor was, we then learned that there were a couple of major things that they were attending to and that the doctor would be with us shortly!  AAAHHH!  Come on people! Don't you know that I have to drive an hour, we have been here several hours, and it is almost 5am.  I was tired, frustrated, and ready to just leave!
BUT, as we learned about why the doctors and nurses weren't able to attend to us, my frustration quickly turned to guilt and asking for forgiveness.  Because while I waited impatiently, two children had been life-flighted to children's from a house fire, one of them was already dead and the other was not far from death.  Another child was being intibated (sp?) because they weren't breathing.
It made our situation seem like a papercut. There were people, families, friends dealing with WAY MORE painful and hurtful situations than we would like to even imagine.
As I stood in the hallway after hearing of these things, I prayed for forgiveness of being impatient, I prayed for the unknown families that were going through hell that night, and I prayed for remembrance of being so blessed with a healthy family that has a few sick members in it right now.
There is someone close whose situation is way worse than the one that you are in right now.  I am so blessed to have a healthy and loving wife, three beautiful boys (although sick) are healthy and alive, and so many more blessings that this blog couldn't even hold.

I am blessed and thankful for life!