This is Not a Drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.

Before Jonathan starts his new 28/28 schedule he had to go to Houston for 2 weeks of training. I figured that these two weeks on my own would be a good preview of how life would run with him gone. Well, things did not go as smoothly as I hoped. Samson and Forest were both literally falling apart and I could barely muster a full night’s sleep the entire time. 

A few days after Jon left, Forest decided it was maybe time to stop napping. Once we dealt with that crisis, he woke up one morning with a significantly puffy eye and an apparent allergic reaction going on. 

We headed to the Saturday clinic and the doctor advised us to put him on max doses of Benadryl and Claritin and gave us an anti-biotic prescription to start him on if it got worse. Later that evening he bonked his head and got a pretty deep cut from the injury which had me questioning if he’d need stitches or not. 

I sent a picture to some doctor friends of mine and they assured me it was too small to need stitches. Instead I was driving around town looking for adequate first aid supplies. When I finally got Forest home, cleaned and bandaged up it was an hour past his usual bedtime. 

The day felt impossibly long. I just wanted to sleep but due to the drama of the day, I needed to get some things taken care of post-bedtime. When I finally went to bed, I was awoken a few hours later by Samson who insisted on going outside. He ate grass for 20 minutes before I had to force him to come inside and then he went on to vomit all over the house for the next 30 minutes. By the time I cleaned it all up and got back into bed, it was 5 AM. I barely nodded back off before Forest was up at 6. 

I was painfully tired, but was hit with a dose of adrenaline when I went to get Forest from his crib and noticed that his eye was almost completely swollen shut. 

This is after a dose of benadryl...

Luckily one of my BFFs here is a GP so she came around to give it a looksee (and also clean and bandage his head wound while she was at it) and she assured me that it looked like a typical allergic reaction and that they eye itself seemed fine and just to continue the regimen he was on and start the anti-biotics just to be safe. 

The next day it didn’t look any better, and it possibly looked even worse. 

I was feeling very worried and helpless. He took a big nap and woke up looking a tad better, and after a dose of Claritin, the swelling went down enough for me to see the source of the bite/sting/picker. 

We’ll never know what the culprit was but I was so relieved to finally see some improvement after continued worsening over the past few days. The next morning it looked way better but when he smiled you could still tell his eye was a bit swollen and his face looked asymmetrical. 

His right eye has always been a bit ‘squintier’ than the left but now it was really obvious. 

I was missing his gorgeous smile and wondering if it would ever look the same. But I reminded myself that the most important thing is that he was smiling and somehow not bothered one bit by the swelling. 

About a week after the swelling started, it was pretty much back to normal, but it doesn’t change the fact that it was scary and stressful at the time. And OF COURSE it happened while Jonathan was gone. 

I’m not sure what the takeaway lesson is. At first I was like ‘Um, God, are you trying to show me that I can’t do this?’, but then I sort of turned it around and thought ‘Hmmm…maybe He’s showing me the opposite. That I can do this.’ 

Jonathan’s trainings in Houston have been mostly emergency simulations. Before he steps foot on the rig they want to make sure he knows the protocol for every possible worst-case-scenario. I feel like in a similar way, I’ve been having my own simulations over here, only in parenthood, there is often not a go-to step-by-step guide for the right decision process. 

I’m sure through experience I’ll get better and more calm in crisis situations and learn to trust my instincts when making decisions. I sort of naively thought that all emergency situations would happen in the 50% timeframe that Jonathan was at home with us. I mean seriously, in the past 2.5 years there have only been 2 ‘rush to the doctor on a Saturday’ kind of situations (which for how fearless and clumsy Forest is, is actually a bit surprising). I was not expecting one to befall us when Jon left for a business trip. 

Luckily I have friends who have patched my kid up and made us dinner so that I had a little less to worry about. Thank heavens for my friends here. I think my biggest unease about the upcoming relocation is that interim time where I’m building up my new support system. It usually takes a few months to really tap into a good group, but with Jon’s first hitch happening this summer, I’ve got to accelerate the friend search. 

When I opened up about my anxiety in this to my small group here, some of the best advice I got was to be candid and vulnerable when I show up in Texas. Just tell people: "I’m new here. I need doctor referrals and a church home and play groups and a support system. Help me please!" I feel like the greatest thing about the Houston area is they know the drill. It's a transient sort of place and at some point, everyone was the new kid in town. I feel like this bodes well for someone to take us under their wing out of sheer compassion.

It’s scary but I have to trust God in this. Anytime we move, my biggest prayer is always: please let each of us find one true friend. He has answered this prayer with total abundance every single time so I’m a bit frustrated with myself that I continue to doubt and fear. I think the things we struggle with the most (for me its letting go of my anxiety and trusting God) He manages to keep re-circulating in our lives until we finally transform. 

Prayers for our family during this transition are greatly appreciated!