Walking as Children of Light

“Jim!” I yelped terrified, as I came around the corner into the kitchen just in time to see ferocious flames licking the bottom of the cabinets.  “What are you doing!”
“I’m making toast, Mommy!”   He told me with pride.  Unable to find the bread, he had stuffed the toaster with crackers instead. 
 I had always feared kitchen fires.  They can be so deadly so fast.  I raced to pull the plug on the toaster then, sweeping it into the sink, I flooded it with water with trembling hands.
Another disaster diverted.  My weak knees barely carried me to a chair where I collapsed.  Looking towards heaven, I silently charged my recently deceased husband with abandoning his family and leaving me with all the responsibilities.
Of course, that wasn’t rational.  His death by a habitually intoxicated driver hardly qualified his being absent from our family as abandonment, but I wasn’t being rational these days.  I was feeling the weight of keeping this rambunctious three-year-old safe weighing heavily on me. 
Only the week before I had gone into Jim’s room to make his bed and, giving his comforter a strong shake, was expecting to watch it float out over his bed.  Instead, two raw eggs and an open can of chocolate syrup flew across the room, striking the opposite wall.  Ug!  The walls, baseboard and carpeting of his room required some serious cleaning from that escapade.  He patiently explained to me that he woke up and felt hungry.  “So I went to the kitchen and got some food.”
And then there was the anxious moment when I heard his dreaded asthmatic wheezing.  Going to find him, I collided with him in the hall just in time to see foaming bathroom cleanser running down his forehead and fast approaching his eyes. 
“Look!  I sprayed my hair like you do, Mommy,” he cheerfully informed me.  Was that the week before or after he had taken my bulky sewing scissors and with them coming perilously close to his eyes, cut away the entire front middle section of his pale blond bangs?  I was fast loosing track of the crises he created. 
Frankly, I was feeling overwhelmed.  I missed adult conversation and predictable behavior.  Increasingly often I found myself thinking, “All work and no play, makes me a dull girl!”  Would there ever again be in my life someone who cared about my needs?   I sank down into the sofa and engaged in a pity party.
Listlessly I began flipping through channels on the T.V.   Sesame Street caught my attention.  “Kim! Jim!” I called.   “Come and see what Big Bird is up to.”  Maybe Big Bird would engage Jim’s attention long enough for me to wash my car, a necessity since a neighbor’s son had earlier attempted to tap dance on the hood after walking through mud puddles.  Yet another male responsibility fell to me.
Once outside I set to work on the car.  After a few minutes I thought I heard the phone ringing and shut off the hose. 
 Five year old Kim called, “Mom, it’s for you.”  It was a friend whom I hadn’t seen for quite a while.  Would I like to meet him for dinner?  Just to get out of the house for a while?  Would I!  I called the babysitter and spent the rest of the afternoon getting myself and the children ready for my night out.
While I fixed dinner Jim raced around the house, being Spiderman, and tormenting his sister with constant interruptions while she was quietly trying to produce a work of art with crayons and paper. “Sometimes I wish I knew where Jim drew all his energy from,” I thought.  “I’d like to find the source.”
The babysitter arrived and, after giving the usual instructions parents give, I kissed Kim and Jim and left to meet my friend. 
The restaurant seemed especially quaint, I thought.  Everything tonight seemed better.  The candlelight gave the silver a warm glow.  The bone china reminded me of moonlight painted on a plate.  The food was perfect.
And so we sat and talked.  We moved from the table to the lounge where we talked some more.  Time drifted by.  I felt myself relaxing.  I really needed this....
And then, an intrusive thought. “Go home now.  Jim needs you.” 
The thought flashed into my mind jarring my comfortable mood.  Was there something to that?  But I didn’t believe I could know if Jim needed me from that distance.  I shook off the idea and refocused my attention on the story my friend was telling.
 “Jim needs you.  Go home.”  There it was again.  Was it me?  Or Someone else?  Still, the urgent feeling that came with the thought was more than I could tolerate and I said, “I’m sorry.  I don’t really understand this, but I think I have to go home.  Something may be wrong with Jim.”
The drive to my house seemed endless in the state I was in.  My friend, alarmed, came along.  I hurried from the car to the house and entered to find the babysitter asleep on the sofa.  Jim’s room was empty.
 I began searching for him and found him lying on my bed, his beautiful blond hair soaked with a feverish sweat.  He obviously had come looking for me in his distress and, not finding me, sought comfort in my room.  Beneath his eyes and around his mouth, his skin was blue.  A weak wheezing noise was coming from his mouth.  He seemed to be making very little effort to breathe.
 Terrified, I picked him up and shook him, calling his name.  His eyes briefly fluttered open and then closed again.  “Oh, God,” I cried.  “Don’t let me lose him!”
We raced him to the hospital where the emergency room staff whisked him away and began working on him while I paced in the waiting room.  When they finally let me join them, Jim was awake.  He was wearing an oxygen mask and looked small and weak and helpless.  The doctor told me that X-rays revealed Jim had pneumonia in both lungs.  For much of the next week, he remained in an oxygen tent.
Then, finally, one afternoon when I arrived to visit him, I found him racing around the pediatric unit being Spiderman again.  I was never surer than in that moment that being Mommy to Jim was the toughest job I’d ever love.
I will never understand how he went from being his active normal self, without any sign of illness when I left to meet my friend and being so near death when I came home and found him.  But this I believe: This same Jesus who had such compassion for suffering children and parents two thousand years ago mercifully  interrupted this widow’s night out on the town, sending me home to a little boy He knew was dying, and I am eternally thankful to Him for doing so.
You may be a single parent with what feels like overwhelming responsibilities.  Don’t lose sight of the fact that you are not in this alone like I did.   Jesus wants to help you.