Schaeffer's Fall

In my women's Bible study on Wednesday morning we are studying the book of Esther. This past week we talked a lot about the fear that Esther had to overcome in order to approach King Xerxes and discuss the planned annihilation of her people, the Jews. She was risking her life and somehow had come to terms with that and had the attitude "if I perish, I perish". In our discussion we talked a lot about the fears that we have and how Satan can use those to disable us. Anyone who is a mother can probably resonate with the fear of losing a child. Thankfully, this fear does not typically have me in its grips but I did have to face it earlier this week. I know I am being dramatic but in the moment my greatest fear was losing my child. Monday morning I decided to head to Walmart to finish up some school supply shopping for a donation from my high school reunion. I had an exact amount of money I could spend so I was really trying to pay attention and keep track in my head. This lead me to be slightly less focused on my children. I had my two carts, one for kids and one for stuff. Logan ended up in the child's seat of the stuff cart and Jack and Schaeffer were in the main basket of the kid cart. (One moment to defend myself-I've always thought the child seats were more dangerous than the basket because my babies insist on turning around and standing up and doing all sorts of tricks when they are sitting there. Obviously with good discipline from their mother this behavior could be stopped, but consider the difficulty of disciplining two babies who are doing dangerous stunts in different carts while also trying to accomplish your grocery shopping. So instead I typically put the kids in the basket part. They are still short enough that they can't flip over the edge. Unless of course they start to climb, as I found out.)  Schaeffer kept trying to grab stuff off the shelves so I moved the cart to where he couldn't reach and then I turned around to finish a calculation. Not a moment later, I turned around and saw Schaeffer mid-air on his way to the ground. He had decided he was going to grab stuff no matter how far away he was and I'm guessing he started to climb the cart to enhance his reach. Clearly he reached too far and flipped over the edge of the cart. I had turned in time to see him land directly on his head and hear the most horrific cracking sound. In a matter of seconds I had scooped him up and was uttering my plea to God to spare his life. Perhaps that seems dramatic, but the sound was so awful and instantly I thought of a story I had heard recently of a baby carrier (with baby) falling off a cart and the baby dying from the impact. So I was terrified. I was certain when I picked him up there would be blood. I was certain when I felt his head I would feel a cracked skull. I was certain he must be bleeding in his brain. I was certain that if he did survive he would be permanently damaged, the rest of his life disabled because I didn't pay attention that one moment. As I tried to comfort him and keep the other kids from falling (another instant fear) I grabbed my phone to call the pediatrician. To my disbelief there was no blood and I could feel no crack and he was actually calming down fairly quickly, considering. I was even keeping myself together. That is until I told the nurse what happened. Then I just started sobbing. Thankfully, a lady I knew had turned down our aisle and perceived that something was wrong and once she heard what I told the nurse she took Schaeffer, telling me she was a nurse. She looked him over and said he looked great and the nurse on the phone asked me questions to which I had all the right answers. By a miracle of God we did not have to go to the ER. By a miracle of God, Schaeffer was going to be ok. This entire incident still has me on edge. I cried all day Monday when I talked about it or thought about it. I keep seeing him fall and hearing that crack against the floor. I'm terrified of putting my kids in carts, though it seems nearly unavoidable. Every time Schaeffer doesn't seem quite right I start to panic and wonder if it's just taken a few days for the impact of his injuries to be noticeable. So I guess God knows how to speak to us in a timely fashion. And apparently I can learn something from Esther about facing these new fears and trusting God with my life and the lives of my children.