Intervention at Navarre Beach

Sleeping today against Daddy's chest

In bed yesterday, I was musing about my spiritual life feeling weak while listening to the waves. Specifically, I'm having a hard time realizing the fruits of the spirit in my life (love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. I think that covers it.) They are there, sometimes. But love, joy and peace are not overflowing 24/7 (which is probably common for mothers averaging 4-5 hours of sleep per night during that special time of the month.)

Late in the afternoon, we were eating dinner at Cactus Flower Cafe. Sofia was sitting, occupied with a graham cracker. I see now how haphazard this was, but she has been eating quite textured solids for three months now and Lucas was always good at gagging things up quickly. Graham crackers dissolve easily and she takes off small pieces at a time.

But yesterday she choked on it. Usually I am very calm in urgent situations, even when my children are hurt. But when they are really hurt I really panic. For instance if Lucas has a particularly bad fall, I turn away and freeze, mentally coming to terms with the worst - his nose is broken, his teeth have been knocked out...

When your child is choking on something this is not a good reaction. From across the table, Chris told me to pick her up, and I did in somewhat of a frenzy. I heard a voice telling me calmly to squeeze her but I was half frozen and kept sweeping my finger into her mouth which only made things worse. There was no moment of clarity in this time of distress. She had thrown up already but was still barely able to get air in.

Then she cried and I thought it was over but it started again and this time my freeze instinct totally kicked in and I screamed for someone to help me, to grab her. I couldn't even see straight and I didn't know exactly what was going on. I turned away and squeezed my eyes shut.

And then I heard the words of the lady who was helping her. The same calm voice from before, "I'm a nurse." At this point I got a vague sense of a restaurant full of people looking quietly and steadily in our direction.

After a few scary moments, I heard the nurse talking happily to Sofia and saw Sofia reach up and try to grab her glasses (up to her usual tricks in no time.) Chris held her and soothed her for a bit and then I held her. The nurse came over and stroked her, quietly saying "bless her Jesus, bless her Jesus." I looked up at her in a slightly more focused way and immediately thought of the last sermon Chris and I heard at church.

It happened to be the first sermon that our pastor delivered after a terrible fall on his "twenty-minute-new" bike which caused him to break his acetabulum, the pelvic bone that holds the femur. Sitting a bit lopsided on a chair many weeks after the incident he recounted being alone and kneeling on the hot asphalt in the church parking lot. He prayed "God help me," the simplest prayer he has ever uttered. (If you know my pastor, you know he has a gift with words.) Then he watched the cars continue to stream by on North Druid Hills. But soon a couple and their young son pulled over. The man called 911, sat down next to Kevin and said, "Lean on me." The man's wife walked further up the hill and prayed.

I went back and listened to the sermon on-line (Broken, from July 31.) and a couple of things stood out to me. When we cry out for help, God's call goes out first to the church. I did not cry out for help this time. We have not even formally had Sofia dedicated at our church. But I personally dedicate and rededicate both children to God when I am blessed with the realization of how terrifying and humanly impossible this life is for me to navigate. So in a way, I have cried out for help for the long haul. And yesterday, "the church" was sitting within lunging distance from our table.

Another thing that stood out (and this is not a belief shared by all) is that our faith can not heal us. Only God can.

Back to the Cactus Flower Cafe... Sofia's energy levels dropped to those of a normal baby which was not too alarming. Lucas's reaction was typical Lucas. When a couple of servers came by to check on us, his brown, long-lashed saucers told of a time when he had swallowed a lot of water and immediately threw it all up. Then he went back to the table and devoured more of his beans and rice.

Right after the incident, the nurse and her husband left quietly with their boxes. It seems this happened as they were getting their check.

I tried to eat a couple more bites of my blue crab quesadilla but the only thing that would go down was a sip or five of my Sangria. We decided to pack everything up. Lucas got to ride in the front seat since I was still stuck like glue to my baby.

We got back to the condo and Lucas and Chris went out to the beach for the evening. The nurse told us to give only liquids to Sofia. So I nursed her (after carrying her around for a while and holding her fat cheeks super close to mine) and put her to bed, then fell into my own with a rush of joy and gratitude.