Rooms simple, clean, and festive. Twinkling lights brighten the rooms and hints of red, green, and white glaze the normally neutral tones of our home. A stocking hangs on either side of the TV and embroidered with the letters ‘E’ and ‘Z’. It’s 4:30am on Tuesday morning as I push start on the coffee machine. It’s been a crazy past few days of Christmas and holiday joy, and as I am settling in to morning work I notice the unusual restlessness of our son before he usually wakes up.
I grab him, a little before his normal ‘green light’ time and he’s burning up. I turn on the bathtub and place him gently in the lukewarm water – he’s shaking and delirious. He’s willing to drink, but eating is out of the question.
The pediatrician picks up right at 8am and tells me there isn’t an appointment available until 12:15p – I know waiting at urgent care will be just as long so I hold him over until they can see him. He’s miserable and won’t let me put him down. Early on I realized any further work wasn’t going to happen, so I put in for a sick day to care for him.
They saw him quickly, they could tell how sick he was. With a temperature of 103 degrees the nurse told us it was the highest she had seen this season, his oxygen was down to 92 – they needed to move fast. In the office they started administering meds and giving cold cloths to try to get his body temperature under control. We narrowly ‘escaped’ without being sent to the hospital, but with a positive Flu A test we had a long road ahead of us.
Everything else for the next week got put on hold, and at first it felt annoying and stressful in this season – but watching my family be still over the next few days shifted my perspective. The downshift seemed to be needed by us all.
We drank hot chocolate way too early in the morning, did so many art projects, and built a few different forts along the way. It was nice to not be bound to a schedule that was outlined to the minute. We all seemed to be better for it!
There are seasons where life hitting you like a ton of breaks is what it’s going to take to stop you dead in your tracks, but what if, just imagine with me, we could make the space for breath before we have to get to that point?
Imagine the possibilities, savoring the season just a little bit more…
Fueling Her Forward 
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