Have you ever been walking along, say in a store, and all of a sudden your feet somehow get tangled, or you trip on a rug and you fall down? It happens to me a lot. You feel pain - actual physical pain associated with hitting some part of your person on something on the way down, say a shelf with pointy edges, or the floor which is hard. Also, there is the possibility that somebody saw it happen. That's so embarrassing. You laugh and pretend it's no big deal, but, I'm telling you from experience that those feelings stay with you for a while.
I'm a school bus driver, and one morning somebody got on my bus smelling like Cheerios and bananas. Wham. Down I went. That smell was like so many mornings in my house when my kids were little. I was immediately in my kitchen, standing by the sink, watching my three eat, their personal blankets wrapped around them, maybe some stuffed animals or some action figures on the table watching as well.
What happened to that life? I still feel like the person that cut up bananas for my kid's morning cereal, but I'm really not. There's Andrew and Emily - they've got jobs, school, lives of their own. There's my oldest, my Jason who is unavailable to me currently. I miss them, often and intensely.
So what's your plan when you're driving a school bus with tears streaming down your face? How do you overcome that shooting, debilitating pain and go on with your day?
I guess you just wipe away the tears, and focus on the job at hand. I have to trust my Father to not put on me more than He is willing to help me walk through. You have to remember all those hugs and kisses, all the stories you read and experiences you shared, all those Cheerios and bananas very fondly and trust that your little ones remember those things, too.
