24 Hours

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly life can change. In a matter of moments, your life can be headed into completely uncharted territory with no inkling of your eventual destination. This past week was one of those times for our family. On Sunday, we were hosting a family reunion party for thirty people. Relatives aged five to eighty-six converged in our back yard for a day of fun, food and conversation. It was a great day. Twenty-four hours later we were sitting in an emergency room with our twenty-one year old son waiting to find out why he was experiencing severe abdominal pain. What was casually dismissed on Monday morning as flu symptoms became instead an inflamed appendix that was on the verge of rupturing. As my husband and I sat there, waiting for Josh to come out of surgery, we were overcome with feelings of worry and guilt. Why hadn't we realized sooner that his "cramps" were more than that? How could this have progressed so quickly to something so potentially dangerous? Funny how much you can beat yourself up with nothing but six hours and quiet to keep you company. Now that he is back home and on the road to a full recovery, it might be easy to slide back into the taking everything for granted daily routine. I hope and pray I don't. If there's anything to be learned from the past seventy-two hours, it's that life is incredibly fragile. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to be reminded of that fact every now and then.