it's a miracle...that I'm not on Prozac

Well, Jake just left for the weekend. Which is bitter sweet because I always miss him while he's gone, but on the bright side, I get to eat lots of cheese and garlic and Easter candy and when he comes home I'll be 20lbs heavier and he'll never leave me again!

But aside from the unhealthy dependency, I'm also looking forward to some good quality one-on-one time with photoshop after the kids go to bed. I always feel guilty when he has to share our time with a computer program (even though it is photoshop), so I try to keep it to a minimum. You know, just long enough so we can actually say a few words to each other without being interrupted or poked or summoned to a horrible scene of sibling cruelty.

But that is not the true purpose of this post. I needed to post about something that happened today that was so miraculous that I had to write it down before I forgot. I know I've written before about how Lily is my "runner". She is the one who is making me grow that 3rd eye I've heard so many parents talk about. Unfortunately it's not quite there yet.

So today I took Alex, Lily, and Jordan to McDonald's to get an ice cream cone and play on the playground, just cuz I'm a cool mom, and when we were done I realized I didn't have my keys. I looked all around where we were, and seeing as how we were one of the only people in McDonald's at 4 in the afternoon, it was clear to me that they were nowhere to be found. So I thought I must have left them in the car. It's been known to happen.

So we all walked back to the car, and the whole time I was just praying that the door was unlocked because then I could at least strap the kids in the car and not have to worry about them while I went looking for my keys. AND I thought, if the door is unlocked then surely my keys will be inside because I always lock my car. Of course if they weren't in my hands as I was walking away then I wouldn't have locked it.

It's kind of an all or nothing thing with me.

OK, so the door opened and I did a quick look around my seat for the keys. I want to emphasize the word quick here, because it was seriously 2 seconds, and when I didn't find them I looked up and Lily was gone. Gone, gone. My first thought was that she could not have gone very far because she was only out of my sight for a nanosecond, so I kept running around the car shouting, "Lily! Lily!" And even when I knew she wasn't there I kept going because I couldn't bear to imagine where in the big wide world she'd gone and it scared me too much to think about it, so I kept having this frantic Chinese fire drill around my car.

And then Heavenly Father sent me a lady who didn't know she'd be Lily's guardian angel that day (and my 3rd eye). Up above the McDonald's parking lot is a very busy road (Sunset Blvd.) and when you're on that road, from that height, you would have to make an effort to look down into the parking lot at McDonald's, much less notice the toddler on one side of the restaurant trying to place an order at the drive through window, and the frantic mom on the other side of the restaurant (still running in circles), take in the whole scene and shout at me from her window that "SHE IS THAT WAY!" The more I think about it the more it amazes me. Total miracle.

So I put her in the car, STRAPPED HER IN, and went back inside because my keys weren't in my car, which is so bizarre to me. So after doing a once-more-over around the restaurant, I finally asked them at the counter if they'd found any keys.

And they're like, "Oh, ya, here they are."

And I wanted to yell, "WE WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE IN THE ENTIRE BUILDING! YOU COULDN'T HAVE LET ME KNOW?"

But I didn't. I said, "Oh, thanks so much!" And we left.

The thing I learned today is that despite my lack of 360 degree vision, I sense that we are all going to be OK because there truly is a Higher Power influencing our lives. I can't help but think about the course of that unknown woman's day that brought her to the exact moment where she could assess the situation so quickly and help me out. It makes me emotional, I am just so grateful to her.

I'm going to have to put a leash on that kid.

And Jeny, this is the second time you've been aware of me losing my keys in the last couple of weeks, and I promise it won't be the last. If Jordan is no longer allowed to go driving with "crazy Sister Bracken", well...we'll truly miss him, but I'll understand:).