30 Days of Thanks #1- Safety

This is a complete rip-off of two of my friends’ ideas. First, @rachmint started her blog, My Writing Outlet, that had this theme from the beginning. Then @pastor_daniel went with the 30 Thanks theme for his church this month. I had been looking for a way to focus myself on giving thanks this month so I am taking their good idea and running with it myself.

Here’s how I’m going to do it: Every day this month, I will write about the first thing I am consciously thankful for each day that I haven’t written about before. If I can’t find thirty unique things in my life to be thankful for I have serious problems. Here goes…

On Halloween night our church, like many others, does Trunk or Treat. The idea is really simple, we decorate some cars in the parking lot, fill the trunks with candy, and start hundreds of kids down the path to type 2 diabetes. We had a blast making my sister’s VW bug look like the ugliest bumble bee I’ve ever seen.

When we got home and tucked our sticky kids into their beds, still trembling in their hyperglycemic states, Janet and I did what we have done every year for the past four Halloweens—we sorted the candy out and removed everything with nuts. Somehow, despite the fact that it affects no one else in our family, our two oldest kids are highly allergic to every type of nut (yes, we get the irony that Jack dressed as a squirrel). Because they have both had multiple trips to the emergency room and aren’t particularly fond of getting stabbed with an epi pen, they are really good about asking before they eat. They also know that most candy in yellow or orange wrappers is off limits, but we still separate it out for safety and so that Janet and I have our own stash of candy.

As we were going through the buckets of candy, I found a half-eaten fun-size Butterfinger. That terrified me because, while our older two know they are allergic and know that eating a Butterfinger will turn them into a human pin cushion, our youngest has never had nuts. She may be allergic, she may not. Our insurance won’t pay for her testing until she has an allergic reaction. We went into crazy-parent mode and watched her sleep for a few minutes until we were convinced she was alright.

This morning, the reality of how serious that situation could have been hit me. Riley could have eaten something with peanuts and I would have never known. There was a lot of commotion around our car so I may not have noticed if she were having an allergic reaction. I don’t know if she took a bite of that Butterfinger or if someone else did, but either way God protected her. She was safe. Whether by not eating the allergen or by not having an allergic reaction God kept her from harm.

Today, November 1, I am thankful to God for keeping my daughter safe.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. –Psalm 4:8 (ESV)