Monday, March 30, dawned bright and clear, a beautiful day to be outside. I was in our backyard when my phone rang. Caller ID flashed up a number that I didn't recognize, but it was my parents' area code. When I answered, no one was there. It seemed strange, especially since I thought it might be my mom's cell phone number, which she never uses. I called back. No answer. I called their house. No answer. I ran inside and confirmed that it was Mom's cell number. Now when I called it, I was sent to a voice mailbox that wasn't even set up yet.
By this time I knew something was definitely wrong. My dad had been saying that he was feeling sick for the past two weeks and I'd meant to talk to them over the weekend, but I hadn't--something I would deeply regret over the next few agonizing weeks. My oldest son suggested I could call the hospitals. Our family (my husband, two sons, and I) live about 7 hours away from my parents, so I called the emergency rooms of their three closest hospitals. Relief--my father hadn't been admitted to any of them!
The next thought was to contact my parents' doctor. The receptionist didn't seem to care about my frantic call and told me that because of HIPPA she couldn't give me any information. "Then can you at least see if my mom is in the waiting room and ask her to call me?" I begged. There was a pause as the receptionist talked to someone else. Then she came back on, "Oh, I see you're on his HIPPA form. They're in their car in our parking lot and your father is being sent in for a COVID test."
There was nothing else I could do now except pray and wait. Mom called late that morning to tell me that Dad had been admitted to the hospital. When she dropped him off at the ER, Dad told her he'd call her when it was time for her to pick him up the next morning. "I hate to put you through all this," he said, meaning the drive to the hospital.
Dad called her from the hospital later. They were giving him oxygen and he was feeling better already.
The next time the phone rang, I could tell from Mom's voice that it was bad news. Dad was in ICU on a ventilator. All of the scenes from the national news flooded over me--people in hospital beds with tubes and machines and now it was real. Dad was one of those people.
Words of Comfort
That morning my Bible reading was from John 10. I focused on verse 22,
“My sheep listen to My voice; I know them and they follow Me. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish; no one can pluck them out of My hand.”
I didn't realize how much I would need those words, but God did. And that night as I looked back on what He'd given me before the missed phone call, I wrote in my journal, "Oh LORD, please, if it's Your will, please don't take Dad yet. Thank You for Your words today that You hold us in Your hand and give us eternal life..."
Now all I could do was wait and pray and hope that the phone didn't ring in the middle of the night...
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