Stinging Saturday

Today was high adventure. Lost in the woods, stung by bees, but ended with my daughter still focused on God.

After making sure the kids had enough energy to venture out to an untraveled nature trail, off we went. One secret path led to another. Before you knew it, we were knee deep in a forest, on paths wide enough for bicycle tires, not two kids each wanting to hold mom’s hand.

It started off fun. Really fun. Sometimes the kids picked left, other times right–sometimes they avoided a hill, and then there were times they faced it head on. The problem with this approach is that we were so disoriented within the woods I had no idea how to get back on track. We should have stayed on the bunny trail, NOT the black diamond.

I pulled up the map app on my iPhone, mostly just to show the kids that “mom’s got this” and “we’re fine.”

But mom didn’t have this. At all. And we surely weren’t fine.

All the map app showed me was a blue dot in proximity to civilization. In other words, not helpful.

After more than an hour, the adventurous kids that started the journey disappeared. Instead they became whiny, impatient, irritable kids. And they were being led by a mom who had no idea where we were, how to get back, or how to answer the question, “when will we be back?”  All I could do was remind them that we weren’t in a hurry, and taking a break was an option.

Sounded appealing.

We found a couple of fallen trees just off the path and Abby decided to sit. Less than a minute later, she panicked when she saw a pesky, angry yellow jacket, and stood up with flailing arms. Bee Training 101 warns this is the worst thing you can do, but what 6 year old remembers Bee Training?  The odds were against her; the bee stung her–shoulder blade. I consoled, and was penalized–the bee had backup and wasted no time stinging me next; thigh.

Experiencing a bee sting at the same time as my daughter gave me perspective and empathy that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. My pain was her pain. The crazy thing is, four years ago almost to the day, Abby got her first bee sting. We were at the apple orchard and a bee found her tiny, 2 year old pinky. That day, too, within minutes of Abby, a bee stung me. More perspective and empathy.

I won’t bore you with the play-by-play from there on either day.

But, I will tell you that today was filled with cute anger from a 5 year old boy who told me “it’s all your fault, Mom”, and “you should have known bees were there.” And with a 6 year old girl who was screaming “help me” and “this is the worst day ever; I wish today never happened” every few paces. But who later calmed down and advised Jacob to do the same or else the bees were going to find us again.

Fifty minutes. Yes, it took us another 50 minutes to find our way out of the woods after Barry B. Benson stung us.

But, we all lived. And, according to Abby, “God helped us find our way because He didn’t want us to miss church.”  Although not many minutes to spare, we made it to the 5:00pm mass on time. Great perspective from a little girl, despite a stressful two hours.

Enough about me, though! How was your Saturday??