We Are Perfectly Safe

My oldest is no longer a child.  She has past those years and entered adulthood with only a few passing storms. 

Some that left her daddy and me feeling like we were standing in the storm alone, but they passed and left rainbows in their wake.

We are at a family reunion.  She's with the adults now and is telling of her life.  How school is going, how her love life is, where she is working . . .

This one.  Where she is working.  She tells of the alternative school and the discipline problems that get her students sent there.  I'm listening and there is nothing new.  I even say . . .

 "Last week one of the students punched her in the stomach." 

I feel a little sick as the words come out, words that sound foreign.  Words that don't belong . . . 

But like Lisa we are stripping worry away.  So I straighten my back and tell myself it is okay.

Then she begins to tell of things I didn't know.  Like the child 
who threw a chair at her or the one that knocked a panel over on her. 

"We hit the button and the office comes running.  We are perfectly safe," she says in her young and very naive voice.  She wants to make a difference.

We are perfectly safe my mind screams.  And in the lawn chair beside me is my mama and I look at her and reassure her Delia is fine but on the inside my mind is screaming we are perfectly safe and my heart has begun to beat faster and like this commercial I'm fretting and there must be a better word than fretting.

But I won't worry. 

And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?  Matthew 6:30

My girls talk to me.  I've never had trouble getting them to talk.  They talk alot.  But sometimes they don't.

And this is when I want them to talk.  I want to know what they are afraid of or not afraid of.  I want to know if a dream crashed or a new one soared.  I want to know the last time they cried and why.

I want them to know that I was once a mess so they will share their messiness with me.

I want to dig deep but then I feel like I'm being buried alive in that same hole when conversations are like this one the other day with people I never see and still love and the sky is blue and the sun is shining and the birds are singing and we are perfectly safe leaves the mouth of my baby girl.  Breathe.

And then I find myself picking up my phone to call and check on the other two out on the pier I can't see that just moments ago I said I wasn't worried about.

But I don't want them to be scared.

I don't want them to think that the world is only a dangerous place. I taught them how to cross the street safely and never go with a stranger. I've told them what to do in an emergency and to always be smart.

Now I'm going to assume that an emergency won't happen instead of the other way around. And I'm going to believe that if one does that they will be prepared.

 And I'm going to let them go out without thinking that the world is too big for them and their mama is a nervous wreck.  Because what I want for them is foreign to fear.

And I'm going to sit down and remind myself that God asked me what do you have to worry about?