Will I Ever Rest?

I am so exhausted. Yes, I know that I am pregnant...with 3 other kids...and I just lost my father-in-law. But from the beginning of this pregnancy, even with being on bedrest for a short while, I have been exhausted. It's like this baby is sucking more energy out of me than any of the other kids did. Last night was a bath night. Dang, that wears me out. Bending over, squatting by the tub, going up & down the stairs to get stuff. Whew!

My exhaustion has been magnified since Chuck died. If I wake up at any point during the night or early morning, it's the first thing on my mind and I can't go back to sleep. I even have dreams about losing him, again, and those are very disturbing to my rest. D has been so understanding and gives me a break for naps. Which I also do for him, because he's just as tired as I am with all of this new responsibility that he has.

Something crazy happened yesterday. My heart is still broken over it. Yesterday was a stormy day here. Sometime around 3:30 p.m. I see a little girl standing in her driveway, across the street. She's standing there in the pouring rain, holding her back pack & the mail. It's lightning & thundering all around her and she's just standing there. A neighbor stops to help her, but she won't talk to her or allow her to help. I put on a raincoat and walked over there. I finally convinced her to go stand on her porch. It turns out that she's 5 years old, was supposed to be accompanied home by her brother, but for some reason he wasn't there. FIVE YEARS OLD and HOME ALONE!

I told her to stay there (I could see her from our house) and I went home to get her some towels and a sweatshirt or something. She was a good girl and wouldn't come over to our house and wouldn't take any food from us. When I returned with the sweatshirt, she told me that she didn't want to wear it and she could change clothes inside. She just walked into her unlocked house. WHAT?!?! Why was she standing outside for an hour, in the rain, when her house was unlocked the whole time? She didn't want me to leave her, but I was afraid that her Mom might not be happy that I was at the house, considering we don't know these neighbors yet. So I told her that I would watch her house and that I would wait to see when her Mom got home.

As I'm walking away from the house, still watching her house, I see a Sheriff in the neighborhood. I walked over to him to tell him the situation. He said that he was responding to a 911 hang-up from this neighborhood. Yeah...that would be my son that called 911 and hung up. He was so concerned for this little girl, and he had seen me call 911 just 2 weeks prior because of Chuck. I explained the situation to the Sheriff's officer. He said that he was waiting on his partner and then they would check it out. By that time, though, her big sister had come home from middle school. They still checked out the situation and I don't know what came of it.

I still have that image in my mind. A 5 year old, in the rain, scared out of her mind, and home alone. She's my daughter's age. The lingering thought of the afternoon has haunted me ever since and I was truly heartbroken. I pray that this is not a consistent occurence.