Anticipation

While away from home on Sunday night, Mira got into some candy.  And when I mean got into, I mean inhaled at a speed in which we can tell there was very minimal chewing.  How could we possibly know this, since she snarfed it while we were gone?  She spent the rest of the night and into the early morning hours puking her guts out.  The feeling in our home when we discovered what had happened was dark and heavy.  Honestly, our kids went to bed upset and angry.  Even our family prayer felt wrong.  But I think the underlying emotion through it all was anxiety.  This isn't the first time Mira has gotten into candy, but her violent reaction was definitely more severe.

Contemplated anticipation can be somewhat more difficult than actually living the situation.  In many cases over the last few years, sometimes the anticipation was far worse in my head than it was in real life.  That's not to say that reality wasn't a beast, but that sometimes I can come up with some pretty heinous scenarios on my own, no real-life participation needed to make it a nightmare.  The same can be said with my anxieties over Mira on Sunday night.  I kept going over and over in my head, praying with all I have in me that she would not die.  I kept imagining losing her, too, and how hard that would be.  It's hard enough to lose a beloved dog (whom we completely count as one of our family members), but can you feel the sorrow it would mean for us should it happen in the same month as losing our beloved Caden?  It hurts too much to even write all that I kept imagining, the depth that I felt should it happen.  It felt like it actually happened, in my heart.  It was scary, with a lot of laundry and mopping and constant monitoring for different symptoms, but it wasn't as dire as it was in my mind. 

Anticipation is sometimes the hardest situation I put myself in.