Better than being outside in the dark...

Well, I found out what it feels like to be completely petrified this week.

Jess and Aubrey stayed after school for art club and then took the “late bus” home for the first time. Since it was the first time any of our children had taken the late bus, Laurel and I walked down to the drop-off point in Ruislip and arrived about 10 minutes before the bus was supposed to come so that we could be there when it arrived. Then we waited, and waited, and waited. Twenty minutes after the bus should have arrived and it hadn't I was concerned; after 30 minutes I was getting pretty worried, and after 45 minutes I was panicking. We don't live in Colorado anymore, you know?!!? There was no one answering the phone at the school, and I didn’t know what to do.

After praying for calmness, inspiration, and a ton of help, I called the owner of the bus company, who assured me that the girls had taken the bus home but said that he was pretty sure they had gotten off in a different city. He then called the driver to try to figure out where the girls might be. The driver thought they got off in Ichenham, the next city over, but couldn't be 100% sure. (The owner sure was sorry for the mixup, though, and wanted us to call and let him know when we found them.)

To make it worse, the girls really had no clue where they were or where we live in relation to the school. They had no money and no phone, and they truly had no way to get in touch with me or their dad. I hadn't prepared them for getting lost, you see, since riding the school bus home is supposed to be safe.

Anyway, by this time it was very dark and over 1 ½ hours since I was supposed to meet them at the stop in our city. I felt completely panicked, hopeless, and simply terrified, praying that we could find them and that they were both alright. London is a pretty big city for a 14-year-old and an 11-year-old to be lost in, you know!

To make a long story short, we drove over to the next city where the bus driver thought they might have gotten off and simply started driving around, hoping we'd find the girls. And we did find them. We all stood there hugging on the side of the road, and the girls were both crying and hanging onto all of us and saying repeatedly how scared they were, how hard they’d been praying, and how good it was to see us. With as scared as I was, I can only guess what it must have been like for them!

I'm telling you all this because it was terrible, but it's now a part of our London experience. AND, as unpleasant as all that was (and especially now that it's over), there is always a funny side, right? The proud winner of the comical line for this event was Aubrey. Everything even the slightest bit challenging now elicits the following response from her: “Hey, it’s better than being outside in the dark.” I like it; maybe it should be our family motto…