Has this ever happened to you? Where you have a day when several out-of-the-ordinary things happen, and if you were a Greek or Roman in Greek and Roman times, you’d think the gods were playing with you?

I had a day like that yesterday. I went to bed the night before with premonitions of what was to come. You see, my daughter had suddenly spiked a fever out of the blue which I thought was odd because she didn’t have any other symptoms. We watched a movie before going to bed, and when I left her on the couch, I looked back and felt that something wasn’t right. She noticed my look of concern and said, “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m going to be fine.”

Famous last words is what went through my mind as I went up to bed. I slept fitfully. I kept hearing things in the background. Garage doors opening and closing. Voices. I had taken some sleeping pills because I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and I was starting to feel sick myself from the lack of it. (Yeah. I’m separated from my husband, and I’m on drugs. Go tell that to your pastor’s wife.) So the drugs kept me from waking up fully, and yet I tossed and turned on the edge of consciousness for what seemed like hours.

I finally fell into a deeper sleep and woke up at 4:00, hearing my daughter throwing up in the bathroom. I saw a text from my husband on my phone at that point. He had brought back our older boys from his apartment the night before, and our daughter told him her chest hurt and she was feeling very sick. He took her to urgent care where they did an exam, including a flu test and a strep test which came back negative. Then he brought her home.

It was obvious something was wrong, and we decided to bring her back to the clinic. My husband sat with her for over two hours waiting for a doctor. The waiting room was packed, but thankfully they gave our daughter a room. A perk for puking. She was also put on an IV to re-hydrate her, and that took care of the nausea. An x-ray finally revealed pneumonia, and she was put on an antibiotic and sent home after spending most of the day at the clinic.

In the meantime, I had an appointment to meet with an old friend of mine who lives quite a distance from me. Twice a year we each drive to a meeting place about halfway between us for lunch or dinner and catch up on our lives. I was tempted to cancel, but I decided to push ahead – so my older boys were put in charge of the younger kids, and I left feeling anxious. I had seen a Facebook post that morning from someone at our church telling of a missionary family from church whose 8-year-old daughter had fallen and passed away the day before from a head injury. I thought of my own almost 8-year-old girl who is the sweetest, kindest, gentlest little girl you could ever meet. What a nightmare to lose something so precious. Life hangs on a thread, I thought as I backed my car out of the driveway.

On the way there, I had several near misses with cars and trucks behaving oddly on the freeway. I felt like I was in a dream, and my nerves were on edge. At one point up ahead I noticed a large object lying across my lane from one end to the other. It looked like a tarp had fallen off a truck or something. I figured it would be okay to drive over it, but I decided since there was room on one side of me, I’d move over. Just in case.

As I passed the object, I realized with horror that it was a long ladder. If anyone hit it, their car would surely be thrown out of control, and a horrible accident would happen. I could see it all happening in my head, and I started shaking. I saw a white working van on the side of the freeway. I suppose the owner couldn’t get out and get the ladder without possibly getting killed themselves. Feeling sick to my stomach, I looked in my rear view mirror, begging God to spare everyone behind me. I saw two cars in that lane, one behind the other, coming up to the ladder. I watched even though everything in me wanted to look ahead and ignore what was happening behind me. Pretend it was a movie or something and not real. Then I screamed out loud, “NO, DEAR GOD HAVE MERCY!” The first car veered out of the path, and the car behind it barely veered out of the way as well, narrowly missing the ladder. Seriously? Did I just see a miracle? Thanking God, and again praying for all who would follow – I continued on my way, hands shaking on the wheel and heart pounding against my rib cage. What was with this day? Again, the suddenness of how things can go wrong, and how out-of-control we truly are hit me like a falling weight.

I had a sweet visit with my friend, but we shared many burdens, and as I drove away in the gathering gloom of a cloudy winter evening with an impending snow storm on the horizon, I had that creepy sense of unreality again. Plus, now I wasn’t feeling very well. Was it the baked potato soup I ate? Augh. I hoped nobody at Panera had the pukey flu.

I came home to chaos. Loud kids. Loud dog. Christmas garbage everywhere. I checked my business email and had two uncomfortable ones waiting for me. A Canadian ranted and raved about how terrible shipping costs to Canada were, and why couldn’t I cover the extra cost of shipping her order? I tried to appease her – explain how I didn’t set the shipping prices, USPS did – gave her some links to soap shops in Canada, etc. But she continued to badger me with several more venomous emails (clearly, she was having a bad day) – and even left a mean review on my Facebook page about how unfair I was for not covering the extra shipping costs. Another customer let me know that their (large) order was destroyed during shipment, and she was extremely disappointed. After reassuring her I would reship everything to her – no problem – and then assessing the damage – I felt deflated. Would this day ever end?

Suddenly I heard a buzzing in my ear. Like an insect. BZZZ. BZZZ. BZZZ. I even felt it. Very odd. Then the room began to spin. I got out of my chair onto the floor. I felt I might faint. I wondered if I was having a stroke. Or a brain bleed? My friend’s mom had died of an aneurysm in her living room when she was younger than I was. Maybe I’d just die right here while my kids all romped and played in the other room? Farewell loud family, I thought. I didn’t even care. I just felt tired – and maybe I’d go to a quieter place. That appealed to me deeply in that moment. Hmmmm. A new sensation. Now I felt like I was going to puke. Would the room ever stop spinning?

After realizing that I was not on the brink of immediate demise, but rather of possibly seeing that potato soup again, I crawled to the basement door and feebly yelled, “HEY! I think I’m going to faint or throw up or something!” Everyone came running to see it. They got me a bucket, some blankets, and a pillow – and I closed my eyes, willing myself not to puke. Eventually I made it upstairs to my bed and crashed for the night.

I woke up the next day, and I was fine. The white, cloudy world was full of snow. That bizarre day was just a memory. Like a bad episode of the Twilight zone.

We all have weird days like this now and then. They remind us of our fragility. Our lack of control. Our ultimate dependence on Something bigger than we are. When we go to a funeral, we have the same experience of seeing reality as it is. You can’t fake reality at a funeral. It lays you bare and raw.

Today I am back to my semi-numb state of mind where I feel “normal” and safe, even though none of us ever is here on earth. And yet – when we know the Creator, we are safe. No matter what. Because this really is sort of the Twilight Zone, and our real home is somewhere and sometime else.

I love this quote from C.S. Lewis:

“It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different – deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia

Here’s to the new country. The one where everything means more. The one we’ll meet in someday, and it might be sooner than we think.