Things you never expect...

Today was quite the day for me. Yesterday ended with finding out that Chris' uncle had passed away. He was very close to Uncle Wayne, and we are both having trouble dealing with the idea that he has passed away so early. We are taking great solace and comfort in knowing that he is worshiping at the feet of Jesus today. The good part of the morning was spent trying to figure out how to get Chris home for the funeral, etc. About an hour after I booked his plane ticket, I got a call from my mom. "Hey, Sara. It's mom," she said, but her voice was shaking, and I knew something was wrong. My dad hasn't been feeling well for over a month, so immediately my thoughts went to him. "Your dad's had a heart attack." It hit me like a blow. I didn't know what to think, how to respond, what to say. I was ready to hop on a plane right that minute and get there as fast as I could. I still feel that way. After I hung up, I started weeping. Grant, who had just woken from his nap and is usually very whiney and grumpy after waking, came over to me, crawled up in my lap and began stroking the back of my hair, saying, "It's okay, mommy. It's okay." I realized later how silly it seems to think that I found such great comfort burying my head in my two year old's neck, but somehow it was so comforting to have someone there to hold me and to cling to in the midst of feeling so very helpless. Mom was so good about keeping me updated. Any time they would give her any information, she was calling me with the update, which I appreciated more than you could know. So it seems that my dad had a very serious heart attack today. They put in 6 stints in order to stop the heart attack itself, but found that on a large artery that splits into a "V," they couldn't clean it out like they needed to, so they will be doing Open Heart Surgery either on Saturday or Monday. Had they known what they were getting into, they would have immediately taken him to surgery and done a 5 or 6 bypass, but since they have all the stints in, they are only going to do a 2 or 3 bypass. I guess at this point, the bottom lobe is only functioning 20% and the back of the heart is only functioning 30%. But they think they can bring some of the functionality back. They just want to give the heart a few days to gain some strength before doing another surgery on it. So that, in a nutshell, making a very long story short, is the latest on my dad. I will be driving home on Friday via NC to pick up my sister and brother-in-law, and hopefully Chris can come up to Indy to spend a little bit of time with us, as well. It's been a crummy day. Definitely not what I woke up and expected to deal with today. So for you faithful readers of my blog, please keep my family - especially my mom and dad - in your prayers. We definitely need it.