The other day, we experienced a parents worst nightmare. Since this is also our family journal, I want to record the events before I forget them (not that I ever could though).
Addie had gone off to a friends house to play. Usually, if someone isn't home, she comes back and tells me before she goes to another house. About an hour after she left, I decided to check on her but she wasn't at the house she had originally intended to go to. I started checking and calling the other neighbors houses and wasn't finding her anywhere. I checked the last house on the street and when she wasn't there, panic set in. I was just sure some crazy person had taken her and we'd already lost an hour of time!
We are so lucky to have such great neighbors- once they realized what was going on, everyone dropped everything to help me start looking for her. They checked other streets, the church, other houses down the street while I was on the phone with 911 dispatch reporting her lost. Clay immediately left work and the dispatch sent an officer to the house as soon as they had gathered all the information (what she was wearing, how tall was she, where she was last seen). It was a terrible feeling and I just kept praying that we would find her and she would be okay.
After getting off the phone with dispatch, one of the neighbors came up the street saying one of the kids playing outside down the street thought she was at his house. I had checked his house earlier but no one answered the door or the phone so I figured they weren't home. I waited at my house and the neighbors went to check and see if she was there. A few seconds later, they answered the door, they were home and Addie was there! They had all been down in the basement and didn't hear the phone or the door. I was so relieved and so happy that she was safe and nothing terrible had happened to her.
Addie had no clue what was going on and just wanted to go back in and play! I called dispatch and let them know she was found and the officer still came by just to be sure everything was fine. We talked for a minute and he was so nice and so glad that we found her. I brought Addie inside and hugged her and held her for a few minutes before I explained what had happened and why I was crying! Will just kept telling me, "moms don't cry!"- he didn't like seeing me upset like that.
We talked about how important it is that she always come and tell me where she's going to be or at least call and tell me when she goes someplace new. We also had a talk about telling the truth (because the neighbor did ask her if I knew she was over there and she told her I did!), and about strangers.
It was only about 20-30 min. from the time I realized we couldn't find her to when we did find her but it felt a lot longer than that!!! It took a few hours for the adrenaline to stop pumping through my veins and get calmed down and Addie was a little emotional that night (probably scared her when I told her I thought someone had taken her!) but hopefully, we won't ever have to go through that again! It was such a scary experience but we are so grateful that she is safe and nothing bad happened to her.
2 comments:
Scary! Glad she is safe and well!
Scariest thing ever. so glad it was a false alarm.
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