THIS Tuesday is MOPS Tuesday!!! 12/8/15

Yay!! Its Christmas time again!! I am mostly excited about this,,,only a little stressed out, can you sympathize? Ok maybe I am a little more than *a little stressed out* but between events, family, presents, cookie making, family lunches, family dinners, decorating, etc... I can get a bit overwhelmed, and I would imagine a lot of you are in the same boat!


Something happened to my family and I this week though, that literally brought my world to a halt and scared me to my core. Early Thursday morning (like 3am ugh), I woke to an alarm I didn't recognize going off in my house. At first I assumed it was my husband's new alarm on his phone as he tends to switch it often, but then as I slowly woke up more I realized it was coming from outside of our room. It wasn't the fire alarm, or a kid's toy, it was like a rapid 4 beep sequence that kept repeating. Finally, I rolled over and told my husband what I was hearing and he got up to investigate. After a lot of going up and down the stairs trying to figure out where it was coming from, he finally determined it was the carbon monoxide alarm and not only was the one upstairs alarming but the one downstairs was as well...We quickly determined that we should grab our dog and our son and exit the house but being still half awake we only made it to the garage, where we sat in the car (with the garage door open), and tried to think through what we should do logically.

My husband ended up driving our son and I to my parents house a few minutes away so Luke could go back to bed, and then came back to the house to call the fire department. When they got to the door to test the levels they had to go back and get oxygen masks to even enter our house and after several hours of using a huge fan to try and blow out the gas with all of our windows open, we still could not go home. About an hour after leaving the house both my husband and I started noticing a few symptoms like headaches, and dizziness but we didn't know if it was truly from poisoning or if it was just from exhaustion. So we called our doctor who immediately got poison control on the phone and after lots of questions they decided we didn't have to go in for treatment but we did need to try and sleep off the effects and have someone keep an eye on us for several hours before we could go to work.

Thursday is a bit of a blur to be honest, I had a headache most of the day and my husband and I were exhausted! We ended up spending the night at my in-laws that night but of course trying to get a 2 year old to sleep over somewhere with mom and dad in the same room is no easy feat, and therefore Friday was exhausting as well.

But come Friday night it finally hit me...the words my husband and told me that the firemen and so many others in our lives had told us...we could have died! In fact the firemen said that the levels in the house were dangerously high and we were lucky that I even woke up to the alarm. The nurse I talked to on the phone at poison control told me that I was lucky I was able to wake up my husband and my son...And as I pondered these words, I slowly started looking back on the past couple of months and realized just how present God has been in keeping us safe.

For example, in August I broke my leg but the furnace didn't go out until I was fully healed and able to get to the car on my own so my husband could get our son. Also, I recently had two job opportunities I was looking in to that would have had me working overnights, and who knows if I would have been working that night but if I had, I can almost guarantee my husband (a very deep sleeper) would never have woken up for that alarm. Even if I  had happened to be home that night I would have had a very hard time going back to work remembering the situation. Finally, what started out as a very stressful process of our landlord selling our house a couple of weeks ago, ended up being a great outcome because our new landlord is an investor and was able to get a new furnace installed quickly with funds that they have set aside for these things.

God kept us safe, and my outlook on this Christmas has completely changed...the presents, the chaos, the craziness is not so important anymore. The fact that my family is all still alive and well is my focus and I encourage each of you to look past the chaos of Christmas and see the gifts God has blessed you with, the magic of Christmas through the eyes of a child, the importance of Jesus in our lives, and the limited time you have here on earth.

This week we will be hearing from Thomas Milburn on Noticing the Goodness at Christmas, and celebrating the year with our wonderful MOPs community! We will even have crepes made to order and extra time to talk at our tables this meeting, so you don't want to miss it!! 

Some other upcoming events: 

December Play Date: Wednesday 12/16/15 at Calvary Bible Church in Erie, We will be having a story and craft time =) Contact Kelly with questions

Spring Sign Up: Don't forget to sign up for spring MOPs if you only did a one semester sign up in the fall, registering helps us know how many people to expect and saves your spot at your table! We will need everyone signed up by the February meeting, if this is something that is not doable for you please contact Joanna or Andrea as we do have scholarships available!

See you Tuesday! and Merry Christmas from all of us on steering =)