When Life Keeps "Lifing" — Our Ambulance Ride, Burn Clinic Visits, and Trying to Keep it Together

Some days you wake up and know it’s going to be a battle. Other days, life sucker punches you straight in the gut with no warning.

Last week was one of those days.

My youngest, Sawyer — a year and a half old and into literally everything — had an accident that landed us in an ambulance, racing toward the hospital. As if life wasn’t already throwing enough curveballs our way (a broken washer, Bentley with a ruptured eardrum, and all the normal chaos that comes with a house full of kids), we added one more thing to the list.

Sawyer grabbed a pot of boiling tea that my mom had left on the stove.

Everything happened in a flash. I ripped his shirt off as quickly as I could, but in the frenzy, it didn’t even dawn on me that he still had socks on. His chest got burned — and it's definitely gnarly — but his foot took the brunt of it.

The ER trip was quick and excruciating. Watching your baby scream while strangers poke and prod him is an entirely new kind of hell. And to top it off, I had to answer a million questions from the police about why I was angry at my mom. (Look, I get it — they were just doing their job. But still. Salt in an already bleeding wound.)

We finally made it home, exhausted and broken-hearted, only to face another hurdle: chasing down liquid pain medication for a toddler in a town where it apparently doesn’t exist unless you go through the hospital pharmacy. So, add another 2.5-hour drive to the schedule just to get Sawyer seen by a doctor that afternoon.

At that appointment, we got good news — better than we had feared. We’ll be following up at the burn clinic this Wednesday to monitor his healing. For now, the orders are simple but heartbreaking: bathe him nightly and peel any loose, dead skin. (You want to talk about heart-wrenching? Try holding your baby while doing something that causes him pain and knowing it’s necessary.)

I’m trying so, so hard to let go of the anger. To breathe through it and remind myself that accidents happen. That none of this was intentional. But God — why him? Why any child?

It’s taken a lot of prayer. A lot of crying in the bathroom where no one can see me. A lot of sitting in the parking lot with my hands gripping the steering wheel, whispering, "This too shall pass," even when I’m not so sure it will.

I know this is a lesson. I know there’s something I’m supposed to learn here — strength, patience, grace — something. It’s wild how in the blink of an eye, your whole life can shift. One second, you’re making tea. The next, you're rushing your baby into an ambulance.

And still... life keeps lifing.

We're still here. Still squeezing the damn lemons we’ve been handed, trying our best to make the lemonade we’re supposed to make. Some days it feels more like sour lemonade with a shot of tequila, if I’m being honest.

I need a break. Maybe a Xanax or two. Maybe just a good, long nap where nobody needs anything from me.

But I keep showing up because that's what moms do. Even when we're tired. Even when we're broken.

This season is hard. It's brutal. But it's not forever.

If you’re in a season like this too — just know you’re not alone.

We’re all out here lifing the best we can, messy and exhausted and doing whatever it takes to keep the people we love moving forward.

One day at a time. One tearful prayer at a time. One tiny, tired step at a time.