The worst day of my life

I'll never forget this day. 9.19.2015.  In my 32 years of life, it was the worst day I have ever experienced.  I am typing up this story 3 1/2 months later & my heart is still feeling tight in my chest just thinking about this day.

 We got to the beach early in the morning to avoid the crowds. We were having a blast.  We built sand castles, Vic rented a surf board and tried out some surfing, & I taught Tommy how to body surf.


 We were all having a great time when Tucker came out to the water with his face covered in sand.  I went to wash off his face & he freaked out & knocked my camera off my wrist.  We all searched all over immediately for it, but the tide was really strong & had pulled it out to sea the moment it left my arm.  We kept searching with our feet, but gave up as each wave pulled out so hard.  

It took me a bit to just sit on the sand and sulk because we lost 4 days of our vacation on it!  I finally decided I better delete pictures on Vic's iphone to still get pictures of our day at the beach so I left Vic with the kids and went up to sit on our towel & delete pictures.  While I was working on that I noticed that with each wave Tommy rode in he'd get a little further away.  I had this crazy strong feeling that I needed to go get him. (In hindsight... I'm sure it was the Holy Ghost!).  A few minutes later I felt the strong urge again.  I looked up and saw Tommy, but right at that moment I saw Vic start to head that way to get him so I wasn't worried until a few minutes later I looked up to see what was taking Vic so long and saw that instead of getting Tommy he was at the lifeguard tower.  My heart sank.  Only moments before Vic headed down there, I had seen Tommy surfing.  My little brave 5 year old had been too brave and every time he surfed a wave his head would disappear before it reappeared closer to the beach.  I sat out there searching the waves for his little head to pop up and couldn't find it.  Vic started alerting all the people around us & a sweet teenage boy ran up and down the beach with him while all of the lifeguard towers were put on watch for him.  There was a sweet older couple next to us that watched Tucker & Whitney while I ran up to all of the people along the beach and got them looking as well.  What really freaked me out was that there was 2 different moms that were on the other side of the lifeguard tower from us that told us they had noticed our tiny boy by himself one minute & gone the next.  They swore he hadn't passed them by as they'd been watching him and were panicking that he'd drowned as they knew for certain nobody had gone there way.  (The beach wasn't very busy that day).  My legs were burning from running around in the sand so long and my heart was sick.  It had been so long that I was sure the ocean had swallowed our son up just like our camera.  Too much time had passed.  It had been 30 minutes and not a soul had seen him.  I gave up and crumpled up in tears while Vic continued to run around with tears in his eyes.  We were both sure he was gone.  The lady that was watching Tucker and Whitney apologized that she couldn't do more, but that she was praying fervently in her heart.  I started to pray as well.  Oh how I mourned and I prayed.  I felt so helpless and wondered why God kept giving us such dramatic challenges in our last 2 years.  I didn't know what to do next.  Do we just sit here & mourn until the sun sets?  Do we wait for officials to scuba dive and find his dead body?  I didn't know so I sad there devastated until a life guard asked me to come sit with him in his tower and reassured me that they'd find him.

  45-60 minutes later they found him walking along the beach confused.  He wasn't scared, just confused as to where he was.  They picked him up and drove him back to us.  They said he was about 1.5-2 miles away.  I have no idea how he passed so many life guard towers on a day that there wasn't very many people and no one noticed him.  When we asked him why he walked so far away he said he didn't and seemed confused as to why were asking.  We kept trying to prod him for answers, but we never got any answers.  

 I have a theory that sounds silly, but I don't know how I saw him one moment and then he was gone the next and how Vic went running in that very direction to find him and didn't see him and no life guards saw him pass their tower.....  My theory is that the ocean took him and God in all his grace let him appear walking on the beach.  It feels crazy to write that, but I believe in miracles.  Either the miracle that God protected him by prompting him to get out of the rough tide and waves and start walking and that no strangers took him and that he wasn't scarred... OR the miracle that he placed him on the beach. (which would explain why he had no idea why he was walking or why a lifeguard was trying to rescue him).  Either way, I am so grateful to God for our miracle!  Poor Tommy received triple the cuddles and kisses from us the rest of the trip.

We couldn't even enjoy ourselves after we got Tommy back. Victor and I had just gone through that first hour of what a parent feels after losing a child and it drained us.  The kids were all hungry so we fed them lunch and I was determined to not leave the beach with a bad taste in our mouth so we rented this bike cart to cruise around in before we headed back to the hotel.

After a long recovery in the hotel room, we showered and headed to Downtown Disney.  We love to do all of our souvenir shopping there so we don't have to waste time in the parks.  We let the kids all pick out 3 big toys and it was as exciting as Christmas for them!  I do have to admit that I let them pick out a few little extras just because I was so grateful to have all 3 of my kids! We also ate at the Rainforest Cafe. It was fun, but not as exciting as when they were a smaller and it seemed real to them.