911 Help

“911 Emergency.” The voice on the other end of the phone was frantic. Words cracked as a mother relayed a desperate story. “My daughter Lisa just called me from home. She is wrapping Christmas gifts in her bedroom upstairs and thinks she heard someone come into the house. She can hear male voices downstairs. Her father and I are driving home from shopping.” As both mother and father raced back, they called 911 to get help for their child.

The parents arrived faster than the police did. It took everything I had to convince dad not to run into their house to help his daughter. If there was someone inside, we didn’t want him hurt. I told the parents to park down the street, telling them that the police were only a few minutes away. “Please wait. We are on the way to help your daughter.”

Waiting isn’t easy, especially when we have to hold back from running in and solving our kids’ problems. From the moment our warm bundle of love is placed in our arms, to the day those chubby, dimpled arms grow up and reach out for their own children, we desire to protect and help them. Whether our children are two or fifty-two, we respond to their hurts, and fears, their tears and pain.

It was easier to be a parent when my children were small. I could run in and be their help and protection. They often giggled when I shared the macabre ways I would deal with anyone who messed with any of them. I prided myself in being their 911 help.

Slowly, I’m learning to let go. My adult daughter and almost-adult-son have been great teaching tools. Surrendering my control, my protection, my covering into the hands of the Lord is an ongoing process. I thought I’d share a few lessons I’ve learned over the years:

•Excuses – I have to stop making excuses for helping, and keep my mouth and my wallet shut.

•Rescue – I’m not my kids’ life raft. How are they ever going to learn to make it on their own, if I’m rescuing them from everything?

•Spankings – I’ve bent over life’s knee and received a few good spankings. I survived and learned A LOT from them - my kids will too.

•Stealing – Each time I over-help my kids, I steal their testimony. I take away an opportunity for their faith to grow. I should not be my kids “Holy Spirit”. The Lord doesn’t need my help.


The 911 call ended well. The teenager had confused the TV downstairs as intruders. The parents succeeded at waiting for help to arrive. You can imagine what it was like to try and convince them to stay in the car. Those few minutes, only yards away from their daughter, must have felt like the longest moments of their life.

What a reminder to me that God has things under control. I need to wait on Him. He's the real professional here. He loves my kids more than I do.

I think I'll take a break and let the Lord help them today.


God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Psalm 46:1

???911 Bathroom Question???

Some blog posts are timeless. If you have been blogging for more than a day or two, I'm sure you could find a few treasures in your archives.

With this in mind, I have included one below, originally posted here in December 2007. Hand picked just for you, as I experienced something along these same lines, yet again, this afternoon.

I'd love to tell you that it was my youngest who interrupted my time alone, though he did drop by later to knock and run. No...this was my oldest, my seventeen year old. Her emergency bathroom question hollered through the door jam...

"Mom, can I borrow your eyelash curler?"

I am so grateful that I have had 911/emergency training so I can remain calm while I answer such a life or death question.



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In my opinion, the U.S. Postal Service has overlooked what could possibly be a very profitable mode of mail delivery, bathroom-mail.

I am surprised that our government would clearly miss such a golden opportunity with overwhelming cash cow potential.

After many inquiries, I have discovered that moms all across America frequently use this form of communication with their family.

Just like the Loch Ness monster and Big Foot, I had heard rumors about a bathroom mail carrier when I had my first child. I had even been warned by many expert mothers - not only would my alone time in the bathroom become a distant memory,I would also experience bathroom-mail from time to time.

So why was I surprised when my first delivery arrived, slipped under the door by a dimpled, blond haired, four year old little girl in 1995?

Since then my mail carriers have been both male and female, some cute and some not so cute (those would be my teenage mail carriers). I have had letters, homework, permission slips, report cards, birthday invitations and even notes of affection delivered under my bathroom door.

I have begged, pleaded, cried and even screamed at them, “RETURN TO SENDER!”

From one expert mom to any newbie moms out there, listen up. Your alone time in the bathroom is now a thing of the past - a distant memory, like having an uninterrupted conversation, or thighs without cellulite. As long as you have children living in your home it's guaranteed you will receive bathroom-mail.

Count on it.

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor the shrill screams of an exasperated mother can keep away a bathroom-mail carrier. Not now. Not ever.

God + Humiliation = Humility

This has been a tough week. I am so tired, I feel like I have been hit by a truck. I wish I could say I am fatigued because of all of the hard work I have done around the house, or in my yard, but my weariness and exhaustion come from a much different experience.

I was humbled this week.

"All day long my dishonor is before me and my humiliation has overwhelmed me. Psalm 44:15 nasb This verse may seem a bit dramatic, but it is truly how I felt this week.

I used to dispatch for a police agency in the California, Bay Area, and have quite a bit of experience in handling emergencies and priority radio traffic. To be honest, coming to work for this much smaller police agency, in a much smaller and very crime free city, left me feeling like I was almost over qualified. (my pride talking)

Boy was I wrong.

Pride is such an ugly human condition. I wish I was immune to its seductive siren song. God made sure to break me of this flesh condition this week at work. No matter how hard I tried listening to my radio traffic, I wasn’t able to make out what the officers were saying. This is just unacceptable in the world of dispatching. The other dispatchers in the room were not very impressed. Needless to say, any prior experience respect I may have had, was wiped away with a twelve hour shift of my voice asking the officers to repeat themselves, over and over again.

Some people think that the emergencies we get from a 911 call, or from an emergency worked on the radio with police officers is the most stressful part of the job. I am here to tell you that that is not the case at all. The most stressful part of being a police/911 dispatcher is working a call well in the presence of all of your peers. The officers and the dispatchers in the room, hear and watch every single thing that you do. There are no mistakes missed, especially while you are training.

As a mother I can hear my children whisper my name while in a dead sleep in the middle of the night. I can translate most two year old language like the most qualified of linguists, and almost always, I am able to decipher the radio traffic of a police officer requesting his Code 7 (lunch), already with a mouth full of food. But on this particular day, by the middle of my shift, I was close to tears. I couldn’t make out the most uncomplicated radio traffic requests. It was then that it hit me, I was no doubt being humbled. I began praying silently to myself.

When I looked up the word “humble” in my Bible concordance today, I found it to be no coincidence that the word “humble” was right above the word “humiliation”. In my little world, God knows that the process of killing my pride is almost always humiliation which in our Christian walk, should bring godly humility.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain (selfish) conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” Phil. 2:3

Humility is to make a right estimate of one's self. ~Charles Haddon Spurgeon

God changed my heart this week. In order to be made more like Jesus, humility is something that I need much work on. I know now that no matter how many armed robberies, homicides, or traffic pursuits I have worked, I am no better than any of these women that I work with now. That was made quite clear with my job performance this week. I can thankfully share that my last evening at work was much better. I had very little trouble at all understanding the radio traffic. I know it was due to my prayers and the prayers of my husband and friends who were praying for me.

I learned this week that with God, humiliation brings about humility. For that I am grateful and hopeful that this is one lesson, at least at work, I have hopefully learned.