Vacation MIRL and A God Thing

After returning from our trip to Eastern Washington, I noticed that my left foot was swollen. My shin on that leg (which had been badly sunburned a couple of weeks before) was also sporting a funny looking discoloration or possible rash just below the knee.

I'd noticed it the day we'd taken my sister to the ER, and had even contemplated getting it checked out while we were there, but not being in any pain or feverish or anything had talked myself out of it.

So, after a morning spent at the laundromat doing our mid-trip laundry in one fell swoop, we rushed back to my moms where I got ready and drove into Tacoma where I was scheduled to meet up with my dear friend Gretchen of Jewels In My Crown...Someday for a bloggy MIRL (Meeting In Real Life).

I arrived at our meeting place first, and Gretchen, who had been dropping her daughter off at camp, called to let me know she was stuck in a major traffic jam.

Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to meet up with her, I told her that was no problem and I didn't mind the wait. We were meeting in a bookstore, after all, so passing the time perusing books was no sweat off my back.

However, walking on my left foot had begun to feel uncomfortable and my anxiety about it was growing.

While in the ER with my sister a couple of days previously, I'd measured the discolored area of skin and my hand barely covered it. But at the laundromat earlier that morning, it appeared to have spread well beyond my hand and the swelling in my ankle was worrisome.

Gtetchen arrived, and over coffee, I gushed on and on and on, trying to quell my anxiety we got aquainted, talking about all the things that don't always get blogged about in detail, and how the Lord bad brought us to the places where we each were, respectively.

It was a delightful visit and truly a highlight of my vacation. It was wonderful to finally put a face and voice to the sweet friend I've known these past couple of years from bloggyville, and to know that she was every bit as real and Godly and fun-loving and all the other things that she comes across as in her blog. She's a jewel of a friend.

Somehow, though, during the course of our conversation, my worries got the best of me and I finally mentioned what I was worried about.

Gretchen's leaned over the table to look at my shin, and her countenance suddenly stilled and became serious and sober. "Oh, Becky..." she asked, concern etched on her face. "Does the back of your knee hurt?"

I thought about it for a moment, and realized that while it didn't hurt, per se, it did seem a bit uncomfortable.

"Becky, I really think you should go to the ER. I mean like leave here and go straight to the ER. Seriously."

As it turns out, she had reason to worry for me. Her hubby had similar symptoms once upon a time which ended up being symptoms of a potentially deadly blood clot which was, thankfully, caught and treated in time.

My tendency to be a bit of a hypochondriac got the best of me then. I felt a bit shaken, even, and decided then and there to take her advice and prepared to get going.

However, we first needed to take our picture. For you simply can't MIRL without pictures.



Yes...our complexions ARE dewey and smooth...for we are youthful women. *winks*

We chatted for a couple of minutes more and then Gretchen asked if she could pray for me.

It was so sweet, and the Lord knew it was just the thing my anxious heart needed at that moment. I literally felt the anxiety lift.

Parting was such sweet sorrow...I wished we could have had more time in which to chat...time not clouded by health concerns, but she was right...I needed to get things checked out pronto. Better to be safe than sorry.

So, on the way back to my moms place, I called Jeff to let him know that I would be stopping by the hospital, and could he please meet me.

I arrived first, and walked up to the door, only to learn that the Urgent Care clinic was already closed for the night.

The doorman directed me to another hospital a few minutes up the road.

Jeff and Judah followed along, having arrived just as I was getting back into the car.

We got to the hospital, which happened to be a very new, state-of-the-art facility. I was checked in right away and put in a triage room.

The ER doc came in to examine my leg, and she, too, suspected a possible blood clot. Among other things, I had blood drawn and they checked for enzymes that would indicate if there was a clot present or not.

While waiting for the results to come back, I happened to glance up at a white board on the wall and saw that one of the techs on duty for the evening was someone named Julee.

It's not a terribly common spelling of the name and I wondered if, being in an area close to my old hometown, this might possibly be my childhood best friend Julee.

That would be totally wild, I thought, remembering that the last time I'd seen her was 20 years earlier.



Sadly, we'd lost touch when I moved out-of-state after high school and she'd moved out on her own, and our paths simply hadn't crossed since.

While waiting and watching TV, I saw a woman in scrubs walk past my room, and something about her looked very familiar. "Julee?" I called out.

She turned and came into the room. "Yes?"

"Julee, my old childhood friend Julee?" I asked, giving her maiden name.

Her jaw dropped, and suddenly,all the years fell away, a million memories bubbling up to the surface, because as it turned out...it WAS her!



We ended up talking nonstop for an hour, catching up on everything we possibly could during that time.

Thankfully for her it was a rare light evening at the hospital, and they were getting ready to send a couple of employees home or she might have gotten in trouble.

Thankfully for me, it ended up being merely some residual skin damage from my bad sunburn of a couple of weeks prior, along with swelling from the in-the-car-for-hours on end-during-a-heatwave travel.

There is a whole lot more to this particular story, but suffice it to say that the Lord knew my desire to one day reconnect with this dear friend...the one I shared all my girlhood secrets with...the one who I got in all kinds of trouble with when we took off in her moms Hyundai around the neighborhood before either of us even had licenses...the one whose family I stayed with for a few weeks during a particularly difficult season of my teenage years...and whom I hadn't seen since we said our goodbyes at a little park in our hometown the day before I moved to Minnesota.

The Lord in His Goodness decided to bless me doubly that day, both in meeting up with Gretchen, and through her urging to go to the ER on my way home...passing up one hospital and ending up at the very one where my oldest childhood friend Julee worked!

How cool is that?!

It was a total God thing.