My Worst Nightmare Coming True

I sure love this little girl. She brings out so many emotions in me from bust-a-gut laughter to pull-out-my-hair frustration and everything in between. Since Makayla started school, Ellie has become my little shadow. She follows me around the house as I complete my daily chores. She asks to cook with me. She wants to put make-up on when I do mine. She wants to curl her hair when I curl mine. Sometimes she even insists on wearing the same color shirt as me. She's my little mini-me.

So imagine the sheer terror that filled me when she got lost over the weekend. We were at a huge park. There were 6 soccer games and 1 foot ball game going on, with additional players and their parents waiting around the practice field. There were literally hundreds of people around us. I was taking care of Kimberly and when I turned around to check on my older girls, Ellie was nowhere to be found.

I thought she was with Makayla checking out the horses in the field behind us. Nope. I stood up and looked around. Couldn't see her. Hollered at Kasey to see if he knew where she was. When he said he hadn't seen her in a little while, I started to get really nervous. After looking up and down the sidelines with no sign of her, I started to panic. I grabbed Kimberly, and Kasey grabbed Makayla. We went in opposite directions looking for a little brown-haired girl in a black & orange shirt.

After each of us made a lap around the park without seeing her, we started asking help of the people around us. There were a dozen or more of us searching among hundreds of people. Kasey told me to start asking everyone. But every time I asked someone if they had seen her, I started to cry. And every time those people told me they hadn't seen her, I cried harder.

I tried not to think that someone had taken her. I tried so hard to remain positive that we would find her. But with every gut-wrenching minute that passed, I got more and more worried.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of searching, I spotted her across one of the soccer fields cradled tightly in Kasey's arms. I ran faster than I have ever run before. I grabbed Ellie and held her close to me and just sobbed. In that moment I felt so many emotions: happiness for finding her, anger for her running away; fear for what could have happened, comfort for what didn't.

Since that incident I have scarcely let Ellie out of my sight. I can't bear to think of all the awful things that could have happened to her. And today when she left my sight in the store, those same feelings of complete terror overwhelmed me. You may have thought I was a paranoid mother before, but you haven't seen anything yet.